Permittivity and Permeability
Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 9:23 am
Permittivity, ε, is the resistance encountered when forming an electric field in a medium, defined by Farads per meter. A Farad in RS2 is s3/t and a meter is just 's', so the natural units for permittivity are s2/t. (Larson's RS and conventional science consider a Farad to be "s" and the value therefore has no units).
Permeability, µ, is a value indicating how supportive a medium is to the formation of a magnetic field, defined by Newtons per ampere squared (N/A2). In natural units, Newtons are a force t/s2 and an ampere is a speed, s/t, giving t3/s4.
The units for both are a bit strange, until you look at how they are related to a much more understandable value, the speed of light:
or
I know how math people like to factor things out, so I got to wondering what would happen if the c2--a speed--was distributed over both permittivity and permeability, and obtained an interesting result:
-- the units for electrical conductivity, G = I/V.
-- the units for electrical resistance, R = V/I.
We now have sensible, inversely-related, natural units that are commonplace in electrical engineering. The factoring out of the speed from these terms into c2 just disguised what they really are, nothing more than electrical conductivity and resistance.
This implies that electricity and magnetism are just reciprocals of each other, and not two, separate phenomenon, which explains why their behavior is linked in EM radiation.
What is interesting is that permittivity is described as resistance, yet has the units of conductivity. Permeability, which is described as a conductivity, has units of resistance. Since they are the inverse of what would be expected, that would indicate the observer is on the other side of a unit boundary (the 1 in the equation) making these behavioral observations.
Permeability, µ, is a value indicating how supportive a medium is to the formation of a magnetic field, defined by Newtons per ampere squared (N/A2). In natural units, Newtons are a force t/s2 and an ampere is a speed, s/t, giving t3/s4.
The units for both are a bit strange, until you look at how they are related to a much more understandable value, the speed of light:
or
I know how math people like to factor things out, so I got to wondering what would happen if the c2--a speed--was distributed over both permittivity and permeability, and obtained an interesting result:
-- the units for electrical conductivity, G = I/V.
-- the units for electrical resistance, R = V/I.
We now have sensible, inversely-related, natural units that are commonplace in electrical engineering. The factoring out of the speed from these terms into c2 just disguised what they really are, nothing more than electrical conductivity and resistance.
This implies that electricity and magnetism are just reciprocals of each other, and not two, separate phenomenon, which explains why their behavior is linked in EM radiation.
What is interesting is that permittivity is described as resistance, yet has the units of conductivity. Permeability, which is described as a conductivity, has units of resistance. Since they are the inverse of what would be expected, that would indicate the observer is on the other side of a unit boundary (the 1 in the equation) making these behavioral observations.