On April 7, 2017 at 00:33, Ernie Gilman said...
As I read it, this is batteries in a series short circuit.
A short circuit bypasses the rest of a circuit- putting batteries in series is additive, WRT polarity, so one battery's voltage will affect the other battery. This isn't done when the batteries are capable of extremely high current, though.
I guess I don't understand bucking.
Bucking is used when AC voltage needs to be reduced without generating a lot of heat via resistors or other small components. If a power transformer in an old piece of equipment was wound for lower primary voltage, sending 120+VAC can cause it to operate outside of its range and some tube equipment has caps that are close to their limit. Rather than use a Variac, a multi-tapped transformer with 120VAC input and 2V, 3V, 5V, 6V or other output can be inserted in series and with reverse polarity to reduce the voltage by the amount of each tap to drop the line voltage to the device's primary to what it wants to see. Connected in series and IN phase, the output from the first transformer would add to the line voltage.
This is used for vintage guitar amps- changing the transformers may not (arguably) let it sound the same as it would with OEM, so some people assemble a box with a switch that allows selecting normal line voltage or another (sometimes several, if they use the amp at places where the voltage is a crap shoot).
http://www.amprx.net/No need to push? Electrons "want to be in a balanced state"? That sounds like a judgment of emotions. I'm saying I think there has to be something that causes them to move, and whatever that is, it must be possible for it to be too small to cause them to move.
If you connect a wire across the terminals of a battery, what happens? Electrons flow, but you haven't pushed anything- they moved on their own. Why? Because, they need to. You can add a resistor to reduce the current, but electrons are still going to move. The difference may be minute, but it will still cause electrons (or one electron) to move. You still haven't done anything except make a connection.
The specific application is understanding the details. You can do A LOT without knowing that diodes have forward voltage drop, but more if you know it. I'm guessing something interesting might come from knowing about this.
What kind of diodes? Silicon, Zener, Shottkey...?
Don't know if you have a need to service anything with tubes, but an incandescent light bulb is a good, cheap current limiter when wired in series with the power transformer.
