Backpedaling I see.

wrote in message
oups.com...

CW wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...

Doug Houseman wrote:

...

solder helps with the movement of DC power thru the wires. It
actually
can hinder the movement of AC since AC moves on the surface of the
wire.
...

DC also moves on surface of the wire because the free electrons
all reside on the surface of a conductor. Solder can help by making
that surface continuous all around the circuit.

Not at all. To see this, one only has to look at AC skin depth. As
frequency
decreases, skin depth increases. At 60Hz, skin depth is approximately
1/3",
deeper than common wiring is in diameter.

Are we not discussing different aspects of the phenomenon?
Isn't skin depth the distance below the surface of the conductor
at which the electric field strength drops to some fraction of
what it is at the surface of the conductor?

That is not the location of the free electrons that carry the
current. They stay on the surface.


DC cannot 'jump' across a gap unless it arcs. AC can, which is
why 'blocking' capacitors prevent DC from flowing around an
AC circuit.

AC does not pass through a properly functioning capacitor. Current
charges
and discharges the plates, giving the appearance of electrons passing
through the gap but at no time do they do so.

Agreed that the electrons per se do not jump across the capacitor.
But if you have alternating current on one side of the capacitor
you will also have alternating current on the other side. In that
(non?)sense the AC jumps across, though the actual electrons
do not.

--

FF