English

Does a phase shift occur in an AC arc?

History and Philosophy of Physics 2016-02-24 v2 Classical Physics

Abstract

This is a translation of a classic paper in German showing that the apparent power in an AC arc is larger than the active power although no phase shift exists between the voltage and the current, indicating that the reactive power vanishes. The phenomenon studied in this paper gave rise to a variety of mutually conflicting "power triangle" models relating the active, reactive, and apparent powers P, Q, and S whose merits are still under debate today.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1602.06868,
  title  = {Does a phase shift occur in an AC arc?},
  author = {Charles Proteus Steinmetz and Gerald Kaiser},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.06868},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

3 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-22T12:55:16.912Z