V, Alright. I will try this again, and we'll see...what we can see.
WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE Charles Morton reported an effect (a series of effects, actually, but we will only concentrate on this one) wherein a beam of force of an unusual nature is generated by a high voltage discharge coming from the sphere of a Van de Graff generator and striking a target with a particular geometry. The force was said to be extremely penetrating, even of metal. It was said to ionize plastic (assume, charge), cause fluorescent light bulbs to flash, and so on. It is said to project outwards into a (at least somewhat) tight beam from the discharge. The original writeup is here, under the section FORCE CONCENTRATION. http://amasci.com/freenrg/morton1.html William Beatty attempted a replication, notes at: http://amasci.com/freenrg/mort2.txt Apparently without success. Bummer. However, he notes that John Schnurer (rest in peace, buddy) stated the sphere should be negative. Bill's VdG was positive. REPLICATION ATTEMPT BY YOURS TRULY Two empty stainless steel bowls, found at KMART, were procured. After banging them together, and making obligatory Monty Python jokes, they were taped together with duck tape (quack). This geometrically perfect sphere (cough) was placed on top of a column made of 4" diameter thin walled PVC pipe, with a length of about 1 foot. The spark target is the 4"x4" galvanized steel cover of a wiring access box. I didn't buy it, I swiped it from a guy who owes me a roof. The strike plate had a 1/4" hole drilled in the center, and a 6"x6" lexan plate (1/8" thick) glued to the face of the steel plate facing the sphere. Likewise, a 1/4" hole was drilled in the lexan plate, centering over the equal sized hole in the steel plate. A piece of plastic PVC pipe, schedule 40 thickness, about 3" long was hot glued to the lexan plate, open end with the holes centering in it. Several other pipe lengths were used, to either lengthen or shorten the spark. They all had the same effect, so assume 3" length. The free end of the pipe was cut to butt against the curved surface of the sphere. The spark thus jumps from the sphere, through the tube, through the hole in the lexan, and hits some part of the steel plate along the edge of the 1/4" hole. The spark was very reliable in this regard. The plate was grounded nine ways from Sunday, and the sphere was held to about -100kV. The sparks produced were dazzlingly bright, blue-white, and could cast flicks of orange whatsit from the steel plate. The power supply was a full-wave Cockroft-Walton multiplier, powered by a 10kV 23mA oil burner ignition transformer. A pulse of air, it seemed, was jetted from the hole, once per spark, and could be felt physically impacting against my skin at almost 2 feet away. It was in a very thin beam. It did not pass through metal or plastic, but would make them vibrate with the impulse. Thinking that this was just air overpressure, I moved the spark plate apparatus a bit farther away. The idea was, if it was overpressure from the spark shooting out an air vortex (like a smoke doughnut... YES! LET'S CALL THESE AIR BISCUITS!), making the air gap between the sphere and tube bigger in area than the hole at the end should reduce or eliminate the impulse. It had, in my tests, no effect in reducing it. One wonders if... 1. Something weird is going on. Preferred direction of spark-induced air impulse? Why? 2. Moving the plate let the impulse voltage get higher, thus counterbalancing any reduction in air impulse. But why didn't it blow smoke around? I tried, and it didn't seem to. Unless the charge around the sphere conspired somehow to hide everything. Also, I tried it with an identical voltage multiplier, producing +100kV on the sphere. There was still an impulse, but at much reduced intensity and cohesion, it seems. NEXT EXPERIMENT Or: the experimenter realized he f'ed up in the replication a little bit. Morton's drawing depicts the spark not only going through the tube and out the hole, it turns around, then strikes the plate. The only way to do this, and the drawing sort of shows it, is to have the lexan plate's hole be smaller than the strike plate hole. Conveniently, the metal plate had a knockout in it for conduit to enter, so I punched that out. The spark now exits, turns 90 degrees, and hits the plate. Now the air impulse is gone. Just gone. But something else happens. Metal plates vibrate on impact of some "stuff", and the force which causes it will make a plate placed 6" or so behind the first one vibrate as well. Interesting... BUT: it works off angle as well, as long as there's a spark. The strike plate is not needed. Further, the force is apparently shielded by a grounded metal cage. This looks conventional, but maybe I have missed something. Ideas? It does, sometimes, but not always, have a minor effect on plastic (a grocery bag made of PE). This effect works independently of polarity. Lastly, I did attempt the following: both multipliers were used. Grounds were common, but the sphere was -100kV, and the target was +100kV. The sparks could be extended out to almost 8", were painful to listen to, and caused a bottle of fluorescein dye to make some great mood lighting. The effect persisted, but was still shieldable. Notes: The identical twin multipliers, except for polarity, were named Happy Happy, and Joy Joy. Was listening to "Frankenstein" while doing the last experiment. --Kyle
