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Re: Wireless Power Transmission



Original poster: David Speck <Dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Drake -- Highly simplified explanation follows:

A TC broadcasts power in all directions into infinite space. Think of a really big garden sprinkler being supplied with a fire hose. You want to fill a bucket 50 feet away. Only a small fraction of the water going into the sprinkler is going to end up in you bucket, with the rest of it lost. TCs are best at broadcasting power when they are not making sparks -- making sparks requires energy. Use it up there, and you you won't have it to transmit. That's why TV, Cell and radio transmitting towers don't make sparks, either, under proper operating condition. However, the amount of energy transmitted in broadcasting to your receiving device is in the picowatt range, again only a tiny fraction of what goes into the transmitting system. The whole idea of wireless power transmission with TCs was conceived in blissful ignorance of the inverse square law. As you move away from the transmitter, the amount of power available drops exponentially. The only modestly successful wireless power transmission systems that I'm aware of use highly directional microwave beams and matched antennas, and even those don't work awfully well.
Dave

Tesla list wrote:
Original poster: "Drake Schutt" <drake89@xxxxxxxxx>

Well I always watch this debate whenever it comes up, but this time I have a question.

Can someone please explain to me how TC's transmit electricity and why they're so inefficient, in terms that someone with a basic knowledge physics (AP next year!) and precalculus could understand? Also what is it that proponents of wireless power transmission propose we do to 'light up the world' and why is this "against the laws of physics", as i believe a lot of people say? One last question- I remember hearing that when a coil is tuned for maximum energy transfer it produces minimal sparks, is this true?

thanks for any responses, I'm sure there are answers in the archives but I'm too lazy to sort through all of the flame wars.

Drake Schutt