Posted on 12/22/2009 2:06:44 AM PST by kronos77
Ping!
Alternating Current.....
AC
Think about it....where would we be without it?
Danijela Tesla, great inventor’s youngest descendant, was only 5-years-old when she was forced to flee Croatia, along with all the Serbs from Krajina
We’d be using six-volt batteries for indoor lighting...
All going in the same direction?
Think of a Piston in a Motor.....it moves up and down in a cycle.
The same with AC....its piston like power cycle doesn’t move the electrons very far, but, their movement is “powerful” of course depending on the amperage involved.
Direct Current (DC) on the other hand looses power over distance because of resistance....because it does “Flow” in one direction.
Tesla was ripped off by Westinghouse, Edison and JP Morgan who “bought” AC from him for a dime.
I agree that Tesla and the Scottish Mathematician-Physicist, James Clerk Maxwell (discoverer of Scalar physics) are relatively under appreciated given the amazing significance of their inventions/discoveries.
They do look alike! No DNA needed to prove family connections.
Still, I wonder about that death ray....
Save
The big advantage of AC over DC is the ease at which the voltage can be stepped up or down using transformers instead of rotary converters or electronic methods.
Power transmission (both AC and DC) is best done at the highest practical voltage. For the same amount of transmitted power, at a higher voltage the current is smaller and therefore resistance losses are smaller. The conductors can also be smaller.
DC transmission generally experiences smaller losses than AC, but the cost tradeoffs between infrastructure and maintenance versus efficiency usually support the AC case, though the differences have narrowed as high-voltage, high-power solid-state inverters have become practical.
At the end-user point, the advantages of AC are overwhelming.
And, yes, Tesla was ripped off in a major way.
Thank You
I learned something today.
;-)
ping
David Bowie did a good job portraying Tesla in “The Prestigue”, which was a great flick. Of course, never having met Tesla, I just have an image in my head to go on. So, all an actor has to do is come off as brilliant, mysterious, and slightly creepy.
There is truth in what you say.
Bowie did indeed give a good performance in that film, I enjoyed it a lot.... I will never forget the scene where they discover all the hats on the ground outside the laboratory. :-)
“The Prestige”.
The scene where the truth behind Robert Angier’s (Hugh Jackman’s) trick was pretty heavy too. Talk about making sacrifices for your craft! It was a nice twist how Angier kept his identity as Lord Caldlow a secret too. Though most of the film I keep wondering: Where is he getting the money to do this?
I’m partial to the Earthquake Machine as featured on Myth Busters.
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