Are my Assumptions Right?

[prabha_friend]

Electricity is Magic!
No Electrons are wasted but Grounded at Last...
Power Needed for a Device is nothing but How much electrons a Device need to Suck to Run...
So My Main Question is If we put the Higher Electron Sucking Machines at the last of the circuit and we can put the lower ones before in the same line of conduct (Wire) we just have to pay only the Electricity Fee of that Larger Device?
Am I Right?
Please clarify...
I haven't studied any of this but my rough guessings. Please clarify to promote to the next level called "Knowledge".
Thanks
Single Line of Conduct? - How about Optic Fibre?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

You are not right. Your premise (the higher-usage device somehow "hides" the lower-usage device) violates several laws including the first law of thermodynamics - that energy cannot be created or destroyed. If your premise had been correct, the "hidden" devices would have created energy from "nowhere" in order to run.

There are all sorts of technical variations of the three laws of thermodynamics, but the movie and Broadway show The Wiz states the simplest form of those laws by portraying all of existence as a crooked gambling game.

1. You can't win. (Energy can't be created or destroyed - i.e. energy is a zero-sum game.)
2. You can't break even. (The sum of entropies in a system never decreases. This says that natural processes lose energy. Think "friction.")
3. You can't get out of the game. (The entropy of an overall system tends towards zero as available energy decreases. The house always wins.)

 

[MikeT1941]

You are not right. Your premise (the higher-usage device somehow "hides" the lower-usage device) violates several laws including the first of thermodynamics - that energy cannot be created or destroyed. If your premise had been correct, the "hidden" devices would have created energy from "nowhere" in order to run.

There are all sorts of technical variations of the three laws of thermodynamics, but the movie and Broadway show The Wiz states the simplest form of those laws by portraying all of existence as a crooked gambling game.

1. You can't win. (Energy can't be created or destroyed - i.e. energy is a zero-sum game.)
2. You can't break even. (The sum of entropies in a system never decreases. This says that natural processes lose energy. Think "friction.")
3. You can't get out of the game. (The entropy of an overall system tends towards zero as available energy decreases. The house always wins.)

And I just saw it as a number of resistors connected in parallel! For simplicity

 

[Isaac]

1. You can't win. (Energy can't be created or destroyed - i.e. energy is a zero-sum game.)
2. You can't break even. (The sum of entropies in a system never decreases. This says that natural processes lose energy. Think "friction.")

I have trouble understanding how 1 and 2 can both be true. Ok sure, you can't technically "destroy" energy, but you can wear it down to nothing by intentionally running the electricity through something?

Apologies for my ineptness in this area of knowledge.

 

[Cronk]

It's completely the wrong concept that a how power device needs more electrons. In fact with alternating current, the electron flow is one way half the cycle and the other way, the other way for the next half cycle. The energy is in the speed of the electrons around the nucleus.

 

[AccessBlaster]

All I know is you don't want to piss off the angry pixies.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I have trouble understanding how 1 and 2 can both be true. Ok sure, you can't technically "destroy" energy, but you can wear it down to nothing by intentionally running the electricity through something?

Apologies for my ineptness in this area of knowledge.

#1 is true because energy cannot be created or destroyed. Actually, it is the sum of matter and energy since they are related at the lowest levels. Which is why nuclear bombs work. But don't forget that energy can be transformed into other types of energy.

#2 is true because energy can be diverted to places from which it cannot be recovered because of the rules about entropy, which govern energy flow direction. A slightly more formal way of saying #2 is that in a real-world process, energy can appear to be lost due to waste heat. Only a "perfect" process can have complete energy transfer without losses due to things that absorb the primary energy flow. When you say "wear it down" you are actually correct but using incorrect terminology. You don't "wear it down" so much as you "leak it to somewhere else."

For example, take a device like you would plug in to recharge your phone. After it has been running for a while, touch the case. It will be warm, representing the wasted heat energy being radiated away from the coils of the transformer device inside the charger's shell. The energy of the charger device "leaked away" some heat.

Take an internal combustion engine such as you would find in your automobile. Ever wonder why your auto has a radiator? It is because of the waste heat generated by the engine as it tries to provide motive power to the crankshaft.

The story of energy is that it likes to move from places where there is plenty to places where there is less. Which is what entropy tells us. Heat flows towards cold. (That's kind of the thrust of the 3rd law.)

 

[NauticalGent]

Electricity = PFM. That is all I need to know...

 

[jdraw]

I think Doc has it right. For a little side entertainment you may find this by Sabine Hossenfelder interesting.

 

[Galaxiom]

However, regarding how to reduce electricity costs, perhaps you are thinking of something called "power factor correction". Electrical systems, especially those with big motors, do not use electricity effectively. Some of it doesn't do useful work. This can lead to higher costs.

Power factor is generally caused by the current lagging behind the voltage due to the inductance of the load. Current can also lead the voltage in capacitive loads. Either way it results in the product of the current and voltage being higher than the real power.

