The Big Misconception About Electricity

It's been 60 years since I took my college electrical classes but the video was as I remember what I learned back then. I don't recall much about Tesla's theories, but it would seem improbable to me that strong enough fields could be generated to transmit any distance. It's done all the time with things like radio and tv, but the strength is miniscule. Verizon can't even get their 5g signal from their tower to me at 4 miles.

Recollection of tesla's ideas was that he liked to demonstrate lighting in a room with no wires, even that would be inefficient. 

There were large transmission towers spaced not that far apart, too, if I recall, and I wonder if Tesla thought he was going to solve the efficiency issue over time, or if he was possibly out of money, too, since he wasn't savvy about signing away licensing rights to things he came up with assuming he'd never have income problems.

I think his big fault, if I recall, was westinghouse was more than willing to take the annuity money coming in for the A/C discovery. 

to us, it seems trivial that DC transmission is a stupid idea if it's at scale, but that's easy to see. I recall seeing that Tesla was dismissive about licensing and may have been coached that it was important, but he was so sure that he'd just figure out the next thing and then the next and never care about it. Like it was an egotistical refusal of money. 

I'm a little more curious also about the effect on people if there is a coil in a room transmitting and one receiving, what happens to us and our DNA and so on. Long in the past at this point other than some proposals I've seen to have cars charge wirelessly on the highway. I think those are far off, too. 

I am dumb as a stone about electricity other than a got a big taste of it as a kid, and have gotten a few zips from it since then in a far less deadly way. But I'm curious about the video and would assume electrons are doing something to agitate each other but the idea that something is flowing from A to B when material doesn't move is a little harder to figure out.

Added later 01 min 10 s:

Oh, I did see the original video before - i didn't totally make sense to me and I see there has been some follow up to clarify what was said in it.

DavidW wrote:

I am dumb as a stone about electricity other than a got a big taste of it as a kid, and have gotten a few zips from it since then in a far less deadly way. But I'm curious about the video and would assume electrons are doing something to agitate each other but the idea that something is flowing from A to B when material doesn't move is a little harder to figure out.

The way I used to make sense of it is that the electrons are not actually flowing, or not flowing very far - just like the water molecules in a fast moving tsunami are not physically moving very far.  The energy of the wave is causing one electron to "push" on the next and so on.  The wave moves, the electrons don't.