Recent content by Sharky

I thought MHD requires a conductive medium, such as salt water or plasma. Are you saying MHD can be applied to air at normal temperatures and pressures?

Is it possible to move air using a strong enough magnetic field? Let's say for something like a fan. If so, what's the physics behind how that would work, and how would you quantify how strong the magnetic field would need to be?

One of the core concepts in electric field theory is that charges exert a force on one another: a positive charge "pushes out," and a negative charges "pulls in." What is the mechanism by which charges interact with one another? How does one charge "feel" the presence of another?

Thanks for the links. I'm working my way through them. The answer to my first question seems to be that conductors tend to have a single electron in their outer shell. Copper's electrons are [Ar] 3d10 4s1, so the single 4s electron is "loose," and the application of a field to the wire can...

My understanding is that with AC, applied current and voltage can be in-phase, but can become out of phase along a transmission line, particularly in the presence of an impedence mismatch. Are you saying that's not correct? But I'm trying to understand the very low-level physics of what's...

I'm familiar with the water analogy for DC -- but how does it apply to AC? How can it be used to show how voltage and current can get out of phase along the pipe? I don't understand what you mean by forgetting about photons. RF is photons, right? And antennas are transducers that convert...

I've been doing some work with amateur radio recently, and realized that I don't have an adequate detailed, low-level understanding of the basic physics behind exactly how electricity and radio work. My background is in math, chemistry, biology and the physics of "medium sized" objects (orbital...