Domestic electricity meters measure real power so the effect of power factor on the cost is negligible. However it does increase the losses in the transmission because the waste heat is proportional to the square of the current.

Industrial power users are also charged based on the current, so power factor does affect their cost and these users can benefit from power factor correction.

 

[jdraw]

Tony,

I totally agree with power needs of the LLMs. I think her comments highlight the "we must all move to EVs to protect the planet (by date xxx)". Where I live (rural Ontario), we can get power failures from time to time-mostly with high winds/storms. The underlying issue is the full lack of infrastructure - additional supply, substations, cabling, poles..... If, as Doc says, you can't create energy. So, if we remove all the ICEs -gasoline, oil and diesel, and replace/convert other forms to "electricity", we need to convert sun light energy or nuclear or ??? soon.

I'm hearing stories of people with EVs having "bad battery" and being told to replace it is ~$50,000. And any government incentive /discount/program to get people to buy EV have now been sunsetted/removed. Not a pretty picture.

I'll be youtubing Tony Seba.

 

[pbaldy]

Electricity = PFM. That is all I need to know...

Is that anything like how my wife describes phone stuff (she was an engineer): "FM" = "F...ing Magic"

 

[GaP42]

The energy is in the speed of the electrons around the nucleus.

Just in the interests of avoiding misconceptions:
1. Energy is not associated with the speed of electrons around a nucleus: as electrons move in orbits their motion is described as acceleration, and so, as for any object that experiences acceleration, a force is being applied and the energy needed to overcome the attraction of the electron for the positively charged nucleus can be measured. The energy levels of electrons orbiting a specific type of nucleus are quantized (an electron may only jump from one energy level to another (up or down). There is also the rest mass energy of the electron, where the mass of the electron can be "converted" to energy units.
2. The energy referred to concerning current (alternating or direct) is not the orbital electron energy. It is the mass flow of electrons through the material. In conductors the electron jump / flow (as a current) - the outermost electrons (which are not held as tightly as the inner electrons) "jump" from one atom to another in the material's atomic lattice in response to the applied voltage across that material.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

GaP42 is correct, but I'll say it a different way so that we get the message across clearly.

Strictly speaking, it is not electron flow that is what we call current. It is the wave-front of electron movement that provides the "push" that is Electro-Motive Force (EMF). The electrons jump from one orbital to the next in the metal "conduction band" that is crucial to conductors. This "conduction band" represents only those bound electrons that are in the outermost orbitals of the metal crystals. Deeper electrons would take too much energy to strip away in most electrical circuits. The electrons entering the conductor push other electrons ahead - but when those electrons are displaced from the molecules they are in, you suddenly have empty molecular orbitals that will strongly attract free electrons - that just happen to be in the vicinity. And regarding a "conductor" vs. an "insulator" the difference is how tightly the outer electrons are held.

Yes there IS a flow of electrons. But if you were able to follow a single electron through a wire you would find that it jumps from orbital to orbital, not a straight and continuously moving path. Rather than moving at the speed of light, all of those jumps from slot to slot cause electron "drift" to be on the order of meters per hour. Maybe 0.02 cm/sec for copper wire. But the pulse (wavefront) of electric current in copper is CLOSE to the speed of light, roughly 270,000 km/sec.

Think about sound. It is caused by air molecules being moved rapidly for a short distance before they collide with other molecules. The molecules that are struck move forward, propagating the wavefront. However, those electrons that struck the next molecule in sequence immediately bounce back at speeds proportional to the energy in the sound wave. I.e. an elastic or near-elastic collision and rebound. The sound wavefront moves at 1100 ft/sec or about 761 mph in dry air at 1 atmosphere of pressure. Even an EF-3 tornado only moves bulk air at about 130 mph, so you know that the sound wave and the air movement are not the same thing. In effect, EMF is the electron equivalent of a sound wave in air.

 

[NauticalGent]

Is that anything like how my wife describes phone stuff (she was an engineer): "FM" = "F...ing Magic"

Spot on, the "P" makes it Pure - an upgrade of sorts...

And another thing - for the folks talking about electrons, power wedgies and stuff: You guys are

 

[GaP42]

Arthur C Clarke - Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

power wedgies

Had one of those in high school because I was a nerd even then. Quite a comeuppance.

 

[NauticalGent]

Had one of those in high school because I was a nerd even then. Quite a comeuppance.

Why am I not surprised?!?

Well, I wasn't a bully and never gave a wedgie, but I wasn't too upset when the nerds got them!

A good friend of him has a son, one of those STEM programs kids (nerds) - but - he is also 6'4" and muscular. They jocks left him alone.

 

[Isaac]

Bullying is one of those things that really breaks my heart to see, hear about or even imagine. Really bad stuff.
I was lucky to have my kids in 'better' schools - sometimes private, sometimes just better charter traditional schools where the kids were all in all, fairly decent.

they BOTH graduated from COLLEGE on the SAME DAY last saturday. Quite a weekend it was. Writer and engineer.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Two kids and they graduated from college last Saturday - and you are still alive to tell the story? Excellent, Isaac.