RE: Terry's Test - Two Manifestations of Charge

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Terry Fritz <teslalist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi Dave,

At 09:34 PM 7/5/2005, you wrote:
> ............
>
> > >Also, could you try both the tube and the rod with their
> > >opposite ends grounded?
> >
> > I think grounding the copper rod is a trivial case ;-))
>
> Nothing is trivial.  Sometimes things aren't what we expect.  I
> remember a teacher wouldn't perform an experiment from a science
> book in the 9th grade.  It involved holding a ping pong ball in
> an inverted funnel and blowing air down into the funnel and then
> releasing the ball.  We had to predict what would happen.  I
> predicted the ball would stay inside the funnel until the air
> stopped.  The teacher said I was wrong and closed the book.  I
> protested that the scientific method involved doing experiments,
> not guessing.  He got snotty with me and tried to embarrass me in
> the class and told me to try it.  I could tell he already had a
> half dozen one liners ready to go when the ball blew out the
> bottom.  But I did the experiment and my intuition was right.
> The air flowed around the ball and the resulting pressure kept
> the ball floating as long as the air was moving through the
> funnel neck.  He then apologized and confessed that he ignored
> this experiment for the past three years because he thought it
> was stupid.  Nothing is trivial.


It just arcs to the near ground rod now....

http://hot-streamer.com/temp/DaveTest-30.jpg


> > All that we have proven, visually speaking, is that one spark
> has more
> > current than the other.
>
> I must have missed something.  Did someone take a measurement of
> the currents?  As I understand it, the only thing that has been
> proven so far is that there are two different appearances.  One
> of them is thin and purple, the other is thick and white.  Check
> out the pictures to see what I'm talking about.  We also know
> that the vacuum tube will produce this result and that a mere
> piece of metal between the topload and ground will not.


I simply place little light bulbs in the current paths...  Mine were 100mA 
but you probably want 50mA types from Radio Shack.

http://hot-streamer.com/temp/DaveTest-31.jpg

The light bulbs will be a rough current indicator.  John Corture describes 
this test in his books.  One can make a fiber optic link to a bulb and 
calibrate it for a nice RMS HV current sensor, but that is more than I 
wanted to fiddle with...  This is what I found:

http://hot-streamer.com/temp/DaveTest-32.jpg

The light bulb from the toroid to the copper pipe was dimmer than the light 
bulb between the pipe and ground.  The spark from the toroid to the pipe 
was also dimmer that the spark between the pipe and the ground wire.

Thus, it appears that the dim spark has less current than the bright spark.


Cheers,

        Terry