Cecil Moore wrote:
John Popelish wrote:

Cecil Moore wrote:

If you want to deny the existence
of forward and reflected current, be my guest.


I deny it. There is only current at a point, just as there is only
water jiggling around under a wave on the ocean.


There is only water juggling under two or more waves in the
ocean. Anyone who has stood on the beach has observed ocean
waves moving in opposite directions.

So waves can move in one or more directions while any bit of water
moves only locally. Same with charge.

Your assertion is easy to disprove. In the following example,
the two sources have identical outputs and are phase locked.
They are each equipped with circulators and 50 ohm loads.

Source1---------------50 ohm coax------------------Source2

Got it.

There is current flowing from Source1 heating up Source2's
load resistor to the tune of I1^2*R.

There is energy heating the load resistor. The current does not come
through the source. It is created at the end of the line by the
traveling energy wave. The charge that makes up the current passing
back and forth through the load to produce the heat does not come from
the source. It comes from the load itself and and the nearby part of
the line (within less than a 1/2 wavelength). That charge is caused
to move by the energy in the wave.

There is current
flowing from Source2 heating up Source1's load resistor
to the tune of I2^2*R.

No, for the same reason. The current is local to the end of the line
near the load. It is not current that travels the length of the line
from source to load, but the energy in the wave, just as the water
from the underwater landslide is not what washes up on the beach a
hundred miles away. Local water is pushed up on the beach by the
energy in the traveling wave that connects the landslide with the beach.

Your denial seems to be a denial
of reality and more of a religious gut feeling than anything
else.

My denial is a recognition that current does not connect the source to
the load, traveling energy waves do, however. Local current carries
that wave along the line.

If you disconnect Source2 completely in the example above
the conditions will be the same except Source1 will be
dissipating its own power after a round trip to the open
end and back by the energy waves.

Yes, its wave energy will return to the source and cause current local
to the source to pass through that load.

Incidentally, in the double source example above, which
direction is the standing wave current flowing?

At any point that is not a node, back and forth, every cycle. At
nodes, back and forth across the dielectric of the line.

How could
its unchanging phase be used to measure the electrical
length of the coax?

You measure the difference of the node positions, with and without the
coil. The shift in distance (in wavelengths) between the two nodes
that straddle the coil is the phase shift of the coil for each of the
traveling waves that make up the standing wave.