Re: Plastic Bottle as an Antenna!?
Can a dielectric store electric energy? if yes, that shows that you didn't get my point.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric
A perfect dielectric is a material with zero electrical conductivity (cf. perfect conductor), thus exhibiting only a displacement current; therefore it stores and returns electrical energy as if it were an ideal capacitor.
That (DRO) was once one of Antenova main type of produced antennas. Again, patented by prof. Kingsley, as well as the tunable bottles.
Cooperated with Antenova a long time ago, and have meet him several times.
A question with a boolean answer "can dielectric store electric charge?",
YES|NO?
The question has been answered, you didn't read.
Plastic bottles are transparent insulators and would be poor radiators. THey have a relatively low dielectric constant, far less than the fluid it normally contains, 4 vs 60.
It needs a ground plane to act as a radiator or antenna although could be used as a conductor if was fluid installed where impedances were considered.
This can be demonstrated with light collected on one side of a roof then dispersed and radiated beneath the roof when filled with a clear fluid, but do very little without the fluid.
If a broad spectrum was emitted inside or outside, it may radiate with some transmission loss and reflection loss enough to partially transparent over a broad range of frequencies, but the bottle itself is a poor radiator.
Since plastic is a good insulator, it would not conduct any magnetic fields unless coated with a conductor. Unlike plastic our bodies have conductive ions in the form of salts which make our electrolyte more effective as an antenna to collect E fields which can be coupled to a preamp or a mini coil antenna or antenna conductor path in a radio.
The question was perhaps to test your articulation of an unknown property or to evaluate your understanding of the properties of materials in the context of conduction, insulation , reflection, diffusion, diffraction which all affect radiation.
I had an epiphany that an antenna is a single-port device. It is an open circuit (even though I understand that there is no open or short circuit at microwave frequencies). So, where is the return path for the current to flow? How does it even work?
The signal is referenced to ground and works better with a suitable ground plane.