In most texts the treatment of displacement current is far from adequate

6. In most texts the treatment of displacement current is far from adequate. A better
treatment than most is given by John D. Krauss, Electromagnetics, Fourth Edition,
McGraw-Hill, New York, pp. 437-439, 547-549 (1992). Additional useful insight
can be gained from David J. Griffiths, Introduction To Electrodynamics, Second
Edition, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, pp. 304-308 (1989).
Problem 7.51 on p. 335 is also of direct interest, as is particularly the comment by
Griffiths below the problem. Additional insight can be gained from David Halliday
and Robert Resnick, with assistance by John Merrill, Fundamentals of Physics,
Extended Third Edition (1988), John Wiley & Sons, New York, vol. 2, Article 37-
4: Displacement Current, pp. 836-837, 839-841. The standard notion is to (1) retain
the continuity of current, thus modifying and salvaging Ampere's law, (2) the
displacement current is non-physical, i.e., it does not involve the transfer of
charged mass, (3) focus primarily upon magnetostatics as to the results achievable
by the displacement current, (4) retain the notion of as E, a force field, thereby
focusing the notion of displacement current upon the change of the E field without
the flow of charged mass, and (5) retain the confusion between electrical charge
and charged mass that is inherent in the terms "charge", "current", etc. On p. 836
Halliday and Resnick point out that the displacement current is not derived per se,
but is a "fit" based upon symmetry arguments, and it must stand or fall simply on
whether or not its predictions agree with experiment. On the same page the
displacement current is taken to be a linear function of d /dt. For flow along a
circuit where there is no electron mass current, it seems appropriate to replace d
/dt by d /dl. It is also strongly indicated that one should clearly distinguish
between charged mass current flow and the flow of massless charge, which is the
approach we have taken.
A final indication of the way conventional scientists tend to regard displacement
current is given by Martin A. Plonus, Applied Electromagnetics, McGraw-Hill,
New York, pp. 446-448 (1978). Here Plonus uses the prevailing notion of the E
field being altered by the flow of massless displacement current. As can be seen,
the displacement current is relegated almost to a curiosity of capacitors, and not
really too essential except just to "balance the books" and retain Ampere's current
continuity.
We now wish to point out something very subtle but very rigorous. CEM
erroneously uses E = - to equate a mass-free potential gradient with a masscontaining
force field. This "E-field" only exists at a point when there is a pointcoulomb
of electrical charged mass at the point. The real version of this equation
should be E == -[( ) q]/q, where is the potential gradient coupled directly to
the charged point-mass at the point, q is the number of coulombs of charged mass
at the point, q/q is one coulomb of charged mass, and E now is properly the force
on and of each coulomb of the collected charged mass at the point.
Viewed in this manner, one can now see that the E field may be altered by flow of
additional charged mass q, or by flow of massless additional , or both. This is
now in agreement with the manner in which it is approached in CEM, but more
rigorous. Essentially it states we may increase the total "charge" (potential) at a
point by either (1) moving in additional charged masses by use of a conventional
current, or (2) moving in additional massless charge (potential) without any
additional change in mass, or (3) a combination of the above.
However, let us apply this to a single charged particle or to a fixed number of them.
No one seems to have noticed that the notion of altering the E-field of the collected
point- charges at a point via method #2 , i.e. by a flow of massless displacement
current onto the fundamental charged particles themselves, a priori requires the
electrical charge of each fundamental particle to change. Hence it falsifies the
notion of quantization of charge.
Also, no one seems to have noticed the electric power implications: if it is known
that one can charge a capacitor purely by displacement current, then one can charge
up the capacitor with energy, without any dissipation of the source, because only
charged mass current through the back emf of the source does that. So one can then
disconnect the charged capacitor and separately connect it in a closed circuit with a
load, to discharge through the load and furnish free work in the load (free in the
sense than no dissipation of the primary source occurred in either the collection of
the energy or in discharge of the collected energy through the load as useful work).
Free energy, overunity electrical devices, etc. should then be readily apparent and
permissible, from the known nature of displacement current and capacitors alone.