I asked: >> What is unconventional about the two "plate" components of a charged >> capacitor >> being attracted to each other? Harry Reeder replied:
>The force of attraction is apparently not equal and opposite. >If the force were equal and opposite it would not lift off the ground. Naudin is very good at replicating an effect--but he isn't good at, or neglects to bother to do, rigorously contolling his experiments. That is, he shows lift, but the two charged plates are not just interacting with each other--they are interacting with everything else around them, too, including the wires supplying the potential to the two plates. When you're at high voltages, you cannot neglect the exterior circuit, nor the air, nor the walls of the container, etc. etc. It doesn't matter if the air around it does or does not ionize. If I rub a balloon on my head and put it close enough to the ceiling, it will rise and stick there. It doesn't need to ionize air to do that. Polarization matters. Let me be clear--though I am confident that the Lifters do nothing at all beyond ordinary physics, I can't be absolutely certain of that. What I am certain of is that I have yet to see an experiment that adequately takes into account ALL of the relevant characteristics of the "lifter system", and the entire system is a very complicated thing. That having been said, Lifters are pretty cool regardless of how they work. Jeffery D. Kooistra
