Would the ipod+battery system, anyway, maintain the same mass through all this?
-Kris
Even if it doesn’t, presumably as some minuscule effect of battery usage/depletion [a premise I shall argue from, without actually assuming it to exist], it wouldn’t have to do with the iPod being full vs. empty. Sure, it takes energy to write data, but it also takes energy to delete it (since deleting it is just overwriting parts of it with something else). Also, the battery state is independent of the actual data state of the iPod, an empty iPod being capable of being charged back to full battery or run to empty battery just as much as an iPod filled to the gills with songs.
ETA: Hm, but looking at the series of posts you’re replying to, perhaps that’s not quite the issue you’re addressing. Well, I’ll let this post stand anyway.
This could perhaps be overcome by weighing a collection of several billion iPods (all together), in empty and full states.
But then you might have to take into account the gravitational effect they have on each other. 
Rob
In my original post I specifically mentioned the weight would increase after the battery was charged, but I suspect that the few missing electrons would be picked up from the surroundings, so charging may not eve be necessary. Note that the total weigh change can be pretty accurately estimated- it’s the percent ‘0’ bits in the music data times the number of electrons stored per bit times the number of bits of music times the weight of an electron.
would the weight increase when the battery is charged? I thought charging the battery was just a matter of moving electrons from one part of it to another. If electrons are actually poured into the battery during charging, where do they go when it is used/discharged?
No, charging a battery shouldn’t change it’s weight. The weight of the iPod system may increase a tiny amount after charging to account for the electrons that are now trapped in the Flash memory cells.
Help, I’ve downloaded “Fallen” and I can’t get up.
I recommend some light jazz.
If they were not coming from the chip somewhere then as you programmed the flash the whole chip would gain a net negative charge.
They are not one’s or zero’s as you concieve them. They are simply positions in the solid state that are either on or off which are equivalent in meaning to 1’s and 0’s.
Actually, the net charge of the chip would be zero, but the substrate would have a defecit of electrons. I maintain that these electrons are replaced by the battery, and since the battery would then be missing a few electrons, they would either be replaced at the next charge, or more likely from the environment (think static electricity).
The deficit of electrons (holes) move to be near the gate with the captured electrons. They create or start to create a conducting channel under the gate. That is the point. It is the presence of this channel that gets detected as a one or zero.
I suspect that there isn’t a 1:1 correspondace between the trapped electrons and the holes.
You are incorrect. The bulk is a reasonably good conductor and it is tied to the very good conductor of vdd or ground depending on weather or not it is P or N type very often to ensure that it is at gound of vdd potential. Charge imbalance is confined to very small regions around the gates and depletion regions at the interface between P and N doped silicon.
Let’s split the difference and make it light jizz, k?
However the charge is trapped some distance away from the gate. Since the electric field strength is reduced by the inverse square law, it follows that one trapped electron can’t repel on free electron in the bulk.
Someone should forward the last several posts to the dj so that he has a more clear understanding of the question. I’m sure it would help.
Why do you say this? It does not follow at all. Conductors will not support a static electric field because charge is free to move under the inference of the electric field. If there is a net positive or negative charge then the electrons will move to cancel it out.
Of course, but what would happen if the trapped electrons were move 1 mile away from the gate? Do you still think that one trapped electron would generate one hole in the channel of the FET? The gate dielectric thickness is important.