Does rain not aid in the lightning of a thunderstorm? Mhos?

Lord Kelvins Thunderstorm sound like a 7th or 8th level D&D spell!

it almost sounds like a comics superhero ability

It's more catchy than "William Thomson's Water-dropper with electric effect" for sure.

Better than Kevin's Thunderstorm! xD

I, had the exact same

same here

True

Comments be like: unoriginal People: like

same also

Damn son

good one: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bsuInZxo2NrGd2w.html

This is how Reganomics works

Shame on you.

Better than calling it a tinkle charger. I know I would be P'd off if my invention was called that without me leaking some horribly punny dad joke into it.

catniss was from the coal mining district so the energy economy is part of the background for the book. the hunger games promo people are doing stunts with alternative energy because clean coal is a myth. pretty sure that's the logic. to quote c&c music factory, it's about "things that make you go 'hmmm'".

Marketing ;)

@@edstirling is jon tickle involved?

corny brain high fructose syrup

He tells you at the beginning lmao it's called listening

wow

it is the wow signal!!!

wow

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/qNxkgM2Sq8Xbn6s.html

so video much wow

i thougt so too. because the only energies i can see is potential, kinetic and chemical. and nothing is reacting and i potential is already converted to kinetic so its the last thing standing^^

I wonder if the water had a thicker viscosity that it would make the electromagnet work harder to pull and push the water,and if that would cause a higher kenetic energy to create a higher voltage? That could be an entirely different experiment in itself. This is pretty cool stuff!

@@rickycarter6371 I could imagine that the ion exchange speed is depending on the viscosity of the fluid. At some level the Ions won't exchange fast enough to charge the coils.

@@m0ntezott In that case, would a lower viscosity fluid increase the ion exchange speed? Additionally, I would guess that scaling up this set up with more coils would produce a higher voltage but is there a theoretical way to increase the amperage?

@@onlineanonymity6153 I have no clue. I could imagine that the size of the coils is limited, because at some point the charge wouldn't be able to creat a field that is strong enough to have any effect. But maybe I'm wrong and you could just build a giant version of this.

Humour wasted on this smartarse clickbaiter

you can simply get a larger water supply and you don't need full charge to make a phone call.

Unless you had a satellite phone it wouldn't do you any good. If there was a cell tower close enough, you could just swim the few km to it or build a raft. You'd be able to see it anyway. Just sayin...

Don't listen to these guys :D You got this!

Many city people dream they owed their own little island paradise.. Embrace being stranded and live the dream....

Don’t pee on the transformer

@@mikecorleone6797 Unless you're an electrician, because it doesn't bite of its own

Joona Korhonen you’ve never seen tommy boy?

Jacqueline Wubbena dats fked up man，my mind was blown by this experiment .What were the judges thinking ，u created electricity using simply water droplets through coils and metal mesh.ur sch sucks bruh

The big yellow one is the sun!

Was the experiment setup still in the barn when presented? I'm assuming the contents of the barn may have an impact. HOWEVER producing an electric charge from water droplets falling through the air, should, be much more interesting then the different absorption rates of additives/solvents mixed in different colored dyes by some pedestrian sheets of paper.

No way that beat this experiment!

TheSunExpress ikr that s pure bs

Relax.

That's probably 2021 Derek using "click bait" titles as was covered in his video.

Changing the name of a video can have drastic effects on how the algo spreads it (else how did either of us come across it recently?). I loathe the system, but I understand (most) of what is intended by the way it is set up. I cannot fault whomever at the channel made the title change for being effective at using the algo.

mee too :)

Me toooo 😌

Me too🤣

Me too! And what a shocking video...

@@Jet-Pack tell me a single video of EB that is not shocking 😉

Yhe streams being polarised is what makes the magnet-like effect.

***** Potential energy into kinetic is where I thought it was coming from too. A good point about magnets going in and out of tubes is that the tubes are lined with coils of wire, similar to the coils of metal in this experiment.

Rather about electric potential than gravitational.

oR3Io Isn't electric potential the end result that is derived from the gravitational potential energy?

But the water isn't slowing down. The coils would have no effect on distilled water, so the energy is therefore being generated from the ions in the water. It is the conversion of the ions' kinetic energy into electrical energy.

It isn't just the air. Every atom is an electromagnet. Some are just better at it than others.

This is why it's important to regularly replace the water or coolant in your cars radiator. After being cycled through the engine and cooling system hundreds of thousands of times the static charge becomes stronger and stronger increasing the electrolysis process essentially turning the antifreeze into battery acid which eats away at the inside of hoses, water pump impellers, gaskets, and temp. sensors.

Except it appears that YT discontinued video responses already in 2013. Hmmm.

@@Graham_Wideman Except we are responding in comments in 2021 almost 2022 soon lol

@@agentstona New here, heh? That's video responses. Not comment responses.

