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Re: Ball Lightning in a different lab

Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005, Tesla list wrote:

> Yes, I've tried the carbon-veil-in-the-microwave oven demo, as you
> describe it. I did it with just a burning match sitting on an upturned
> tumbler and I got the same type of spherical plasmoid that you de-
> scribed. In my case it would usually float upward and as it reached
> the top, it would float around and burn the surface of the plastic
> "ceiling" of the interior of the oven until I turned off the microwave.

The JL Naudin-science weirdness website has an interesting variation: let
the plasma become trapped in an inverted glass container. It sits there
and sloshes back and forth like an upside-down fluid. If you let NaCl
crystals fall through it, it blazes brightly yellow, see http://amasci.com/weird/microexp.html#plasm
It's quite hot, and will even shatter pyrex if allowed to continue for
more than a fraction of a minute.

Here in Seattle, Matt Crowley discovered "carbon veil," a black carbon
fiber mat from fiberglass suppliers.  Compared to other methods like
graphite pencil leads and charred toothpicks, it's almost guaranteed to
work, see

  Bigger, Better Balls, M. Crowley 2004
  http://amasci.com/tesla/bigball2.html


I've seen microwave plasma become perfectly hemispherical.  This happens
with my oven with glazed ceramic-like interior where there was a small
burn spot on the inner ceiling which penetrates to the bare metal.  If a
blob of plasma should touch that spot, it becomes anchored in place and
turns bluish, brighter, and hemispherical.  I suppose it's then more akin
to the plasma attached to a metal electrode.


> I would agree. That's the closest thing to what's described as BL as
> anything that I know of.

The "Maser theory" of ball lightning proposes that somehow a thunderstorm
can generate an intense RF field.  But if this were the case, then BL
could not travel into a metal enclosure, and also many other effects of
intense RF would accompany it.




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William J. Beaty                            SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb at amasci com                         http://amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits   amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair
Seattle, WA  206-789-0775    unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci