On Apr 19, 3:44 pm, Cecil Moore wrote:
Dr. Honeydew wrote:
Ah, I can see you didn't take me seriously. But I was dead serious.
It is absolutely not necessary for the source to be dissipating the
reverse wave it sucks up as heat.

Can a wave exist without energy? Where does the energy in the
sucked up wave go since it doesn't go into the source.

You are getting close to the truth. Yes, the forward and reverse
travelling waves are not necessarily moving energy. The Bird
wattmeter, despite its name, is computing a number with the
dimension of watts, but which does not necessarily represent
energy flowing (it represents flowing energy when the indicated
value is 0 in one direction or the other).

This will probably (I understate) be hard to accept but is the
only reasonable conclusion after examining a large number
of experiments and trying to rationalize the answer
to "Where does the energy in the reflected wave go?" Once
it becomes clear that there is no good answer to that
question, the only possible conclusion is that the question
is invalid and the roots of its invalidity lie in the assumption
of energy in the reflected wave.

....Keith