There have been a number of responses so far, many of which reference
the "skin effect" - why the hell do we continue to produce wire that
has a core of the same conductive capacity as the surface, at great
cost, when we might manufacture a wire of a cheaper core material,
with the surface conductor at optimum.?

Wouldn't it make more sense to create a wire of a cheap core, with a
surface at optimum? We could have gold plated wires that would be
cheaper than solid copper.

On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 19:43:14 -0400, Tom Watson
wrote:

I had a conversation with a friend of mine today who has a masters in
electrical engineering.

This degree was conferred by the same school that I went to
(Villanova) about a hundred years ago, so I must inherently trust him.

Yet...

The question that I asked him, which I thought to be simple enough,
was - do the electrons travel down the circumference of the wire, or
do they travel through the core of the wire?

He told me that that is an unknown.

This was very surprising to me as I thought that it would be easily
tested.

Could we not create a wire of a core of inert material and coat it
with a conductor and measure the difference between a wire of the pure
element and that of the coated variety?

This seemed to be not within his reckoning.

The reason that it is important, to me, is that, if the electrons only
travel on the circumference, that circumference may be folded into a
smaller section than that described by the original, and wires would
not have to be so thick.

Would y'all please try to help me out of this conundrum?

Is my friend a poseur?





Regards,

Tom Watson

tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1/
Regards,

Tom Watson

tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1/