More accurately the number is 6,286,000,000,000.
114LETTER 13
TUNING
Dear Radio Enthusiast:
I want to tell you about receiving sets and their tuning. In the last letter I told you what determines the frequency of oscillation of an audion oscillator. It was the condenser and inductance which you studied in connection with Fig. 36. That’s what determines the frequency and also what makes the oscillations. All the tube does is to keep them going. Let’s see why this is so.
Start first, as in Fig. 47a, with a very simple circuit of a battery and a non-inductive resistance, that is, a wire wound like that of Fig. 40 in the previous letter, so that it has no inductance. The battery must do work forcing electrons through that wire. It has the ability, or the energy as we say.
Now connect a condenser to the battery as in Fig. 47b. The connecting wires are very short; and so practically all the work which the battery does is in storing electrons in the negative plate of the condenser and robbing the positive plate. The battery displaces a certain number of electrons in the waiting-rooms of the condenser. How many, depends upon how hard it 115can push and pull, that is on its e. m. f., and upon how much capacity the condenser has.
