I bought 1000 meters of wire to settle a physics debate [video]

It mostly works that way, but not exclusively: the moving electrons in one circuit create an electro-magnetic field that can induce currents in other nearby conductors that are not part of the same circuit.

What confused me is that the effect does not actually require the circuit to go through the resistor/lightbulb. Instead of thinking in terms of a delay, you could just have the switch and power supply in their own closed circuit, and the resistor alone with maybe an antenna to boost the effect.

Some small part of it is. The vast majority is transmitted along the wires.

A long, long time ago, before I realized software makes more money than being an EE(albeit with less life satisfaction), I went to school for EE. I like the Veritasium video for the debate it is spurring, but I really hate his impractical assumptions(funny, since 80% of EE is 1st and 2nd order approximations with 10% tolerances, but I digress). I get that he needs to simply things dramatically because of the audience he's trying to reach, but light year long superconducting wires and a light bulb that turns on with infinitesimal current just bother me. I guess normies wouldn't get that interested by talking about transient EM waves... but the video just leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I understand why EEs are making response videos. I wish he at least mentioned that the power reaching the light bulb would be practically useless. Oh well. Hopefully it spurs a few young minds into sacrificing higher pay for a career in EE or physics.

> Is there really an epidemic of EE's who know how to use a field solver, but don't know to consider coupling between signal lines?

Now, I'm not an EE myself, just someone who took undergraduate electrodynamics, decided to read up the subject, and found some truly excellent videos on youtube.

But, at 1:00:23 in that same video I linked before (https://youtu.be/QG0Apol-oj0?t=3623), Rick Hartley says this:

> I spend most of my consulting time solving EMI problems because most of the engineers I meet have no clue about any of this. My job is so easy and I make such a ridiculous amount of money doing it. It's just unbelievable; I solve most EMI problems by simply adding returned vias to boards or changing the positions of decoupling caps, I mean the things are so simple and ridiculous it's amazing and if these guys would educate themselves they wouldn't need to hire me.

So I gather that there is a problem. It's not that EEs don't know to consider coupling between signal lines, but because most of them persist in thinking that signals travel in wires, rather than in the fields, they don't understand when coupling will occur and when it won't. Sure, they can look at the result of the field solver and realize they have a problem, but without thinking in terms of fields they don't know how to solve it. So, they fix it either with trial-and-error until the field solver is happy, or by following design patterns that are passed down as an oral tradition, but without actually understanding why it works or what the problem was in the first place.

Here's an example: https://youtu.be/52fxuRGifLU?t=1719

That's simple to understand if you think in terms of fields. Even worse, if you have signal lines that are parallel and on top of one another (on different planes), referencing the same ground plane from the same side, then it doesn't matter how far apart those planes are, they're going to couple strongly since the fields overlap. You can have two traces right next to each other that have virtually zero coupling because they're stripline, or, if you have a stackup with a single ground plane on the bottom layer, a signal line on top of that, and a signal line on layer one parallel and on top of the bottom trace, they're virtually on opposite sides of the board and yet they'll couple strongly. And if you don't think in terms of fields, you'll observe that, whether in simulation or on a circuit board, and have no idea why it happens or how to fix it.

Here's Rick talking about the state of the industry in the 1980s and 1990s: https://youtu.be/ZYUYOXmo9UU?t=4295. It's clear that no, EEs weren't taught this, they didn't understand it. The situation has, I believe, improved somewhat, but only perhaps in the last decade or two. I would guess that even today, most EEs still don't really understand this (or Rick wouldn't be making so much money consulting).

> Personally, I didn't get hostility from any of their videos.

Perhaps "hostility" is the wrong word. I think on reflection "dismissiveness" is better.

Like, "Yes, we know that Maxwell's Equations are the ground truth. We were all taught that and understand it. But that's not the way practicing engineers work -- we use models like transmission lines and lumped-element. It's technically correct, but more of a curiosity than anything. It's not something we really need to think about, and certainly not useful for a general audience -- more likely to confuse them than anything."

That's the general impression I got. And I think, that not only was Veritasium technically correct, but that model is useful, and most EEs don't use it when they probably should.

Most of us here on hn are software developers. I think that most would probably agree that on the whole, we're all pretty terrible at it. Why would you think Electrical Engineering would be different? Because they're "real" engineers, whereas we just sometimes call ourselves "software engineers" (knowing that's pretty much a lie)?

Here's a presentation by Eric Bogatin that reminded me more than a little of the sort of cargo-cult design patterns that pervade software engineering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4REmZlE7Jg