Magnetic Susceptibility of Dental Amalgams

"madiba" ............
.....The idea is the current produced by the amalgams goes For you and Keith---
"I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship"
Casablanca
carabelli

No idea, I thought it was due to pressure on the mixture of metals as in piezo-electric (sp) effect or somehow imitates the small mercury-type batteries that are used in watches, whatever. I'm not a physicist, but I can see the cabling is adequate.. :-/

Dodging the question is also an answer, I guess..

I guess you're the physicist, I had no idea the physics of the discharge had not been sorted out. The cabling (the nerves) are there for it to happen in an intact tooth. Needs to be tested.

So you are saying you need five amalgams to trigger one nerve ,,, I mean five nerves trigger one amalgam.

You tuned in late. That is exactly what Keith is saying .... and more than once.

Keith shuffles on the carpet and then touches an amalgam to the doorknob ,,,,,,, but watch out if someone is in the room beyond.

We do. How else would the radio inside my tooth work?

You're not comparing like with like here.
Static discharges of the type experienced after walking across a carpet occur at potentials of up to thousands of volts.
But the amount of energy dissipated by the discharge wouldn't light a flashlight bulb for any appreciable amount of time at all.
Everyday batteries which are able to drive a sustained current through a flashlight bulb filament and keep it lit for many hours do so with an operating potential of just a few volts.
The nature of the dissipation of the energies involved in these two situations is dependent on a combination of variables and is very different for each case.
That's why I keep making the point that in order to understand the nature of any dissipation of electrical energy due to the generation of electrical potentials by amalgam dental fillings it should be necessary to carry out experimental investigations to measure it.
And this would include establishing by physical measurement that there is no dissipation of energy at all.
It isn't enough to just rely on guesswork for answering these questions.
Shall I tell you why?
It's because your guesswork might be wrong, that's why.
And amalgam dental fillings are placed in children's teeth.
As far as anybody can tell this statement might be true simply because the experimental procedures which would be necessary in order to demonstrate such effects have never been carried out.
And in the absence of any scientific evidence of any kind regarding the matter then the only other logical possibility is that such investigations have been carried out but the results are not available.
Keith P Walsh
PS, enquiries concerning the electrical behavior of metal amalgam dental fillings can be found at:

It has been known for more than 160 years that metals, mixtures of metals, and dissimilar metals in contact with each other are able to dissipate electrical energy to their surroundings as a result of their thermoelectric properties, and that it is not necessary for there to be any electrolysis taking place in order for this to happen.
For an elementary description of the thermoelectric effect go to:
Keith P Walsh

In sci.physics, Alexander Vasserman DDS., BS.
wrote on 24 Jan 2004 20:45:02 -0800 : Pedant point: anything can be a capacitor if it holds charge, and anything conductive can hold a charge. Of course it's not like it's a *big* cap; I suspect a few picofarads at most.
See a highly theoretic (and non-working) capacitative device the size of a D-cell that is outperformed by said D-cell. (It's a response to Feerguy, who occasionally posts on this forum relating his theories on the "trench capacitor".)
Could lead to erosion of the filling, methinks.
Hmm... According to
1 T = 1 V s / m^2 = 1 kg / (s^2 A) = 1 N/ (A m) = 1 Wb / m^2
The Earth's magnetic field is 2 * 10^-5 to 3 * 10^-5 T, at least on the surface (I've always remembered it as 1 gauss = 10^-4 tesla so this is about half as strong as I had thought), and presumably this means a wire of length 1 meter moving through the field with a velocity of 1 m/s will generate a potential of about 30 microvolts at the most.
Not very much. :-) Even the shuttle astronauts moving through space at 8 km/s will only experience maybe a 240 mV potential, if that. Of course it might be of some significance on the shuttle itself (the shuttle is 37.24 m long) and the tethered satellite experiment performed some time back was generating 50KV potentials IIRC, until the tether broke.
If one gets enough turns of wire one might get a nice current but at this potential one will definitely need a step-up transformer, :-) and a *lot* of turns.
Note that the world's strongest magnetic field is apparently 25 Tesla or so; presumably generators work with less than that. I'd have to look for the specs on Grand Coolie or Hoover Dam, for example.
The reading would be wiped out by carpet static electricity anyway, which is a few hundred to a few thousand volts -- hence the need for certain antistatic products.

Does anyone else get a mental image of the shrieking woman, "But think of the children!", when the bear came to Springfield in the Simpsons?

Ummm, the thermoelectric effect requires two different metals in contact.
The net thermoelectric effect voltage of a discrete lump of any homogenous metalic substance is zero.
If the only metal is amalgam, how could you have a thermoelectric effect?
Amalgam filling touching a gold or silver filling?

And the energy stored/dissipated by an amalgam would be thousands or millions of times weaker. What's the capacitance of an amalgam -- a femtofarad? I rest my case; no harm done.

But what is completing the circuit? At best I see an open circuit with one end where a nerve ending and amalgam are in close proximity, while the other end exposed to air is open.

REPLY:
I do not know about anyone else but Keith Walsh uses his tongue ...

I thought that a bunch of amalgams in series would light up a flashlight.

A static electricity charge from the carpet if you can direct it to the filling without grounding it. I think not. The amalgam itself does not hold a potential difference especially of 350mV. I'll have to consult with a PhD (in Physics) friend of mine as to what energy can be harvested from the Space Shuttle moving in orbit. I would imagine that with the right type of electronics you can get more than 350mV.

Keith P Walsh
From what I remember its if you heat one end of a copper wire and cool the other you will get a small current this will never happen in the mouth(the metal will either be warm or cold not both at the same time) and it does not make amalgam filling into a battery or a capacitor. and the link you provided talks nothing of seeing this effect between silver and mercury and as you yourself pointed out it is not a sustained current and is limited from one end of the metal to the other.