D'Arcy on 6/3/2009 at 18:14
That H<sup>+</sup> cation isn't exactly stable. It's a simple proton, which will be 'picked up' by any anion or molecule with a decent polarity (such as water, where, because of the electronegativity difference between the two components, the negative charge will be located around the Oxygen atom, and the positive around the Hydrogen ones).
God, it's been ages since I had to know stuff like this :p
RocketMan on 7/3/2009 at 01:37
Quote Posted by Displacer
Well I wasn't going to continue with this, but I forgot to explain how conductors work.
Using copper as an example, and a wire 1 copper atom in diameter, the way conductors work is at the start of the wire the magnetic field slaps an electron off the first atom, this hits the next atom in the wire and knocks an electron off of it into the next atom and so on down the length of the wire. This is how electric in a conductor works as Zygoptera posted.
Nerves do not use electrons, they use ions of potassium an sodium. I forget which one is which but one of them is positively charged, the other negatively. By pumping out more of one ion than another, the surface is now charged in the area of the ion gate. The next gate opens and so on and the charge is moved down the nerve length. No electrons are involved hence the nerve is not affected by the magnetic field.
You don't need an EMP to prove this anyway. The magnetic field in a MRI is massive, and you walk away unharmed from it.
An EMP Can kill though, if you have a pacemaker for instance.
Zygo raised a good point about the inertia (and resistance) of charged particles being a major hurdle to moving them with an EM field. However, all charged particles of any kind communicate the electromagnetic force. What I neglected to mention earlier is that it's a magnetic "flux" that creates a potential (ie. a changing magnetic field). A field of a fixed magnitude doesn't do much of anything to stationary charged particles. I am not arguing the absense of "electricity" in the conventional sense, in the body. I thought there was electricity in the body until you explained that wasn't the case. All I'm saying is that if there are charged particles in the body, no matter what they are, they must all perceive a force in response to a magnetic flux passing through them. Perhaps this force is tiny compared to their mass. Then again maybe not. In science fiction you can get away with such exaggerations however. A nuke, an emp grenade and an emp "shot" can all be thought of as EM transients that create a powerful flux.
Another thing that might make this concept moot is that the body isn't organized like a chip or a circuit board. I bet the pathways in the nervous system are absolute chaos and if a field of sufficient magnitude were to sweep by, the charge flows it may set up would probably all cancel each other out. I'm just speculating on that though.
BTW, how is it that we have near-instant reaction to something like touching a sharp object before we even feel the pain, when each nerve cell (pardon me if i'm using the wrong terms here) in a long line up to the brain needs to play leap frog with this potassium sodium pump? That seems a bit sluggish to me. Even if it took a mere 1/1000 th of a second to transfer electrical potential across 1 cell, that means that if there are only 1000 cells on the way from finger to brain and brain to muscle fibre (to react) it would still take 1 second to react. Sounds a bit off.
jtr7 on 7/3/2009 at 01:43
Maybe it could be explained by the fact that the spinal cord can control reflexes, too. The spinal cord reacts first, then the signal finally reaches the brain, and it reacts, perhaps?
Also, cells communicate and react on their own level, separate from the nervous system coordinating things.
I was reminded of the old Disney science films, with a segment showing a single heart cell beating by itself, and after a second cell was placed near it, and they touched, they syncronised.
Not Disney:
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAe3cabBLaM)
I haven't read up on it, but it's said that all living cells in the body can communicate with any other living cell in that body. Fascinating.
RocketMan on 7/3/2009 at 01:50
Now that you mention it, I think you're right cuz I heard something like that. Didn't the brain evolve from the spinal cord outward or something?
Displacer on 7/3/2009 at 03:05
Quote Posted by jtr7
Maybe it could be explained by the fact that the spinal cord can control reflexes, too. The spinal cord reacts first, then the signal finally reaches the brain, and it reacts, perhaps?
That's exactly what happens. The nerve is connected to 2 different other nerves. The first one its connected to is in the spine which is connected directly to a muscle group, its called the reflex arc. The other one its connected to goes to the brain. The path is shorter from lets say your arm through the spine then back to the arm than the path from the arm to the spine all the way up to the brain, so your muscle is activated first, then you feel the pain later. Great pic of it (
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/R/reflex_arc.html) here
I'm telling you, the body is a miracle even on the microscopic level.
jtr7 on 7/3/2009 at 03:17
:thumb:
As for disrupting the nervous system, electromagnetic frequency and amplitude have to be dialed in for it, if the point is to stun without permanent effect from the the disruption itself, otherwise we'll have cooked tissues or broken DNA strands. Would the sodium ions be too obvious? Would there be a better choice?
RocketMan on 7/3/2009 at 04:46
If the goal is to cook the target that's easy enough to do with certain frequencies simply because human flesh is opaque to some fequencies in the spectrum and will absorb the photons and convert them to heat. I think some radio, microwave and IR are good for this. If you want to theoretically short out a human being (if that's even possible, as per our conversation) I think what you'd be going for is a shock front or pulse that is not oscillatory. An oscillating wave will just cause charges to jitter with an AC frequency but a powerful one-directional pulse might really screw things up in the body.
Moon Hoplite on 8/3/2009 at 06:36
It's good to see that we have all done our homework on this.
RocketMan on 8/3/2009 at 07:06
Do you have an unsubstantiated wise-ass comment to make perhaps?
Zeph on 12/3/2009 at 01:00
Quote Posted by Moon Hoplite
I think this gun needs balancing
Agreed, it should be nerfed to hell as it makes any mechanical enemies a joke.
Speaking of jokes, SS2's weapon balance.