@@DimaZheludko hehe he check the join date . here since 2007 .

@@agentstona so, what was your point then?

What if this apparatus is in an environment with no gravitational acceleration but has an initial velocity, and a non-adhesive tube that bring water back to the "top"?

This is the only answer that hasn't made me facepalm going through the comments..

Derek Leung This coverts a bit of the kinectic energy of the droplets into electrical energy. Thus the apparatus would lose its kinetic energy(by passing each droplet) over time and stop.

Derek Leung I've seen you before... 2spooky4me

***** f: Z+ -> String f(n)=nspookyn^2me

Tim, from Grand Illusions would appreciate this video

Try installing a diode to eliminate charge toggling and a capacitor for larger sparks.

see my post...

yup

is this anything like when you put a load on a car's alternator, it labours the engine - in principal and in relation to the drops being slowed down.... are they slowing down because they gave up or gained a charge?

Mostly correct, kinetic energy is only assisting the water to the metal, as the water passes the metal, it leaves electrons on one coil and protons on another coil until the charge in each coil builds up to arc.

right what i was thinking the guy must have got idea from storm humans learn from nature

Except that the current theory for thunderstorms is ice crystals

Positive feedback. Yes. Mass of falling water -- doesn't play the slightest part. The CHARGE WITHIN the falling water is what makes it work. The amont of mass literally has nothing to do with it. Take another substance that's heavier and with a lower disassociation constant, and it will take substantially more mass to produce the same amount of charge at the electrodes.

Also, as for this being how thunderstorms happen. No.... the "static electricity caused by rising air currents" model of thunderstorms was always shaky at best; It has now been PROVEN that lightning is a result of charge in the UPPER atmosphere (like tens of miles above the cloud tops) caused by cosmic rays.

I know this is a 4 year old video and you're not likely to even see this comment of mine, but if by some slim chance you do, would you mind elaborating further? I don't understand how the stream becomes charged, which is really bugging me and I can't seem to find a fulfilling answer online. When you say that "electrons have to flow through the common water pathway" what pathway are you referring to and how does that allow the stream to become charged?

@@shadiester I think it is kind of like a feedback loop. He started off with the assumption that one stream had slightly negative and other has slightly positive charged water particles. These induce their charges to the mesh. Since one mesh is connected to the other stream's coil, it forces the the water in the other stream to take opposite charge. Because of this feedback system, the coils accumulate more and more charge. These coils are in turn connected to the metallic balls. When their is enough potential difference, there is a charge discharge and the coils become neutral. This repeats. This is my understanding.

@@nageenyerramsetty4954 I understand most of it but this one part is what I don't get: "Since one mesh is connected to the other stream's coil, it forces the the water in the other stream to take opposite charge." Why does it force the water in the other stream to take the opposite charge?

@@shadiester Let us say mesh 1 is negatively charged which makes coil2 also negatively charged. Because the coil 2 is negatively charged it attracts positively charged water particles and also repels the negatively charged water particles. So the negaticely charged water particles are forced to move upstream into the water tank. This happens against the gravity and that is what is mentioned in the original comment. Also what is not shown in ths video is that the two water tanks are connected through a metallic wire. So the negatively charged particles which were repelled by coil 2 flow back up and come through water stream 1 thus making the mesh 1 more negatively charged

@@nageenyerramsetty4954 Ah okay, that makes a lot more sense now! I didn't realise that the charges were actually moving into the water tank. Thank you for clearing that up!

Your explanation makes sense. Thank you!. I couldn't understand Derek's explanation that negative charge in the left shower attracts the positive charge in the other shower. It should neutralize and not result charge buildup.

Friction, static...?

The gravity is driving the separation of the charges. If it weren't for the gravity pulling the water down into two separate streams, any charge variations would just attract each other and almost instantly cancel out again. You'd constantly have tiny electrical fluctuations popping up and then going away. However, the gravity pulls the water down and overcomes the attraction of those charges and rips them apart from each other to drive the whole system. Look at how the upper coils attract the water streams due to the opposite charges. Those coils don't contribute much to the overall energy since they are pulling perpendicular to the water flow. However, the bottom screens have the same charge as the water and are directly in line with the direction of flow and will be repelling the falling water. If you were to carefully measure the speed of the falling water, you would find that the bottom screens reduce the falling speed of the water by approximately the same amount as the energy being built up before each spark.

***** I do know that electricity can be created by magnetic forces only when the magnetic force changes. That happens when (-) charged water falls nearer and then away from a (+) charged coil. There is a change between the magnetic interaction. How this happens though is beyond me.

Dan Heidel You clearly know more about this them I do. :) Thanks for the explanation.

