I purely by chance read something on quora digest that electricity isn't the flow of electrons but photons that are ejected from free electrons then re absorbed by another free electron this process makes them vibrate and move forward a fraction of an inch. Now I know there was a discussion about this on here a while back so what was the final conclussion. I know its a tough subject ide like to get my head round it of course its made harder because I can't understand the maths.
I assume you are referring to this experiment where as one would expect from the series L-R and voltage source from the armature model, as you stall the motor the resistance term representing the mechanical load falls to zero and the current rises and becomes more imaginary?
The experiment would benefit from a 'scope showing the phase offset between supply voltage, primary current and the current in the shunt windings - the whole point of a shaded pole motor is that the magnetic flux in the core is retarded in the vicinity of the shunts, to give the effect of a rotating magnetic field from a single phase excitation - which after all is what pulls the squirrel cage in a particular direction.
Note also that the current in the shunt windings would be noticeably higher without the clamp ammeter - in this case the one turn around a cm2 or so of laminated iron in the meter "jaws" is not totally negligible in comparison to the area of iron enclosed from the motor core.
I agree that magnetism (and complex nos for that matter) is appalling taught to most electricians, and that leads to a lot of misunderstanding and confusion, not helped by some incorrect drawings in text books.
Where I differ, strongly, is that I see no need to add further to the confusion by adding a new pseudo-particle. And as it happens the name magnon is already used for something else,.
Mike
PS
A schematic of a shaded pole motor - which is what I think that is in the video - the sense of rotation is from the open part of the pole towards the side which is 'shaded' by the near-short circuit winding (or windings) - though washing machine pumps are usually a variant with one primary winding and the iron work forming a horse-shoe with the rotor completing the magnetic flux between the poles of it - see photo - cheers Wikipedia, . The time delay between main and shaded pole areas is nothing like 90 degrees though, (I think 20-45 degrees perhaps) and this poor sense of direction translates into a weak starting torque... as you note it is almost a transformer, albeit one where most of the magnetic flux from the primary coil misses the shorted secondary completely (*).
As induction motors go shaded pole machines are pretty poor , so tend to be seen in low power situations where torque is not critical - capacitor start and two real windings is a far better way to get a spinning field on single phase if you need something with a decent pull.
(*). A similar game is played with microwave oven transformers where the core is shunted, so quite a lot of the magnetic field linking the primary and the heater winding is steered round so that it misses out on the HT winding - giving a performance rather like an ideal transformer with a current limiting extra inductor in series, which limits the peak HT current in the magnetron - a crude "almost constant current" drive.
Mike,
"Given that the Poynting vector points the direction of power flow for everything from 50Hz mains leads through microwave horn antennea and upwards to X-rays, I'm not sure how you think it is not useful for AC?"
Exactly, Poynting points us to the voltage attraction direction which is in the z vector direction but to produce power we need to have a flux/current inertia area in the x,y direction and if this is not at right angles a Cosine reduction in real power will occur and we will have quantum VAR's.
Physicists have discovered that flux spin frequency moves at 2 times the speed of current amps which has relativity built in so as to move the whole massless electromagnetic unit sideways fractionally in time..
See sketch 
