ECN Forum Forums Technical Discussion Electrical Theory and Applications 180 degrees out of phase

You can have 'wave '. You put voltage on your Y-axis and time on your X-axis.
You get a sine wave.

Please consider this analogy...

Place two 1.5V cells in series with taps on all poles as follows:

(tap A)+CELL-(tap B)+CELL-(tap C)

From tap A to tap B is 1.5V

From tap B to tap C is 1.5V

From tap A to tap C is 3.0V

This could be considered a three wire 1.5/3.0V DC system, with the noted opposite poles, but without any phasing whatsoever.

Am I off base?

>This could be considered a three wire 1.5/3.0V DC system, with the noted opposite poles, but without any phasing whatsoever.
I agree. And based on Scott's rotating magnet model, I am very happy to refer to 240/120 V as two pole rather than two phase.

That does not change the fact the if the voltages of the two poles are plotted over time, the waves are 180 degrees apart.

Indeed, acceptance of Scott's model requires that they be 180 degrees apart as one end of wave comes from the coil at the north pole and the other comes from the south pole.


[This message has been edited by Dspark (edited 05-21-2001).]

>So can I think of the 9V battery ... as an infinitely phased AC source as long as that makes more sense to me?
A 9V battery is not AC.
How many wires would it take for an infinitely phased source? Infinite.
How many wires do you have? Two.
Therefore, it could not be infinitely phased.

In DC current, actual electrons actually make the one-way round trip carrying energy to the load; whereas in AC electrons mainly slosh back and forth where they are pumping energy along.

define RMS as pertains to peak to peak, i thought that this was 0 to peak

The RMS voltage is based on potential difference between the two poles. The actual potential difference varies between 0 when both waves are crossing zero to 340 when both are at their peaks. The RMS is 240 (nominal).

Don't confuse measuring potential between two coincident peaks of separate waveforms with measuring peak-to-peak (necessarily non-coincident) voltage within a single waveform which is something quite different.

For a single pole to neutral, the potential varies from 0 (zero crossing) to 170 (at peak).