William Beaty wrote:
But... there would be no ion flows near the rotor if the pingpong balls
were truely insulating. A cloud of opposite ions would just gather around
the pingpong balls, then all air flows (ion flows) would stop. So I bet
the pingpong balls are terrible insulators, and electrons are going
through them fast enough to give ion currents and air flows.
Re-reading Miklos' page and his posts to Newelectrogravity supports
this...he says that the device works better if the feed wire to the
pingpong balls has a section of "bad" insulation. Look at the first
image on:
http://www.fw.hu/bmiklos2000/unipolar.htm
I'd bet that is why it works better with "bad" insulation there instead
of "good". More ion current, more air flow.
If you haven't yet dissassembled your device, try REALLY insulating the
tips of the rotor wires: snip off the sharp parts and cover them with
big blobs of silicone caulk. Don't use pingpong balls at all. If that
greatly slows things down, then ion-flows were almost certainly the cause
of the thrust.
It is still hanging around, literally. I will add this to the list.
About to go on some travels, will get some incense while I am out,
preferably something that smells nice and not like a house of ill repute. :)
Note well that where kilovolts and microamps are involved, rubber and
plastic are NOT INSULATORS. They are resistors. A large area of thin
plastic (as in a pingpong ball) is a poor insulator. Better that you
should fill each pingpong ball with oil! :) Or, just get rid of the
pingpong balls entirely, and cast the wire tips into thick spheres of
solid plastic or silicone.
I have quite a bit of silicones around here, I'll use something to do
this. Not sure if I will get to this today, but I will do it.
--Kyle
