Spencer Heath Archive

Item 437

Taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath. Note penciled comments by Alvin Lowi on copy of original.

1955?

     There are well known to be two kinds of attraction and repulsion, electric attraction and repulsion, positive and negative electricity, so that two bodies will attract one another or repel each other according as they are in a similar or dissimilar way electrified. It is also well known that when a body spins, or at least when an electric current spins around and round an axis, as the earth rotates on its axis, that there is a magnetic effect at either end of the axis, and these magnetic effects are contrary, one to the other, so that if the current is reversed the attraction and repulsion will be reversed. All this is well known.

     It is also well known that the earth attracts objects by a force that is called gravity. But we do not seem to have any opposite to that, unless it could be the centrifugal effect at the equator, diminishing of course towards the poles. In that view at least, we can say that the earth has no negative. But that depends very much on the point of view, just as it depends on the point of view of a magnet, whether you are looking at one end of it or at the other, whether it attracts or repels. That is, what the relation of the armature is to it, and we of course are armatures with respect to the earth. Then, if we look at the earth from the position of the north pole, let us say, the earth rotates right-handedly, and we are drawn towards it. If we look at the earth from the standpoint of the south pole, then the earth will be rotating left-handedly. (I may have gotten these two reversed, but that won’t matter. I don’t know which way it does rotate, actually; it would rotate differently at the two poles.) In this case, the earth as a magnet should repel us at the one where it attracts us at the other. The answer probably is that we also are revolving in the same direction as the earth both times, whereas possibly if we should spin around in the contrary direction, we would fly off. But I have no assurance of that, never having tried it, and my theoretical foundation is rather uncertain, to say the least.

     The spin of the electron, however, is supposed to determine whether or not two electrons attract one another or repel one another. If they are rotating in the same sense, looked at from the same direction that is, let us say both are spinning like a top spinning right-handedly, or clockwise, then if the two approach one another, they would naturally have friction, and grind, and their peripheral particles would violently collide and a lot of sparks might fly, so that they would fly apart. While they are together, their energy would be slowed down, their energy dissipated into the environment through the spark-radiant dissipation of the energies of the electrons. On the contrary, however, if they are rotating in opposite senses, then they will tend to draw towards one another because there will be no collision between the peripheral parts, the radius and rate of revolution being the same. They would be like meshing gears, or perhaps like double stars, which revolve about the same axis.

     So there is a very great similarity between magnetic attraction and repulsion and electronic attraction and repulsion. In the case of the magnet, the rotation of the electrons around the axis core, or axis without a core, in which case it is called a solenoid, when the rotation is in one direction, then the polarities are in opposite ends. But when we reverse the rotation of the electrons by sending the current in the other direction around the coil, then the polarities are reversed. This is very analogous to what happens to the electrons. If two electrons are rotating in the same direction, their peripheral particles collide and slow them down, and they tend to fly apart. If they are rotating in opposite directions at the same time, then they tend to roll smoothly, each upon the other, like two stars revolving around the same axis without conflict or collision, and in that case they would tend to draw together rather than to thrust one another apart.