Directionality of wire

It is illogical to say that "electricity" or current or voltage is an electromagnetic wave AND that audio signal must travel outside the copper conductor. And here's why. The only thing that travels at lightspeed is photons. And all photons travel at lightspeed. You know, 186,000 miles per second in a vacuum and less in a different medium such as air. And even less in denser mediums. The reason why the audio signal travels at say, 70% the speed of light in a copper conductor is because the audio signal is traveling through copper. It’s not because it’s traveling through air. If it was traveling through air the velocity of the audio signal would be just slightly lower than its velocity through a vacuum. If you measure the time it takes a radio signal to go from a transmitter on Earth to a satellite in synchronous orbit and back, you know, at 24k miles high orbit you will find that the elapsed time up and down is approximately the same time as if there were no air, no atmosphere. That’s because electromagnetic waves are barely slowed at all when they travel through air, which has an Index of Refraction of 1.0003. This all means the audio signal electromagnetic waves must be traveling through the copper, not outside the copper, just like voltage and current.

Photons with higher energy than light can obviously travel through solid objects, like say, X-rays and gamma rays. They are all comprised of photons. The entire electromagnetic spectrum is composed of photons. Radio waves, X rays, light rays of various colors, they’re all photons.

@geofkkait,


Quote from Ralph Morrison

The laws I want to talk about are the basic laws of electricity. I'm not
referring to circuit theory laws as described by Kirchhoff or Ohm but the
laws governing the electric and magnetic fields. These fields are
fundamental to all electrical activity whether the phenomenon is lightning,
electrostatic display, radar, antennas, sunlight, and power generation,
analog or digital circuitry.



These laws are often called Maxwell's equations. Light energy can be
directed by lenses, radar energy can be directed by waveguides and the
energy and power frequencies can be direct conductors. Thus we direct energy
flow at different frequencies by using different material.



For utility power the energy travels in the space between the conductors not
in the conductors. In digital circuits the signal and energy travel in the
spaces between the traces or between the traces and the conducting surfaces.
Buildings have halls and walls. People move in the halls not the walls.
Circuits have traces and spaces, signals and energy moves in the spaces not
the traces.



https://books.google.com/books?id=t7EB4PJMPVsC&pg=PT20&dq=moving+electrical+
energy,+ralph+morrison&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwisrtrwlIPNAhWkyoMKHX-MCsAQ6AEIL
DAD#v=onepage&q=moving%20electrical%20energy%2C%20ralph%20morrison&f=false

Here are a couple links for you to read on the subject.

http://science.uniserve.edu.au/school/curric/stage6/phys/stw2002/sefton.pdf

http://amasci.com/miscon/elect.html

herman                                                      1,946 posts08-06-2017 12:42pm

about this

The speaker transducer moves forward and backward according to EMF acting on the voice coil - see Faraday’s law and Maxwells equations - so both +ve and -ve current direction along the speaker wire causes transducer movement.

Again, it has nothing to do with we commonly call "current" which most visualize as electrons flowing back and forth. It simply doesn’t work that way. There is an electro-magnetic wave that transfers energy to the coil of the speaker. If applied to a resistor it creates heat. If applied to an inductor (coil) it creates a constantly changing magnetic field which pushes and pulls against a fixed magnet creating motion. Those stuck in a world of flowing electrons are just that, stuck there. Energy flows, electrons do not.

Thanks herman for the explanation.
Jim

geoffkait:
It is illogical to say that "electricity" or current or voltage is an electromagnetic wave ...

>>>>While you may think it's illogical, electrical energy transfer still happens through the electromagnetic field. The paper I referred to earlier shows how this works for DC. The energy flows in the direction of the Poynting vector. For a zero resistance cable, this vector is zero inside the cable (there is no electric field), and it is oriented parallel to cable outside the cable. For a non-ideal cable the Poynting vector has a small component directed  perpendicular to cable, transferring energy into the cable, causing ohmic heating.

geoffkait:
The reason why the audio signal travels at say, 70% the speed of light in a copper conductor is because the audio signal is traveling through copper.

>>>>This is patently untrue. The propagation speed is limited by the dielectric constant of the material surrounding the conductor. Look up, e.g., propagation speeds for coaxial cables.

It is illogical to say that "electricity" or current or voltage is an electromagnetic wave.

This all means the electromagnetic waves must be traveling through the copper, not outside the copper.

First they aren’t and then they are? To deny that audio signals are EM waves is to deny basic physics. I suggest you go take a basic physics class about these topics as your analysis is I’m sorry to say.. fundamentally flawed. Take a look at this chart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum

Using the common ways of describing it in terms of voltage and current always breaks down at some point, like the water through a hose analogy. It’s OK for grade school to start to get a grasp but it oversimplifies in ways that can’t be supported and at some point (we are there) just causes confusion.

Trying  to differentiate some portions of the spectrum by saying  that some are made of photons  is basically incorrect. There are two common ways to analyze light and all other EM waves. Photons, which treats it as particles and the EM wave which of course, treats it like a wave. For some phenomena particles works better, for some waves work better. To try and differentiate between the 2 to explain an ill-conceived position just muddies the waters. Since to get the clearest picture you need to use quantum physics which is clearly beyond the capabilities of most here including me, we simply must trust those physicists who do understand it.. like Einstein.

It is not incorrect to use photons to discuss EM waves at audio frequencies, it just generally serves no useful purpose.

Once again and I will drop it, but to claim that all of the energy is contained inside the wire falls apart with simple experimentation. Electromagnets would not exist, electric motors would not work, and on and on like I pointed out above. To deny this is again denying basic physics. I guess the earth is flat too since you can’t see the curvature from where you are standing?


BTW, you may or may not have noticed that I haven’t posted much for several years and this thread is a perfect example of why. A perfectly logical question is asked (cable direction in case you forgot) and somebody (usually the same guy) jumps in with pseudo-science and voodoo to try to explain a position that is fundamentally flawed and flies in the face of all known physics. Said person will then endlessly defend their defenseless position until we end up where we are today. My apologies to the OP but sometimes you see something that is just so blatantly wrong you have to speak up.