Vanadium 50 said:
First, one cannot simultaneously claim that one is perfectly clear and that ones readership is making unwarranted assumptions. Its one or the other.
Next, copper is diamagnetic. It is weakly repelled by a magnetic field.
Next, even if this were to work as you described, the electric force is so much bigger that once a handful of electrons were bunched together, future electrons would be repelled by them.
Next, you say you are not making a circuit. You can't have electricity without a circuit.
Finally, if we ignore all that, a household magnet might have a gradient of 10 T/m. For a 1mm wire, this is an energy of the order 10-4 eV. This is tiny compared to ambient thermal energy, so the electrons would not stay polarized long enough to be attracted.
> First, one cannot simultaneously claim that one is perfectly clear and that ones readership is making unwarranted assumptions. Its one or the other.
[Reference to crackpot source deleted by the Mentors]
> Next, even if this were to work as you described, the electric force is so much bigger that once a handful of electrons were bunched together, future electrons would be repelled by them.
Which is why I specified that it would be a weak electret. I accounted for that.
> Next, you say you are not making a circuit. You can't have electricity without a circuit.
You cannot have an electrical current without a circuit, yes (unless it is alternating current, but that's besides the point). You do not need a circuit for generating static electricity.
After all, a typical electret is an insulator.
Once you brought the magnet away from the copper, the charge would not be retained unlike a typical electret, because the electrons would move back into place.
> Finally, if we ignore all that, a household magnet might have a gradient of 10 T/m. For a 1mm wire, this is an energy of the order 10
-4 eV. This is tiny compared to ambient thermal energy, so the electrons would not stay polarized long enough to be attracted.
I was imagining something more on the order of a large neodymium magnet. Or, if you will, a few large neodymium magnets in a halbach arrangement.