The notepad is out early for this one, because that naughty, mr veritasium has stood over right hornet's nest with his video covering uh the concept that electricity may not travel in circuits. In the way we've originally thought with con with conventional current flow and electron theory. So, to start this, i'm going to have to actually say that it really is theory, his theory and our theory, because nobody has ever seen an actual electron. As such i mean okay, i suppose some scientists may claim they've seen them.

You go on google, and you find pictures like this, which show things like um an atom of carbon with a a cluster of electrons around it, and you look at them and think. Is that really what it looks like? Have they actually managed to see that small? Because we're talking about the base elements of like all materials here and they're, like they're, very, very small. This, incidentally, is a ping pong ball with some filters applied in earthen review, but you get the drift. I wonder how many of those other pictures are are similar computer generated sounds, however, let's talk about conventional current flow first, and that is the theory of how electricity passes through a while.

So this emulates, a wire and the central core is the conductor with lots of electrons are free to move through it. The outer core here is the plastic insulation, and before i even start with this, i have to explain that, because i'm talking about raw electrons, i normally like to use what they call conventional electron theory, because in the early days - and this shows you how things can Change in the early days, they thought that current flowed from positive to negative. They later found that electrons actually flow in opposite direction. The electrons actually flow from the negative to the positive, but unfortunately, by that time, they've done all the sort of electrical and electronic symbols.

So when you think of it, i prefer to stick to conventional theory positive to negative, because that way the diodes are all the right way, but in this instance i'm going to make a concession i'm going to go talking electrons. So, for that reason, i'm going to say we apply a negative voltage here and a positive voltage here and what happens with conventional theory of current flow is that when you've got a completed circuit with a wire electrons are pushed by pressure. The voltage into this end of the wire and it nudges all the other ones through, so you push a couple electrons in and the other ones pop out the other end effectively and when you've got a complete circuit like this. Theoretically, because this is something you can't really prove easily, but they say that even for a significant current, the electron flow is really slow, almost like slow motion through the wire just because it is shuffling all the other screw which uh makes me wonder.

I mean in the case of ac, the electrons are literally you've just got a few shuffling in and out. Well i see a few in the scale of things if this was a even uh, a wire say three millimeters or an eighth of an inch in diameter. Um, you may be talking bazillions of electrons, so uh with the ac, those electrons shuffle backwards and forwards, and you know when you consider that it is just shuffling those electrons. It makes you realize that an electric shock is a very special thing.

Indeed. Anyway, veritasium presented a concept. He presents the concept that if you got a battery, let's draw the battery and a lamp, but joshua draws a lamp symbol and you connect them together and the lamp lit up, then the electrical energy that is being transferred from the battery to the lamp to make It light up is not actually going through the wire. There is an incidental flow of electrons through the wire, but it's actually being coupled with magnetic fields from surrounding the battery.

The battery would normally have electrical fields surrounded anyway, but also magnetic fields that are kind of like making the current flow of the electron flow in the wires. Just incidental to that, it's just providing a path and the energy is traveling the outside of the wires to make the lamps light up. That is a very interesting theory, but the way he describes this is he raises the fact that in way distant past a scientist called james clark. Maxwell realized that light the sunlight hitting the earth is actually part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Goodness knows how we work that out, but if you consider that the electromagnetic spectrum say we'll start at this end, we'll start at dc and we'll go, the frequency will rise and we have in distinct sections. We've got the dc and we've got the to all intense purposes: mains voltage, wiring, 50 hertz, 60 hertz is way down effectively close to dc, but as the frequency rises you go through various levels. You go through radial radial frequencies, you go through microwave frequencies and then it goes into the infrared. Then the optical spectrum - that's the i was going to say: that's the sunlight bit, but in reality the optical spectrum actually covers a whole load of this then to the ultraviolet and then to like all the nasty bits above that, like x-rays and gamma radiation, we don't Want to know about those bits, but the theory the formulas are being applied to justify seeing the current flows the outside i get the feeling that they largely apply to the radial part of the spectrum and not necessarily down to the bottom part of the spectrum.

