Glad my video came in handy! Thanks for letting me know! Regarding the cables, any wires will do but those are wires with alligator clips on the ends. It makes them easy to connect to things. You can buy them at Radio Shack or any electronics parts store. Or you can just get any wires, strip the insulation off the ends and tape the ends to where I attached them in the video. Have fun!
Hi Dave. Do you mean the thing with two rotating disks, the one that caused the two cans to come together? If so, that's a Wimshurst machine. I bought it off of ebay. You can find a lot of places that sell them online - they're quite popular. I'm delighted to hear you're going to share my experiments with your kids. They'll learn a lot and have a great time. -Steve
Yup. I should have thought to demo that. I even have a video, "Positive or Negative? How to Find Electric Charge Polarity", where I determine the polarity of charge on a CRT TV. Thanks for pointing it out.
That does sound very much like it might have been a Franklin's bell! Cool. I now remember reading that before but I think it was an extract in a book about Tesla. Looks like lots of good reading here. Thanks!
All your vids inspire me Steve! It's merely a question of free time, and 2012 just hasn't left me with much at all. In 2013 I will make more free time for myself, and get back into experimenting. I know you did lots of work with lifters and ''poynting flow thrusters'' - have you ever had results confirming another force in addition to ion wind?
Oh the endstuff is done in Sony Vegas Movie Studio, which is my movie editor. I make a separate movie for just the middle portion with the preview clips. That alone takes 8 separate video tracks, one of which is a violet "green screen". I bring that into the main movie and add 5 more video tracks for the rest. It's mostly copy and paste from the previous video. Once in youtube, I add annotations. Oh, MrFlathunter! We haven't seen a new video from you in a while. Maybe this will inspire you? :)
Hi Steve - your videos are extremely professional and great for anyone who wants to try experiments at home. I was wondering how you got that great widget at the end of your video - is it homemade? Very nice anyway. I'm going to share your experiments with some of the kids I teach.
I'm working on another video that answers your question. But in short, the lower portion of a storm cloud is negatively charged, causing things at the surface of the Earth to potentially become positively charged. Franklin mounted a lightning rod to the side of his chimney and the top became positive. The other end was connected to one of the bells, the other bell to ground. The sharp positive top of the rod collected electrons from ions in the air.
Which wires are you referring to and what are you powering it with (Van de Graaff, Wimshurst, ...)? At 1:42 you saw it worked with just one high voltage connection, but then at 1:58 you saw it was better with the opposite polarity connected too.
Is he touching the metal? The spatula must have a plastic or wooden handle, it must be dry and he has to hold the handle so that his hand is as far from the metal as possible. In the video I used a plastic cutting board, which is really just polyethylene. It has no paint or anything on it. If there's paint or some kind of coating on yours then maybe it's not getting charged in the first place. Also, what kind of cloth are you rubbing it with? I think mine is cotton.
Thanks! I tried for entertaining while still full of useful and neat stuff. I've heard of Tesla's Colorado Springs lab of course but nothing about a bell there? And a search came up empty. Do you have a search string or something?
No mate - I mean the beautiful 'subscribe here' and 'watch these other projects' at the end of your video which appears on the screen. Did you use a video editor to make it? Which one? I want one too! The Wimhurst looks great! I bought a Tesla coil kit on ebay about 7 years ago, and since then I have always had the experimenting bug. ''MrFlathunter'' is my other account and I remember you came to my channel and commented - Thanks! I always appreciate your input.
Nah, if there is any other force, the ion wind dwarfs it so much its effects aren't noticeable. I've done countless other experiments in the past that didn't have the ion wind and still didn't get anything. A small sample of them are on the solid dielectric propulsion pages in the Non-conventional Propulsion section of my website. And I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work in 2013.
Oh, you might have to wait til December though. :( I won't have access to my workshop in December so I'm collecting videos that I can work on that don't require tools, like the Franklin's bell explanation.
