On Jun 2, 2007, at 4:09 PM, Kyle R. Mcallister wrote:
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.
Interesting! Like Bill says, perfectly insulated balls should clog
up with charge, though even just a microamp conduction through the
ball should still allow significant attraction of the radial flow
ions toward the balls. It is also notable that an airflow around the
balls will tend to discharge the balls on average because pulsed DC
is being used.
One effect of reduced insulation of the rotor wires will be to
increase the radial wind from the stator wires, making them more
effective at producing radial ion wind current, and thus improving
motor performance. However, increased radial air flow *behind the
ball*, where the wire is, produces reduced air pressure on the back
of the ball, and thus reduces the forward thrust. Interesting.
I don't think that a rotor with just plain straight spokes, no wire
bends, no ping pong balls, ends insulated, will rotate in the same
direction as with the ping pong balls, or at all for that matter,
unless the stator electrodes are on a bias. They should be symmetric
and thus produce no torque in either direction, so the wire bends
must be important. (Hmmmm... maybe would rotate after a push or
initial motion prior to power?) The big surface of the ping pong
balls should be important too, and if so there has to be a net charge
difference sustained between the ball surface and the radial ion
stream. It doesn't appear to me there would be much thrust with just
the bent wire armature, insulated small tip, with no ping pong ball -
though experiment will tell for sure.
I should also note that the current bends produce a magnetic self-
force, but that force is very small due to small current, and in the
direction the rotor rotates when it is just an ordinary ion wind
pinwheel, i.e. with no ping pong balls.
Regards,
Horace Heffner
