I wonder whether it may be possible to build a circular train for electrical waves to travel around where the waves can be superimposed in a linear way. One possibility would be to match any wave with an opposite wave that together superimpose to an average of zero over a cycle. Standing waves could be set up that span the whole cycle, with more energy being pumped into the system through adding higher frequencies and by stepping up the amplitudes. The energy going into and out of such a system would be quantised, even if the quanta could be adjusted. It might look like nothing much is happening, if the idea would even work – if the waves conserve energy in train and if the waves can be superimposed to minimise dissipative energy loses and if large amounts of energy can be stored like this.
Without understanding electronics properly, maybe a train of reactive circuits could be designed so that energy put into the system remains virtual while it is being circled around, but as energy levels are added or removed that energy is real. There might have to be a basic amount of energy continually fed into the system to set up the conditions for virtual waves to move around, and/ or it might have to be kept at superconducting temperatures. Hypothetical, all.
(Trying to have circuits with a power factor close to one).
A physical analogy might be a bell or something resonant that vibrates but does not lose energy through giving off sound. A hammer would be the way to add to and remove energy from it.
The thing about storing energy in a wave is that the energy is stored in the continual CHANGE of one form of energy into another in a suitable medium (usually, except for EM waves as the main exception). Conventional ways of storing energy are usually static and of one type – gravity potential, mechanical, chemical, electric field, magnetic field, etc. Perhaps by storing energy dynamically rather than statically you might be able to store larger amounts of energy in circuits with capacitors and inductors or transformers. It would take advantage of the higher power density of capacitors (with high frequencies) compared to their very much lower static energy density.
The technical question is whether you could build a (train of) circuit(s) that is (are) such that energy propagates in one direction only, alternating between electric and magnetic fields, but where energy can also pulse in both directions simultaneously. Maybe another way to pose the problem is to say that if you have a number of these circuits in a straight line, a pulse of energy could move from left to right, and a pulse of energy could move from right to left. If you set off a pulse of energy from both the left and right of such a straight line of circuits at the same time, would it be possible for the two pulses of energy to meet in the middle and then continue to the other end of the line, or would the two pulses cancel each other out in the middle and that be the end of it (where would the energy go?). Would the number of circuits in such a line have to be even or odd? What would happen when the energy pulses overlap? Could you make them superimpose so that the two directions have opposite polarities, a peak matched with a trough, but where the energy continues afterwards? Are there any benefits for doing this – could you pack much more energy into a cycle of these circuits if they did behave like standing waves? I don’t know so I’ll plead ignorance! (That tactic seems to work for plenty of people in these strangely irresponsible days.)
10 Jan 2007
With regard to the analogy of a bell and hammer in this context, the ‘bell’ would be the circle of solenoids and capacitors and the ‘hammer’ would be one link in that circle where precise amounts of energy could be added or removed to the cycle in precise time frames. It would all have to be computer controlled.
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