Volume 3: Pages 211-216, 1990

Forces on a Stigma Antenna

P. T. Pappas ¹, Tim Vaughan ²

¹Technological Educational Institute of Kalamatas, Greece

²Radio Engineering Laboratories, 1013 Wellsford Road, Modesto, California 95351 U.S.A.

Stigma‐shaped (“s” shaped with sharp corners), paired, transmitter antennae were excited at various radio frequencies. Clear attractive forces were observed to propel all antenna pairs, one towards the other. However, no self‐forces of the type predicted by the relativistic Lorentz force law were seen for all the antennae standing alone, even though these forces were expected to be considerably bigger than the observed forces between different antennae. The positive results on the one hand and the null results on the other may imply that the relativistic Lorentz force is not applicable to currents in physically open circuits, and that the nonrelativistic cardinal force law of Ampère is correct for all cases.

Keywords: stigma antenna, electrodynamic forces, law of electrodynamics of Ampère, cardinal law, law of Biot‐Savart, Grassmann, relativistic Lorentz force, forces between currents, forces between incomplete circuits, open circuits, forces, radio‐excited antennae, forces, electromagnetic self‐forces, (non) equivalence of Ampère and Lorentz force law, relativistic forces, Maxwell hypothesis of displacement current, continuity

Received: February 21, 1989; Published Online: December 15, 2008