Thanks Keith, for looking at this again. I will have to pull out another supply - one that can take me up into the voltage range you speak of. But I know just the puppy - its lurking in my junk boxes right now.
You ask if there is anything else I would like you to try for now - just one other idea comes to mind, if you get a few minutes. If you have some NaOH (Red Devil Lye seems to be darn near ACS grade), whip up a strong solution of it (5M?) and see how the effect compares to what I have seen. You should get a bright plasma sheath that has the strong lines of sodium. BTW - what color is the plasma with NaCl? Thanks very much for your time on this! Best, NR > With a weak solution of NaCl, at about 70 volts I > begin to see the > effect. When I switch to a strong solution, I see a > much > more robust effect. I can lower the voltage to about > 60V and still see the effect. NaCl is just out of > your > power supply voltage range; given that the currents > in your > microcathode experiment are so much more reasonable > I'm > sure you can find something with more voltage and > confirm > my experimental results. I'm guessing that a 100V > supply would be more than ample to light up all the > electrolytes you mention. > > So I can confirm that the effect is more pronounced > with > higher concentration AND that it works with NaCl. I > should > go back to my old notes and see if I just remembered > that > bit about concentration wrong or if there > was something about the other aspects of my setup > that made it behave differently. As I said > initially, > there's a lot going on here, and my old setup was > quite a bit more sophisticated than what we're > messing > with right now ( I think I spent 15 minutes to get > the results above ). The geometry of the > cathode, particularly the ratio of inactive area > ( electrolysis ) to active ( plasma ) is very > different, perhaps this is swamping out the inverse > relationship I was seeing to conductivity to > what we're seeing now. > > Before I throw away this now brown mess away, is > there anything > else you'd like me to try? > > K. > > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
