[Avodah] water and electricity

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 03:32:51PM -0400, David Riceman wrote:
: According to the CI the problem is binyan and stirah.  Why should 
: "work-doing" matter?

There is no way to know how the CI intended this to be boneh, since
there is no binyan involved. No roof, no walls. There is no "boneh" of
a keli that isn't also a ceiling or wall. There are those who think he
"really meant" makeh bepatish or even that he "really meant" to tell the
mavin that he was inventing an issur because it just seems unShabbos-dik.

Since I can't make heads or tails of what the CI was saying on the
halachic side, how can I know what part of the metzi'us was significant
to him? (I don't feel bad, neither could RSZA.) So, I was just saying
that as a parallel it's flawed if one is doing something, and the other
can at best be *used for* doing something. (A sink doesn't wash dishes,
it enables me to.) Perhaps along the lines of the "'really meant' makeh
beparish" rewriters of the CI, this difference is important. Perhaps not.

I do not know if the CI would allow turning on and off a water-wheel
by moving the sluice-gate, even if the water-wheel was doing something
mutar. (If it's milling wheat, of course not, but that doesn't help us.
But that case is a texbook hasaras hamonei'ah example, IIRC.) I would
think it's makeh bepatish regardless of this "boneh" thing.

I also don't know of the CI would prohibit closing a circuit that doesn't
do anything, although your later example of:
> Consider attaching a wire with a plug to a metal pole in the ground and
> plugging the wire in.
would be bishul. You can't run a loadless circuit (not speaking
of superconductors, they post-date my degree). If nothing else, the
resistance of the wire will turn all that voltage into heat. Even shorting
out a AA battery will make the wire very hot. Sparking and glowing,
annealing the metal (bishul), are certainly all possible. But say you
found a really tiny voltage source and completed a circuit without that
kind of heat or any load that does measurable work. Are you sure the CI
would assur? As above, I am not sure that his "boneh" is divorced from
the fact that the circuit does work.

IOW, is it a circuit, or a work-doing thing, that is the thing you can't
build? Related: RSZA writes that the CI didn't intend the closing of a
powerless circuit to be boneh.

: RTK:
:> You are not bringing the water into existence by opening the faucet.  
:> But it seems to me there is no pool of electricity sitting 
:> there someplace, no puddles of electricity sitting in the wires.

: (a) Where do you think the electrons go?  (b) What about a circuit with 
: a battery? Why isn't a battery a "pool of electricity"?

This is difficult to answer, given quantum mechanics. Electrons exist
either way. However, the electron in different energy states are to
a certain extent different beryah than one just sitting in the usual
metallic bond hanging around the same couple of atoms. And both of which
are probability waves, so the entire question of where it is is fuzzy
altogether...

And given my ignorance of the CI's knowledge of electronics as it was
understood then, I can't answer in terms of the basis of his pesaq either.

BTW, I found your discussion of a related question (with the same
odd-to-my-eye referral of the CI as "Rabbi Karelitz") on mail-jewish
Nov 2006. There is was generating electricity in a wind-up flashlight
such that the light is made without a new circuit. (Because of details
of how generators work, it requires using AC to avoid winding itself
causing an open and closed circuit, or you could shift the question to
the shake kind...) It's an LED flashlight, not bishul. People should
see <http://www.ottmall.com/mj_ht_arch/v53/index.html#VU> and consequent
subject lines before replying.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 26th day, which is
micha at aishdas.org        3 weeks and 5 days in/toward the omer.
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Fax: (270) 514-1507         control just a way of abandoning one's self?