Here, certainly with radio, of course, the energy is being transferred through the air and does not need wires. It's a black magic, however, for the dc. I don't think that applies, however, to justify this. The person that came up this concept uh as an example used under an underwater communication network to let this is where i get it wrong: telegraphy telegraphy.

I don't use that word very often, because i they don't really do it much these days, but anyway, apparently in 1858 they ran a telegraph, cable and uh. They ran it between two countries, the transatlantic ones. So there's atlantic there's the two countries there's the reshack with their equipment in it, their morse code, keys and stuff like that, and they put an armored cable under the sea and connect them thinking. They're going to be able, then, to connect the morse code keys and send data to each other.

However, their problems once they'd put it in. They discovered that uh. There was a lot of disrupt distortion and electrical noise and it really disrupted. They couldn't easily actually just send their signal, and his theory is that, because the cable was an armored cable with the steel cores on the outside, and then it had the actual the conductors inside almost like a wire, armor cable.

His idea was that the reason that they couldn't communicate is because that electrical field, that's supposed to actually find alternative means, was being shunted by this uh grounded outer this uh metal outer layer acting as a screen. In reality, that would mean data cables, wouldn't work very well. However, let's go with it, because this is quite an interesting thing. There are so many variables that could affect this.

One of them is inductive effects, inductive resistive, capacitive and galvanic. In galvanic i mean the cable breaking and water getting in, let's discuss them all individually, another one uh here, if you run a cable between two zones, this is uh. Uh would be an interesting thing between to actually measure. I wonder if it's a real thing with a transatlantic cables.

I wonder what happens when they ground one end to one country, um and then sort of measure the vulture, because if you go into your garden, i don't recommend this experiment by the way, because it's quite a dangerous experiment. But if you go into your garden, there's your house with its earth electrode and there's another house, the neighbor's house, with an earth electrode um. If you connect a cable to ground in your house and then you go out into the garden with it. And if you do try this experiment, wear rubber gloves be very careful.

There is a reason that uh power tools for your garden are double insulated. They don't usually have an earth because, as soon as you walk away from this equipotential zone, you actually walk into another electrical zone. But if you were to measure the voltage with a meter from that wire to a rod stuck in the ground, you'd get a potential difference, and that could be for many things. It could, because this house is in a different substation or it could have electrical problems.

Be leaking current, there are so many variables, but you will find usually a low to some instance is high uh voltage and in some instances of an electrical network failure it will be the full mains voltage or more. It can be quite dramatic. So there is the the potential for a potential just starting off just by running a cable between two zones, the other one that comes to mind resistance. Did i honestly resistive at that shipping resistive the resistance of the wire would be a factor.

My guess is that their telecommunication system would literally have been a coil at one end: uh actuating, uh, sounder the two wires uh and they probably would appear from both ends, obviously, because that would allow two-way communication and literally a push button like that. I could be wrong, i don't know if they did it this way and then stack of batteries, i'm guessing that's what they might have done, but you'd have to allow for the fact that capacitance, along there and capacitance to the outer metal screen would be a factor. Galvanic um in the case of galvanic effects, if this cable actually got damaged while they're putting it in because it was a long time ago and it would be viable and salt water get in. It would bridge the potentially copper cores to the iron cores and create effectively a battery that would have created lots of electrical noise and hissing and swirling noises.

The other thing that could happen is an inductive effect where the ground, the earth actually radiates, signals all the time and uh to go with inductive effect. Initially, if you're heading towards a set of traffic lights, say, for instance, you're driving along the road um and there's a set of traffic lights here, beaming out light and there's a center in the road which is a sort of like, looks like a seven segment display. In pitch, someone's cut it into straight lines and then they've got a weak line coming off, that is the inductive sensor, cable for detecting vehicles, approaching the lights or sitting the lights, but the way they actually the reason it's got. That figure.

