Some chemistry
christian0710 said:
Thank you so much for this very clear explanation - Very well explained and interestign way of putting it into a larger context. So even in vacuum where ions are not held together by water in a lattiice structure ions can float around? AMAZING! Is this because the Field is stronger than the energy holding the electron in place? So it breaks covalent bonds in pure metals such as steel?
Nice example: The charge evens out, so if it's negatively charged compared to the ground, electrons flow from the conductor down to the ground until the Voltage between the conductor and the Ground is zero.
A couple of things, christian0710; ions are not confined to water as a rule. It's easy to get that idea because of high school chemistry, where all the reactions take place in water, but ions are just molecules or atoms with unsatisfied electron orbital pairs. They can exist freely in any medium that doesn't ultimately fill Pauli's Exclusion principle. A very good example is common table salt. It is an ionic compound without any covalent bonding. Sodium and chlorine react (violently, exothermically) to form a salt where outer shell electrons attempt to jump to the other atom to fill an empty orbital. The S and P orbitals don't like to release electrons - they are electrostatically bound to the nucleus very strongly. Instead of covalence, where the two atoms share an orbital to balance the books, sodium and chlorine are held together purely by electrostatic force (ionically). You mentioned also the idea that a lattice structure might be associated with a water solution - this is actually true in some cases, but mostly solutions are ruled by Brownian motion.
I'm not quite getting where you were headed with the last two sentences in the quote. Here's how some of it works. An electrical field exists between any two points that differ in potential, or voltage. Most solids are crystalline in nature, meaning they self-organize into categories of atomic packing (and here is your lattice structure). The crystal - for simplicity's sake, look again at table salt. The crystal structure is cubic, with a grid of sodium and chlorine atoms all lined up and alternating. The crystal plane just obtained is placed again on the next layer and the next, etc, being offset by 1 in each x,y,z direction. From this simple example it turns ugly quickly as you examine different substances with different crystallizations. HCP - Hexagonal Closed Packed; BCC - Body Centered Cubic; FCC - Face Centered Cubic, and 20 some other variations of a few simple classes. You get into pretty interesting physics by studying the properties of crystals.
Anyway, the method of loosening molecular bonding is phase change, not electrostatics. You can melt steel and then proceed with chemistry involving covalent bonds, but an electrical field is not going to materially affect a chunk of cold iron. Another example, perhaps. The electron beam in a CRT or an electron microscope is generated by a hot filament. The filament is set at some arbitrary voltage to prevent charge accumulation, and the electrons that are boiled off pass between two plates with a potential difference of 5 - 20 kV. The beam goes through some shaping after that, but has no bearing on Ground Potential. In this case, ground or zero volts is the plate nearest the filament. The electrons illuminate the specimen in such a way as to provide either an electrical signal that can be decoded into a picture or as a black-on-green image on a phosphor screen that can be photographed. When the electrons have impacted the target, they once again complete the circuit to ground. This current can even be measured (and in fact, you'd better pay attention to it, otherwise cooking the sample is a possibility).
Grounding in the laboratory is a big issue. You have to account for every signal source, every potential difference. All of the instruments are grounded at a common point to eliminate what are affectionately known as ground loops. Real-world isn't any different. All of your outlets run back to a common ground in the electrical box, where they are connected to grid ground. As much as is possible, this is kept at zero volts.
So, a parlance definition would be to equalize your voltage with your surroundings.
