Logical Meaning through Complex Reasoning

César A. Rivera Collazo

What if? This question had been the reason for humanity to break the schemes and let creativity flow.  This question had also been the responsible for many discoveries and improvements.  Many people often ask themselves this question when they are up to something or when they are learning something.  Students can be identified with this last one.  During the semester we had learned how electrons and protons behaves in other words how electricity behaves and also how electricity and magnetisms relates with each other.  Here is where the question comes from.  What if?  As a student I asked myself this question in order to understand and analyze what I have learned.  Then creativity and ideas began to appear.  When I was studying the topic about how current can be produced by magnetic field I asked myself, “If we know that current can be created from a magnetic field (change in magnetic field or change in area or change in the angle between both), What if we can power spaceships with magnetic field?”

This idea sound a little extreme and illogical but if we analyze how current is created from a magnetic field it would not sound that extreme at it appears.  In order to create a current from a magnetic field we know that we need a loop of wire and a magnet.  The current then will be induced on the wire by the change in magnetic flux.  The magnetic flux is ∅_B=BAcos(θ) (B=magnetic field, A=area) so the only way to change the flux is to change the magnetic field, the area of the loop(s) of wire, the angle between them or simply all of them at the same time.  With this in mind the idea of creating current from a magnetic field could sound reasonable.  

The only question is: how the current will be transported to the spaceship?  The current will not be transported to the spaceship it will be created in a recharge station on the orbit of the earth.  We know that magnetic field can create and induce current.  So what if we install a large magnets somewhere on earth and a recharge station somewhere on the earth orbit so the magnetic field could direct this field to the recharge station where a large wire with many loops will be nourished from this magnetic field.  Now there are two problems one concerning the way magnetic field will be created on earth and the other regarding the way we will create a change in flux so an induce current would be created on the loop of wire at the recharge station. 

To answer the first problem we need to know that magnetic field can be produced by a change in electric field (change in charge) in other words by a current.  This current can come from a power plant or if we what to keep things clean we can produce this current from renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, etc).  We also know that if the recharge station will be orbiting earth we need to install those large magnets on strategic areas around the world. 

With this in mind we can answer the second problem, the way we will create a change in flux.  In order to do that we know that we have to change the magnetic field, the area of the loop of wire or the angle between them.  If the recharge station will be orbiting the earth the angle between them will be changing.  Also we can manipulate the magnitude of the magnetic field by changing the current.

This idea of powering a spaceship with a magnet can be seen illogical for many, or can be seen as something taken from a Scifi movie.  As a recall is only an idea and every idea has its restrictions at first when they are analyzed scientifically.  We have to realize also that discoveries and improvements were born from ideas and is the work of engineers, scientist, physicist, etc to analyze the idea.  They are the ones that are able to find a logical meaning by complex reasoning.