Daniel Beeker - The billion dollar mistake

We all are involved with developing products that generate, control, and consume ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD ENERGY. This is not what we are taught. Circuit theory suggests that electrical energy is made up of electrons moving in the conductors. Switches add conductors, and the current instantly starts to move in the loop. The wires carry the energy, and the load instantly responds to the flow of energy. WRONG!! Switches add new spaces, and the moving field carries the energy. It takes time for the field energy to move into that space. The moving field energy has no idea of what it is at the end of the new space. Field energy moving through a space is the current flow. The magic here is the displacement current flowing through the dielectric at the wavefront, completing the circuit. Fields do all the work. “Current flow” is a measure of moving field energy through a space. “Current flow” occurs in the space between the conductors that bound the dielectric. Some of the fields interact with the molecules in the outer surfaces of the conductors. This interaction consumes some of the field energy, hence a resulting voltage drop caused by this “resistance.” The consumption of field energy results in increased movement of the molecules, hence is converted to “heat”! The dielectric also consumes energy the same way unless it is a vacuum. Electromagnetic energy moves slower through a physical dielectric than through space. Field energy can only travel in space, not through matter. It takes TIME for the energy to go around the molecules it encounters. The higher the molecular density, the longer the path, hence, it takes the field longer to go from one place to another. Once created, EM field energy can only move from one space into another one as we intend, be converted into kinetic energy, or radiated into the surrounding spaces.

Abstract—Engineering teams worldwide are facing increasingly difficult challenges to design electronic products and achieve good signal integrity and compliance. However, the status quo had become to expect the design to fail EMC testing, not just once, but three, four, or as many as five times. Each time the design is sent to be retested, there is little confidence in success. This cycle is expensive in both the time it takes to redesign the product and the cost of expediting fabricating the new PCB and assembly. Add this to the cost of retesting the product, and the numbers add up very quickly. This expense and delay in product certification are not in the budget or the schedule. The expense directly affects the bottom line of the electronic supply company, but also affects the customers waiting for the product. Instead of designing the next big thing, teams are trying to fix the current one. As a result, billions of dollars are lost each year designing products that are expected to fail. – Author Daniel Beeker.