Customer Reviews

Newtonian Electrodynamics

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This is a very well written book. That first reviewer up there is full of it. Even if his quibble turns out to be correct, one does not disparage all the other work someone does. Maxwell believed in the aether, as did everyone else back then. Because of that, does he propose to discard all of their accomplishments? That would be absurd. I will probably have my own disagreements with the authors of this book, but I heartily applaud them for publishing alternate ideas, experiments, and theories. That is what real science should be about.

This book discusses longitudinal Ampère forces, originally proposed by Andre Marie Ampère himself, based on his experiments in the early nineteenth century. Later, Maxwell adopted a different formulation in his equations, and longitudinal Ampère forces were all but forgotten. The Lorentz force equation of modern physics has become dominant, although it does not predict longitudinal Ampère forces. This book describes the experiments that have been performed to prove their existence. This force is thought to be the true cause for thunder from lightning and the source of the mysterious "sprites" and "jets" seen in the upper atmosphere. This force has been overlooked and is denied by the mainstream physics establishment.

The authors of this book are in love with Newton's work and are suspicious of Einstein's theories. They are entitled to having preferences - although these may be due more to stubborness/narrow-mindedness than to critical thinking - but one would expect that at least they would teach and use Newton's theories correctly, which is not even the case! I will explain myself below.

In particular, I am quite familiar with the material of chapters 6 and 7 of this book (the parts that relate to underwater sparks and the authors' claim about having discovered "free" energy in this process). The basis for their excess energy claim is the large inferred water velocity in their experiments on underwater sparks. They estimate this water velocity via the rigid-body collision method taught in first year college physics classes which makes use of Newton's second law and the principle of conservation of momentum. The problem is that they assume that there are no external forces acting on the system constituted of the water and the "projectile" that it accelerates. This is wrong since the water is in contact with the high-pressure plasma created by the spark which is in turn confined between the water and the container in which the experiment is done. The reactive force between the water and the plasma and/or between the water and the container is not zero and is external to the system they chose to analyze, therefore this force should be included in their calculation of the water velocity. Since their mistake amounts to attributing all the momentum resulting from this large external force to the water's momentum, they grossly overestimated the water velocity.

Since these authors can't be relied on to do basic college level Newtonian mechanics properly, I don't think they could be relied on for more complex physics concepts either...

The authors mention Oxford and Northeastern University as their affiliations, but the Oxford position of Neal Graneau is that of a research assistant (not a professor, not a PhD, not even a Master's) and the Northeastern University's website says nothing about Peter Graneau, who may very well hold a very insignificant position there...