EE Ehrenberg I have actually run across Kelvin's waterfall before. However, understanding it has less to do with raw knowledge and more to do with how you approach the problem. Derek loooves complicated looking problems. There's usually a lot of extra stuff that looks like it might possibly drive things but is actually just part of the process. A lot of real engineering problems tend to act like this as well. The key is to step back and not get bogged down with the details of all those coils of wire, etc. Instead, look at the overall process and try to figure out where the energy comes from. It can't be the metal coils or screens - there's no wires or radio waves putting energy into them. Therefore they *can't* be the source of the energy driving the system. instead, we do have a clear driving force, the gravity pulling the water downward. Now that we know that it's gravity driving the system, we can work through it step by step to figure out how that gravitational energy can possibly be converted into the electrical energy that's generating the sparks. The secret is that most physical systems are actually fairly simple if you step back and analyze them piecemeal like that. And since there always has to be some sort of energy input, that is a logical place to start.

Drop the math!

Hendrik Werner drop drop drop the math *dubstep sounds*

Agreed, the energy is coming from the pump in the buckets.

distilled water still contains ions because it dissociates into H+ and OH- so even pure water would work in this apparatus.

Veritasium So the water molecules are not actually H+ on the one side and OH- on the other side, as I were told in school and made to imagine a "triangular" shape of the molecule?

Ions, remember?

MrB10N1CLE Yeah, but distilled water isn't electrically conductive, or at least it has a way higher resistance than normal water, so there should be less to none ions in it?

Seegal Galguntijak When people say pure water is not conductive, it is because there are no ionic pollutants. Stuff like table salt (NaCl) would dissolve and conduct electricity. As such, pure water wouldn't function as a wire in that sense. In this case, it is less electricity than it is electrostatics, as far as I can observe, so it functions based on the fact that water is bipolar so it can separate charges.

Nice....

I apologise if I'm wrong. But the potential energy isn't being used up, so it can't be getting it from there. And this set up could be used in conjunction with a waterfall or something so that the water wouldn't need to be pumped back.

it is being used up. otherwise water-turbines would be producing "free" energy.

FractalMachine Even in this case? Can potential energy be used up without contact?

well it doesn't need physical contact. interacting is enough. and in this case the water does interact with the metal coils.

The potential energy "released" by the falling droplet would normally be converted into movement, sound, and heat. This machine simply converts some of that into electricity as well. The water should actually fall slower, just like a magnet slides down a copper tube slowly as eddy currents are generated.

+

gravity

no. not induction. I think it's more like a vandagraph generator where charges are scraped off or released into somthing else. idk what that's called but not induction.

@@Wtfinc i think thats called static induction, may be wrong tho

Could be done using natural water flows. Still, better ways of converting the energy exist.

@@JBinero waterfall

but if you ever happen to find yourself in a place with no electricity, and happen to have all the materials to build this, you can use a bucket to transfer the water back up to the top tank by hand, converting chemical energy (from eating food) to mechanical (moving the water yourself) to electical.

Well said

@@SurgStriker you could create a dynamo, a lot more power efficient

The effects demonstrated in this experiment are not directly related to potential/kinetic energy. Those aspects cannot be removed, but this experiment is more about magnets passing through conductive coils. Atoms in and of themselves are electromagnets. Chemistry calls it chemical or molecular bonding but at the root it has all of the same properties of electromagnetism. How you use particular atoms/molecules to affect other atoms/molecules is where the focus (rightly) lays within that field, but the root is still electromagnetism.

Sorry but this comment is nonsense

yeah that was kind of the point. I prefer being real as well.

Veritasium Derek, the answer to your spinning disk trick is STABILITY. Friction is only a requirement. Contact me for the explanation. James.

The only change in the water at the beginning of the experiment and at the end is it's position. this means it is powered by the fall of the water. What i'm saying is that it needs to bring the water back up, so no energy generated. Also, you could also run a wheel under your faucet to generate energy which is much more effective.

Correct me if I'm wrong, But I think this is how Waterfall generators work...

don't moving charges produce magnetic fields?

bassisku No, gravitational potential energy is not the source, the ions are....

if we did this to all water before we used it in traditional hydroelectric power stations we would make the whole system more efficient though. right?

Reggie land For the added cost, being able to charge an extra phone every six and a half years wouldn't be worth it.

people keep on saying it comes from the gravity, which was my initial thought. But then I realized the only reason the water really needed to flowing was so that it could get more charges from new water. And so I thought a similar thing. I am pretty sure you are right.

The water starts out electrically neutral. There is no significant electrostatic potential in the water until there's charge separation, which is caused by the charge building up on the coils. That, in turn, can't happen without a source of energy, as like charges will tend to repel. The only available sources of energy here are gravitational potential energy and thermal energy. Given that the droplets are moving relatively fast when they hit the mesh, their overall kinetic energy, rather than internal kinetic energy (a.k.a. heat) should matter more. But, the motion comes from the conversion of gravitational potential energy as the drops fall. Thus, the only thing that could reasonably be the energy source here is gravity.