Eight effect is because it literally the cable loops around like a figure vape and goes back out like that. The reason for that is that the earth radiates magnetic fields all the time and if it radiates them onto this one, the ambient magnetic field will induce a magnetic field that direction say and that direction, but because it's a figure, eight and they've looped one round. The other way it will actually cancel its cancel them out. The watts looped in one detected by one loop will be cancelling out what's in the other group, and that way it's only affected when a vehicle crosses over and disrupts the frequency of the oscillator that they actually use to detect vehicles going back to the uh, the Screened cables and capacitance in the case of data cables like an rs485 network, if you've got say well, let's use theater lights.

We've got a lighting desk um, sending a signal along a data cable to a moving headlight, very crudely, drawn moving headlight and uh. The data cable in there you typically have the outer screen for the cable, which is reference to the zero volt rail on the circuit uh, and you have what's called a balanced pair where one is referenced as the plus and ones references minus. But what actually happens when you're transmitting data you're, not just turning the power on off like a morse key and battery, would you're actually alternating the polarity between those. So that means that any capacitive effects are actually being shunted immediately and the drivers that actually drive these have to actually sink and source quite high current to make sure they can submit data at a high enough speed.

There's also the networks are just hugely complex. I wonder if that's what they were discovering the hard way. The other thing you often find with a networks like this they're, a balance pair if it's a very long run and they'll actually go through either a transformer, or in this case it's a comparator designed to deal with a modest voltage difference and the reason for that Is that if you run it next to a cable that is inducing quite high voltage in that cable, it will induce in the same direction in both instances and because they're running together and that will effectively not influence the comparator result or the transform result. Because it's only looking for the positive negative differential, complex subject indeed see the the undersea cable was quite interesting, its own right, but didn't answer the question because i don't think that's actually why the signal was shunted out.

I think it's just they had problems, but veritasium. Also, then goes on to say: this is potentially why overhead lines say this is a tower electrical distribution term. We call them pylons here, but overhead lines are run high off the ground. For that reason, so there's the insulators there's the insulators and there's the cable sagging between them - and there is if this is the ground, is a ground.

Basically, it's got an earth reference, but the real reason they run them up high, like that there are capacitive effects. There's always going to be capacitive effects. In fact, if you actually stand underneath uh, one of these pylons not show an actual size and uh you hold up a fluorescent tube, don't touch the pylons, the tube in on a dark knight, if you hold it under the high voltage, cable, just even ground way Below the cables uh, it will potentially glow slightly with the radiated sort of uh field. The voltage gradient you get off that, but the primary reasons they run them overhead is because there are less losses than running it through a cable where this the screen, the the armor, would be coupling uh it's easier to install outdoors than digging huge trenches for miles.

It's also easier to maintain um and they also keep them up high off the ground. Just avoid people touching them. But when you consider that your local substation will eventually that will go to say a big transformer, there's the insulator on top - and it goes on to that, but at your local substation that comes from that transformer, the cable is potentially going to be an underground cable. With the armor and with individual cores for each of the phases, still a high voltage 11 kv supply will be actually about about 7 kv per core.

Then we've, thereby back again with this uh high voltage, cable, but with that core in the vicinity. So if the outer core was effectively shunting that field, you wouldn't really get much luck getting power to your substation, so um. I think the theory is wrong. I mean it's an interesting theory.

It's it's always good to keep your mind open to things like this, because everything is just theory and uh. All it takes is a slight. All it takes is some random wild card, some unexpected behavior of an electrical circuit in the future or a material that just displays completely non-compliant characteristics and suddenly all our electrical theories are just blowing out the window or we have to modify them to fit uh. And you know in some instances that could be quite serious changes or it could just be a very slight change.

It just happens to fit into the current theory, but that is my taking it. I think it's interesting, but ultimately i don't think it's the way. Energy is transferred along wires.