Talk:Contact electrification: Difference between revisions
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The effect is most pronounced with two dissimilar materials, but it can happen with, say, two identical objects at different temperatures as well. |
The effect is most pronounced with two dissimilar materials, but it can happen with, say, two identical objects at different temperatures as well. |
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(somebody's unsigned comment above) |
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I find the sentence "An important fact leading to the rejection of the theory of contact tension was the observation that corrosion, that is, the chemical degradation of the battery, seemed unavoidable with its use, and that the more electricity was drawn from the battery, the faster the corrosion proceeded" quite confusing. |
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The "it" in "with its use": refers to the battery, right, not to corrosion? What is being said here? In what sense is the word "seemed" being used in "seemed unavoidable"? Seemed according to actual real-life experience with batteries? (If so, what's "seemed" about it? Isn't corrosion of batteries a fact, even now) Or is this "seemed" referring to some apparent conclusion of the now-discredited theory? |
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The relevance of "and that the more electricity was drawn from the battery, the faster the corrosion proceeded" is also not clear to me. |
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I am just guessing here, but I think the writer intended to say something like: real life batteries corrode with use, and there is nothing in the "contact electrification" model of how things acquire electric charge to explain this. (From the page, I'm not sure if there is anything about contact electrification that is at all _at odds with_ or _contradictory_ to the fact that batteries corrode, but the fact that the model of electrification sheds no light on why this real life fact happens is understandably a weakness of the model.) If something more complicated than this was meant, somebody familiar with the relevant details should supply it. It is missing. |
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In my opinion this page should explain what contact electrification is in the first sentence. The current edition tells us in the first sentence that it is an obselete scientific theory. Then we get a somewhat abstracted, non-focused narrative of the various electrical phenomena people observed in the 18th century. Then we get a discussion of something called "contact tension", which I am guessing is another name for contact electrification and not some different concept. The definition of contact electrification should come first. Then and only then should we be told why it is obsolete (not, apparently, because it is "discredited" in any fundamental way, but because it does not distinguish between ways of producing electric charge differences that we now recognize are entirely different from one another). |
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[[Special:Contributions/75.167.202.118|75.167.202.118]] ([[User talk:75.167.202.118|talk]]) 21:33, 31 May 2009 (UTC) |
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Revision as of 21:33, 31 May 2009
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Merge
I started adding some info about contact electrification in general to triboelectric effect. I now see that triboelectric specifically refers to different materials, so I will remove that info. I think maybe the two articles should be merged, however. I see that neither article seems to be aware of the other. - Omegatron 19:10, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
- It seems to me there's a huge amount of history that could be added to Triboelectric effect, and also all the other phenomena mentioned here, so I've removed the merge tags. I'll try to bring more attention to them from historians of science. -- Beland 01:51, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
- This article covers topics which were once erroneously thought to be related but are now clearly seen as unrelated, and are covered elsewhere: triboelectric effect, Volta potential, semiconductor Fermi levels. This should be made clearer in the lead para. It should stick close to the history and not recap the scientific topics. --ChetvornoTALK 17:39, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
The effect is most pronounced with two dissimilar materials, but it can happen with, say, two identical objects at different temperatures as well.
(somebody's unsigned comment above) I find the sentence "An important fact leading to the rejection of the theory of contact tension was the observation that corrosion, that is, the chemical degradation of the battery, seemed unavoidable with its use, and that the more electricity was drawn from the battery, the faster the corrosion proceeded" quite confusing.
The "it" in "with its use": refers to the battery, right, not to corrosion? What is being said here? In what sense is the word "seemed" being used in "seemed unavoidable"? Seemed according to actual real-life experience with batteries? (If so, what's "seemed" about it? Isn't corrosion of batteries a fact, even now) Or is this "seemed" referring to some apparent conclusion of the now-discredited theory?
The relevance of "and that the more electricity was drawn from the battery, the faster the corrosion proceeded" is also not clear to me.
I am just guessing here, but I think the writer intended to say something like: real life batteries corrode with use, and there is nothing in the "contact electrification" model of how things acquire electric charge to explain this. (From the page, I'm not sure if there is anything about contact electrification that is at all _at odds with_ or _contradictory_ to the fact that batteries corrode, but the fact that the model of electrification sheds no light on why this real life fact happens is understandably a weakness of the model.) If something more complicated than this was meant, somebody familiar with the relevant details should supply it. It is missing.
In my opinion this page should explain what contact electrification is in the first sentence. The current edition tells us in the first sentence that it is an obselete scientific theory. Then we get a somewhat abstracted, non-focused narrative of the various electrical phenomena people observed in the 18th century. Then we get a discussion of something called "contact tension", which I am guessing is another name for contact electrification and not some different concept. The definition of contact electrification should come first. Then and only then should we be told why it is obsolete (not, apparently, because it is "discredited" in any fundamental way, but because it does not distinguish between ways of producing electric charge differences that we now recognize are entirely different from one another). 75.167.202.118 (talk) 21:33, 31 May 2009 (UTC)