An all round superb demo, with lots of your other projects to show it off ! Would you say that Tesla's Colorado Springs bell with the lightning was likely a variation ?
Wow! thank you so much for this video! I'm a mother of 4 and my husband is currently away for another week in a short navy work up. And I'm going insane trying to figure out how to configure materials for the bell. He is obviously making a Static bell. I did order the wimshurt machine already. I'm guessing it doesn't come with those cables to connect. Maybe you can tell me where to find? Thanks again for the video.
Nope, I've never used acetone, or any chemical to remove the outside paint. I have used sandpaper and also a rotating wire brush attached to a drill, both of which worked fine. As for it being better to have bare metal on the outside, I guess it depends on what you're using it for. To build up the voltage, having insulation is a bonus. But I guess at some point you'll want it to arc to something else.
Search 'Colorado Springs notes'. July 4th 1899. He used one own method then a bell, to 100 miles and more from storm. "An ordinary bell was connected to earth and elevated terminal and often it also responded. A small spark gap was bridged by a bright spark when the lightning occurred in the neighbourhood. By holding the hands across the gap a shock was felt indicating the strength of the current passing between the ground and the insulated plate." Well worth reading, lots of info per day !
Do you have experience with acetone to remove the outside paint on the cans to have bare metal on the outside? I've heard that there is a varnish even where there is no apparent color paint on the outside of the can. And that it is much better to have bare metal on the outside of vandegraffs and teslacoils terminals and such... just asking :)
wow! cool. Can you explain a little bit about the cool modification you did at the end with the Faraday Cage aspect? Why does this improve the performance?
hi li A Faraday cage is a metal container that, in this case, you electrically connect to inside. Due to the effect the inside surface of the can is always electrically neutral, no matter how high the voltage is on the outer surface. So the wire just sees a neutral or uncharged place to conduct to always, no matter how much charge the wire sends to the can.Compare that to connecting the wire to the outer surface of the can. In that case the more charge the wire delivers to the can, the greater the repulsion by the charge on outer surface the can to any new charge being sent to it.
RimstarOrg Wow! that's really amazing. So does the base you built for it, seal the inside of the can from the outside of the can (the charge moves through the wall of the aluminum), or is it simply the geometry of the can that makes the charge stay on the outside and keeps the inside neutral? I was guessing the inside and outside layers of the can were acting like two plate of a capacitor, I didn't imagine the inside one would stay neutral. Is there a way I might have been able to anticipate that this would be the case, instead of the capacitor idea?
hi li It's simple the geometry of the can that matters. As for anticipating it, the closest I would come is to think that all excess like charges would repel each other and the farthest they could spread out would be the outer surface.
I don't have a plastic-metal spatula so I tried to use an electric fly swatter. The wires are on the inside of the cans and I'm using a tab in the middle. But for some reason it doesn't work, the tab is just touching one of the cans and sticks there.
Hi, I don't really know what you're describing. I can say that a 9-volt battery alone wouldn't help, you'd need some circuit to step up the voltage. And then you'd need some way to spray the charge onto the PVC since PVC is not electrically conductive i.e. the charge won't spread itself out over the PVC. So your high voltage output would need to have a sharp needle-like tip.
I'm missing something ? your Van de graph is creating the power to operate the Franklin s bell. How does one set it up to be effected by a storm, cloud or other natural electoral Phenomenon.
It alerts about the storm, even if there's no lightning. I would guess that a lightning strike would actually make it stop ringing since the lightning strike would momentarily neutralize the Earth and cloud.
+RimstarOrg > "the lightning strike would momentarily neutralize the Earth and cloud." Ok, but immediately before the lightning strike there would be a huge voltage drop. Shouldn't the voltage drop be sufficiently to ring the B.Franklin's Bell ?
That was incredible!... that is a large mass compared to the electron and to think a Wimshurst could be powered by wind or water... clouds could be moved... teslasources.com
