Calling the Juicetricians,,,,,!

yeah.. it's called a capacitor !

here's a link, 'everyone's hawking' them today.....

It's a 'feel good' scam, well lower case 'scam'.....

Think about it

IF it really,really ACTUALLY did 'save energy', then the guv would mandate they be installed everywhere.

Dang now that I typed that ..ooopsy CA newsome will make it LAW... sorry...

Jay

 AHA,,,,!! SO,,you already know about that one,,,Huh,,Steve,,,??

   Are you refering to the famous "POGUE CARBURATOR",,,,,,Steve,,,,,,,,? I actually built one from a piece of 2" pipe that we welded inside a piece of 3" pipe as a heat exchanger using the hot water from the engine to boil the fuel in a atomizing atmosphere,,,,, The "Mule" was a 1961 Chevy Trk with a 261 straight six but it had issues with maintaining a good idle,,and wound up shelving the project due to not being able to control the temp of the heat exchanger,,,consequently the MPG would swing from 23 MPG to 56 MPG,,,,,

 Well,,I know it is fun to poke Fun at those that tend to believe in those things but ,,,HEY,,,,,!  does anyone NOT believe that it is possible to attain those kinds of MPG numbers,,,??

 "IF" it was beneficial to the Guvment,,It would happen almost overnight,,,,,,,,

 The original POGUE  design is so friggin  simple,and if todays electronic Ecm's, controllers ect, ect were applied to that simple design way back then,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,?

But back to Joe's original post:

The power coming from your utility company, is a SINE WAVE.... if it came from a mechanical generator (and basically ALL of it is)... then there's no 'non-sinusoid' aspect to it that can be magically filtered out by a capacitor, or an inductor. 

Now, aside from that bullchip, there's people who think that the 'transformer' is some incredible consumer of power... they're so convinced that some bozos moved legislation to 'outlaw' transformer-based 'linear' power supplies and force 'switch-mode power supplies' to take their place.  In reality, an SMPS is not significantly more efficient (a thermograph picture illustrates this) and one of the reasons why, is that the SMPS uses a high frequency oscillator (which generates waste heat) to alternate DC current at high frequency through the primary winding of... yes... a TRANSFORMER... to provide a voltage-to-current trade off... (even when there's no load, the SMPS has to run)... and finally, the SMPS is loaded full of components that required a significant amount of pollution to create, and when they fail (and they do... miserably) those components go to the Great Pile of the County... (landfill) because there's just nothing in there economically practical to extract.

And that transformer had two windings (a primary, and a secondary) of copper wire... and a laminated steel core... not hard to recycle that, if it failed (and they tended to run for decades)...

It's just another demonstration of idiots pushing totalitarian acts forcing false economy upon us.  Add it to the imbacile's proud list.

"After all it is human nature to be honest, compassionate, and caring for fellow man with no intent of swindle, fraud, cheat, deprive, etc."...

Yep, exactly... 

It is human nature for us, as optimists, to fall prey to 'Confirmation Bias'.

Sure, Jay-  I haven't met a toroidal transformer I didn't like... ;-)    We're coming up on the peak of the 11-year sunspot cycle, and I've got a couple 6-meter radios that need to be ready...

Les said:

"

See any problems there? 

Like... you can't apply heat, to cool something down...

and

...you can't increase turbulence while reducing flow restriction.

It's like fighting for peace, screwing for virginity, and hiring more government employees to reduce government spending...

While I'm bashing away at 'snake oil products'...

Putting a magnet on your fuel line to 'improve performance' WORKS...   but it's better to put that magnet on the fuel TANK... because when there's metal shavings and rust debris in your fuel tank, it fouls up the path, gets in to the pump, and plugs up the carb.  It doesn't do anything 'magical' to the molecules in that fuel, it just helps keep the steel fragments, iron dust, and stray nuts and bolts down there from winding up plugging the works.  By the way, nuts and bolts in the fuel tank help knock all the crud loose, but why are there steel fraggies and iron dust in there?  Yeah, if you leave the cap off and live along the railroad, I can understand the iron dust...

Carbeurator spacers.  So, the VOLUME of the intake runners and plenum have a resonant frequency... and when the engine runs, air pulses interact with that resonance, and the result is a change in airflow property.  Depending on the differences in frequencies, the flow properties can change.  IF you shorten up the plenum really, really short, the resonance goes to such a high frequency that the engine's pulses NEVER interact, so you get the flattest response. 

(If you wanna try this in a human experiment, pull the mouthpiece off your trumpet, trombone, or tuba and play Reville.)

