Re: Energy vanishing into air? (fwd)

[Steven Roys <sroys@xxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 00:10:10 +0100
From: Finn Hammer <f-h@xxxx>
To: High Voltage list <hvlist@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Energy vanishing into air? (fwd)

Al, all.....    :-)

The energy would stay the same, in theory the voltage on the plates
would rise to infinity.
In the real world, the structure would arc over and dissipate the energy
into the arc.
This principle is what creates the high voltage in Wimshurst Machines:
Charging sectors where they are close together, then removing them from
each other.

Cheers, Finn Hammer

High Voltage list wrote:
> Original poster: Steven Roys <sroys@xxxxxxxx>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 11:54:14 -0500
> From: Alfred Erpel <alfred@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: High Voltage list <hvlist@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Energy vanishing into air?
>
>
>
> Howdy All,
>
>     Imagine an air variable capacitor with plates fully engaged and the
> capacitor fully charged.
>
>     Let's use the example of .001µF charged to 10,000 volts. Stored energy =
> joules = .5CV^2 = .05 watt=seconds.
>
>     What happens to the energy of the fully charged capacitor when the
> plates are rotated to the 0µF capacitance position?
>
> Regards,
>
> Al Erpel
>
> [Potential energy.  It would take that much energy to rotate the cap
> plates to the 0uF position (barring friction losses), and rotating them
> back would convert the energy back from potential to the energy stored in
> the electrical field.  SRR]
>
>
>