Hertz
Join Our Community Subscribe to Paul's PostsI can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve written the abbreviation, Hz—1 kHz, 1,000 kHz.
It is, of course, short for Hertz.
The car company?
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was a German physicist who first proved the existence of electromagnetic waves. Invisible forces that had a specific periodicity (frequency) that later were named in his honor.
Invisible waves were first proposed by a Scottish fellow, James Clerk Maxwell (no, not the hammer murderer Maxwell Edison) who first connected the idea that three forms of energy—electrical, magnetic, and light—were all related to each other. To make it even more interesting, they all seemed to travel at the same speed (the speed of light) and they all acted in the same way (like waves). He summed these conclusions up mathematically in what later became known as Maxwell’s equations.
It was our friend Hertz (no, not the owner of Hertz Drive-Ur-Self System), who would not only prove that which no one had yet shown, that electricity and magnetism could travel through space as waves (like visible light). It was easy for people to wrap their heads around the idea of light traveling through space because we could see it. But invisible electricity or magnetism? These were spooky unseeable phenomena.
Hertz not only proved Maxwell’s Equations were correct, but in so doing, he also invented the first radio transmitter.
“Hertz’s first radio transmitter: a capacitance loaded dipole resonator consisting of a pair of one-meter copper wires with a 7.5 mm spark gap between them, ending in 30 cm zinc spheres. When an induction coil applied a high voltage between the two sides, sparks across the spark gap created standing waves of radio frequency current in the wires, which radiated radio waves. The frequency of the waves was roughly 50 MHz, about that used in modern television transmitters.”
Unfortunately, Hertz suffered from massive migraines and in 1894 died at the young age of 36 after complications in surgery to fix his condition.
Seems medical science was considerably farther behind than physics.
So-o-o…what really Hertz here is the migraines?
When I gave a speech at Popov society in Moscow 1980 they had another favourite for the invention of the radio.
You young whipper snappers I was brought up on Cycles per Second.
With the organization of the International System of Units in 1960, the Cycle per Second was officially replaced by the Hertz.
Took me ages in training to take up Hertz (Hz) rather than the home grown descriptive term.
Life then was the sunshine glow of tubes with nary and transistor or chip in sight.
Damn Europeans 😉
Hey guys did you forget about
d.v?
That preceded cps!
Larry
I was brought up on cps. Never heard of d.v
Are you thinking of dV/dt?
D. V.
Does anyone recognize this term?
Nope
D.V.!
Domestic Violence?
It has become more prevalent since CoViD-19 forced us all into lock-down.
It was the fall of 1966 and I was in my sophomore year sitting in a seat in Burchard lecture hall. It was a really nice place, just like a movie theater but with fold down desks so that you could take notes. Good thing too, you’ll see why. This was a second year physics class and the professor was Herr Hans Meissner whose father had discovered the famous Meissner effect. It told you that school got top notch people.
“Today vee ah goink to tawk about elektro magnetik enerchee.
Oh goody. Finally I’m going to learn how radio, light, x-rays, microwaves and all kinds of good stuff like that really works.
“Zumtimez vee zink of dem as pahtiklez unt zumtimez vee zink of zem as vaves so vee call zem vavikles.”
What the hell?!!!! Well what are they particles or waves? What kind of bullshit am I paying for? Well if that didn’t have me falling on the floor the next one almost did.
“Ven vee zink of zem as pahtiklez vee call zem photons and zey haf no mazz”
Something made out of nothing? Are you kidding me? What kind of nonsense is this?
I was reminded of the book 1984 I first read during the summer when I was 12 years old. It is a pretty frightening book especially at 12 years old. Of all the things in it the one that scared me the most was “doublethink.” In this process you believe two completely contradictory irreconcilable ideas to both be equally true. 2 + 2 = 4, 2 + 2 = 5. Which is true? In that world both are equally true. It is self induced schizophrenia as the only way to survive in that imaginary nightmare world but here it was in the real world told to me as physicists saw it. You remember it even if you can’t believe it because you need to say that to pass exams.
Ten years later I figured it all out and it was nothing like what I expected and nothing like what I was taught. It’s in my bucket list of things to do before I die that I’ll probably never get to, to publish my own alternate theory. I see things very differently from other people and if you think I have disagreements with audiophiles that’s nothing compared with how I see physicists and their theories.
BTW, it was the second time in invented a trick to visualize things in more than 3 dimensions only this time it wasn’t just a mathematical abstraction, it’s real.
The concept of light, electricity and magnetism all traveling at the same speed is pretty mind blowing. Hertz my head just thinking about it.
You do of course realize that the speed of light is lower passing through matter like glass than it is in a vacuum. To know the speed of light in a substance multiply the speed of light in a vacuum by the index of refraction. The speed of electrons in a wire is not the same as the speed of light. I think I once calculated (over 50 years ago) that the speed of electrons called the drift velocity for 100 amps was about 2 inches per second. Of course in AC electricity they just move back and forth. What travels at the speed of light times the index of refraction in a conductor is the field that influences them. (Why do I remember all of this stuff?)
Nephilim 81,
From what I’ve read, electricity travels through copper wire at around two-thirds (67%) the speed of light.