Unfortunately, making an infinitely short intake path does not yield a good running engine, because the resonance of that path, when it's not set incorrectly, helps the airflow maintain a stable procession inward.  Likewise, having a too-short exhaust path does same, which is why when you run an engine with no exhaust manifold, it doesn't run well at all.

And now we circle back to the 'miracle products'... 

There ain't no 'miracle', aside from the ability of a marketer to exploit the ignorance and optimism of humanity.

Now, back to the 'capacitor' product...

AC Power transmission operates at a frequency.  IN the US, MOST of it is at 60hz.  Conveniently, that's 60 times a second, which means we can compare that to a clock, and we can use it AS a clock... which isn't something we could do at say... 50hz (which most of the rest of the world uses) or 25hz... which is what some of the earliest AC used.

A 60hz transformer requires a certain amount of iron in order to work well at THAT FREQUENCY.  If you want a transformer to work well at 25 hz, you need SIGNIFICANTLY MORE IRON...  When you're working on an AIRCRAFT AC power system, you won't hear that 60-cycle buzz, you'll hear a 400-cycle WHINE... because they run at 400hz.  At 400hz, it takes a SIGNIFICANTLY SMALLER transformer (and that's good, because aircraft prefer LIGHTER stuff).

Take a piece of wire, and measure it with a meter, and you'll find that it has resistance.  Make that wire longer, it has more resistance.  When you flow current through it, that current becomes a magnetic field, hence, the wire becomes an ELECTROMAGNET

When you take a wire, and stretch it across a hundred miles, that wire becomes not only a long resistor, it also becomes something called a CAPACITOR... the dielectric being the air between the wire, and the ground.  The dielectric charges up, and discharges, just like a battery... and it takes a little power (not much) to do that.    The air doesn't WANT to do it, but it HAS to, and that warms it up a little tiny bit (and it makes your hair stand up).  The fact that the air is a load, is called CAPACITIVE REACTANCE.

NOW...When you pass current through the wire, it's electromagnetic field intrudes upon everything around it... the earth, the support structures, nearby buildings, the fillings in your teeth, and the metal plate in my foot.

All those other things IN that field, don't WANT to be upset with an alternating magnetic field, but they are... and they warm up a little (not much), but this becomes part of that transmission wire's 'LOAD'.  Now, it ain't much load, so there isn't a huge loss, but the added DENSITY has an impact on current flow through that wire (just like a long plenum).  This is called INDUCTIVE REACTANCE.

The CAPACITIVE REACTANCE of that wire, and the INDUCTIVE REACTANCE of the wire are awarded the mathematical labels Xc  and Lc, respectively.

The resistance is called "R".

Because the capacitive reactance and inductive reactance both vary with FREQUENCY, and they do it in the OPPOSITE WAY, there's a point in any circuit where Capacitive Reactance and Inductive Reactance become equal.  This is called RESONANCE...  The 'Frequency of Operation', or 'Fo'.  Some call it 'frequency of oscillation', which is oftentimes how it's used, so no worry there.

When you add up the values of Capacitive and Inductive Reactance, and add in RESISTANCE (which doesn't change with frequency)... you have IMPEDANCE... which we identify as 'Z'.

Fo = Xc=XL

If you speak math, you'll recognize this:

Z = Xc + Xl + R

Impedance is the sum of capacitive reactance, inductive reactance, and resistance.

What does this all have to do with overhead wires and 'magic stuff'...

Well, if you have a plenum tube that doesn't RING at the frequency that makes the engine run well, you either put something IN the plenum to REDUCE it's internal volume, or you ADD to the plenum to make it longer.

Ever open the hood of a modern car and wonder why the INTAKE PLENUM has bulges... and appendages like... a gall bladder or appendix in the middle?

Because at that specific point in the plenum, if you add a little volume, it either enhances, or reduces the mechanical reactances that affect the engine's airflow at a certain frequency.

It's TUNING.

Electric transmission systems have adjustable capacitor banks that they can switch in and out to TUNE the transmission lines to account for changes in Capacitive Reactance when things like... humidity and temperature...  come in.

Time to go dig out the driveway, class dismissed.  Test is next Tuesday, open notes, and calculators are allowed.

Humidity and temperature monitoring in an automotive transmission are used to alter shift patterns from cold start to operating temperature(s) routinely. All, or at least partly in the name of CAFE baselines and standards. This again is costly to develop but the overall game plan is to be able to comply, implement, and sell the technology to the end user. Then the technology has to work long term. Vicious cycle it is.