Now my head doesn’t feel watted…I mean weighted. 😉
Gold and platinum are slightly quicker, but they ain’t no light. 😉
Try a TOSLINK cable 😉
The dualism of wave and particle is nothing but a way to put measured data of experiments into mathematical equations fitting the measured curves. Thus physics is only describing things but never “explaining” the unknown complexity of the reality. And these descriptions are based on many simplifications and simplifying assumptions. Hey, how does the energy of the electromagnetic field created by a current in an audio circuit influences the “circuits” in its vicinity and vice versa? Designers of passive crossovers carefully arrange the components (especially coils) on the pc board for minimizing cross-contamination! 😉 The introduction of dark matter and dark energy proves that existing models of physics were insufficient in explaining measured effects.
What is dark matter Mr. or Ms. physicist?
We don’t know
What is dark energy Mr. or Ms. physicist
We don’t know
Then how do you know it exists?
We made it up because we have no other way to explain things we see that we don’t understand.
Then in short Mr. or Ms. physicist you don’t know how the universe works or what it consists of.
Yes that’s right, we don’t know but we do get a lot of money for our theories. We’ve got a lot of people snowed that we actually know something.
China just built a quantum computer that is a trillion times faster than all electronic computers. It’s based on lasers, mirrors, prisms. But not to worry, it can only solve one problem, the proof that it is a quantum computer. It can’t do anything else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZcW_5D-euY
Soundmind
please enlighten us ignorant physicists. We hang on your lips to hear your insights, and don’t forget to hit Dick Feynman, who misled us with his interpretation of quantum field theory and quantum electrodynamics.
An Austrian fellow called Einstein discovered the secrets of the universe and said he was standing on the shoulders of a Scottish fellow called Maxwell, who in turn was standing on the shoulders of an English fellow called Faraday.
So when some committee came to give names to things, they mostly chose engineers and industrialists, leaving aside the pure scientists who had the bright ideas. Mr Watt was an unqualified instrument maker who got started in the toy business, which was a huge success, and was set against high pressure steam engines. Mr Becquerel got his name used for radioactivity, why his wife Curie lost out one can only imagine. Faraday got to be used for capacitance, but they chopped his name in half, as if it’s a difficult name compared to Becquerel.
Smells of politics, money and German beach towels to me.
The curie is a non-SI unit of radioactivity originally defined in 1910. According to a notice in Nature at the time, it was named in honour of Pierre Curie, but was considered at least by some to be in honour of Marie Curie as well. Wikipedia
She is Maria Skłodowska Curie.
Indeed, she was. I would recommend this very good biography. She had a hell of a life.
https://flic.kr/p/2kqC1ZL
I would note she changed her name to Marie before getting married, not after.
But her discovery was named by her “Polonium” and not Francium…..A Pole till the very end.
Steven,
It would seem that our new boy ‘Pucovski’ will (pun intended) require a few innings to settle in.
Warner’s picked up where Joe Burns left off…I hope that’s put a smile on your face 😉
I’m glad to see that Australia has improved their fielding efforts.
Labuchagne…’Dead-eye Dick’
Day 4 starts in a few hours & it’s a cloudless…so far.
Marvelous that!
Pucovski had a good start last week with a bit of luck. The 3 run outs were superb, Hazelwood was my favourite. Warner – even a bigger moustache doesn’t help. Watching now – Smith is in very good form, but he’s being contained. I want to see his windmill shots. Then I might not hate him so much.
Steven,
There’s a nice little edgy windmill ‘six’ for you (& me) 🙂
It used to be popularly called cycles per second. Regards.
Dr. Geldmacher (head of the department of electrical engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology 1969):
“For your final exam I’m going to give you seven problems and I’m going to tell you what they are right now. Go home, pick out four of them and show me what you know on the exam. You won’t have time in the four hour exam to solve more than four anyway. One problem, write down every equation you know about electromagnetic fields. If you get a grade of less than 50 percent, consider going into a different profession. Electrical engineering is not for you”
So for awhile I knew every equation in the book by Fano Chu Adler and Lai, about 250 of them. Among them I knew all four of Maxwell’s equations as both integral and partial differential equations in both the curl and divergence form. That’s sixteen equations right there. And I could solve all kinds of problems with them. Give me the details of the deflection plates in a cathode ray tube, the size, spacing, voltage and I could tell you in what direction an electron going through them would exit. But less than 10 years later I realized that the thousands of equations I’d memorized at one point or another told me what would happen but not how it would happen or why. I was clueless about the mechanisms of how things ultimately worked. And so that is when I realized that not only didn’t I know anything but neither did anybody else. Frankly that wasn’t much comfort. That’s when I realized that if I wanted to ever know anything I’d have to figure it out by myself. I’m sure if I had become a physicist like my roommate I’d be far crazier than I am today, as crazy as all of the physicists I’ve ever met, known, or seen.
Heinrich Hertz was Mark Levinson’s great uncle (mothers side)…which lead to his newest company Daniel Hertz…
Mark likes to spin a good tale though I often question it.
Death
In 1892, Hertz was diagnosed with an infection and died at the age of 36 in Bonn, Germany in 1894.
Hertz’s wife, Elisabeth Hertz née Doll (1864–1941), did not remarry. Hertz left two daughters, Johanna (1887–1967) and Mathilde (1891–1975). Hertz’s daughters never married and he has no descendants.
I have no inside info, only read it on Wikipedia
but if Levinson’s mother was a child of one of Hertz’s siblings, he would be her uncle and mark’s great uncle…oh well…just found it interesting
Could be.
Probably needs more research.
Heinrich was the oldest of 5 children and perhaps one of his siblings is where Levinson makes his claim to heritage – but clearly, he has no relationship to Heinrich Hertz himself (which, if you listen to Mark, is what he’s trying to imply).