James Lewis a dick energy

James Lewis just because a force is pulling on it doesnt nessesairly mean it give it energy

MessiahNerves right, but the water starts with gravitational potential energy, and this is obviously converted into kinetic energy... if the electricity comes from somewhere, this would be the obvious potential source... but if you have another suggestion, please feel free to suggest it.

James Lewis the same molucules attrack while the ions pull the h30+ ions and the oh- to them aswell im guess this charge diffrence may cause but im not sure if i really wanted to know im sure a google search would give me the awnser but thats to fun.

MessiahNerves RIght, so obviously the positive coil attracts negative ions in the water, and visa-versa... and this creates a positive feedback loop because of the cross connection of the screen and the coils... but since this "sorting" process is essentially decreasing entropy, which can't happen unless there is an external source of energy, the question posed was... where does the energy /come/ from, and as I said, since I this is an electrostatic induction generator, the energy appears to me to come from the gravitational potential energy of the water... by slowing the water droplets a tiny amount.

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - William Butler Yeats

Veritasium Stop being smarter than me dammit

Veritasium This kills the students.

Veritasium Is it the conversion of the kinetic energy of the ions to electrical energy in the coil? Assuming that you would generate no voltage if you used distilled water.

serggie3 This method actually orients the charged particles in the metal pipe by using the charged particles of the water. Difference in the amount of negatively charged particles through the pipe causes currency enough to make the spark.*flies away*

Lol, that' was not very nice! hahah

Take notice that he never outright tells people "you're wrong" He gives them a question, asks what led them to the answer they gave and then tells/shows them WHY it's wrong.

Yes, he is very tactful in his delivery and certainly always smiling - however doesn't change the fact that people tend to get upset when proven wrong, specially when they've learned something and feel very confident in what they know even if its incorrect.

Enjoying - his theses is supporting what I just posted about learning not necessarily making people smarter but more confident in what they learned, correct or incorrect

Justin Belford While we are on toic, i was hoping he would ackknowledge Thunderfood debunking his vid about the bipolar nature of water not beeing the main cause for the affection of a flowing stream towards a charged object, cause the topics are related... but this vid seems to have had a long preptime and he might have not knowen it yet. Anyhow, the answer is electromagnetism, more precise induction. The randomly charged droplets induce a current inside the apperatus

Sadly the 3,6,9 quote is not a real Tesla quote.

​@@CharlieSolisAwe! But I really like those numbers!

William Thomson renamed himself "Lord Kelvin" so being a little cheeky with the name is warranted.

Patrick sorry 😐 🤷🏼‍♂️

I too, am sorry for this.

hahaha thunderfoot > veritasium

he wasn't wrong, watch thunderfoot's video again and really understand it.

Then answer it

Can’t believe more people haven’t gotten the importance of this post!

@@daryljohnson6333 maybe its because there isnt giant coils sitting around too. this isnt how lightning is produced

Calin Agotici No, it is the gravitational energy that is driving the whole thing. Here's the steps of what happens: 1) Random charge variations cause one loop set to gain a net charge. 2) The induced dipole causes a greater charge separation to start forming. However, without any external driving force, those charges would simple recombine due to electrostatic attraction. That's why putting the structure into stationary water wouldn't work. you'd constantly get tiny charge separations but they would almost instantly self correct and vanish. 3) Gravity pulls the water into two separate streams, preventing the separated charges from simply recombining. This takes energy out of the gravitational fall of the water. This is caused by the repulsion between each charged water stream and the bottom screen of the same charge. You see the same effect on the top coils. They visibly deflect the water in an attractive way but since the attraction is at a right angle to the direction of water flow, it has a minimal energy contribution to the whole system. You can't see the screen/water repulsion as easily but if you were to measure the speed of the falling water, you would find that it is decreased as it passes through the screens. You can never get energy for nothing. The electrostatic interactions cannot drive the system since there is no way for net energy input to occur. The only energy input is from gravity pulling the water down. (or more indirectly, the pump that is circulating the water back up to the top) When analyzing energy systems, you always have to step back away from the details and ask yourself, "Where is the energy driving the system coming from?" Once you figure that out, then you can work your way through the problem.

2 videos + the next one

Dan Heidel Electrostatics are symmetrical, so any decrease in kinetic energy on the way toward the mesh due to repulsion would be exactly matched by an increase in kinetic energy after passing through the mesh and heading away.

BookofAeons You are correct. I was thinking that the relative deceleration and acceleration of the water on the top and bottom of the mesh would impart differing amounts of work on the falling water but that is not the case. The work must be performed when the water initially falls out of the upper reservoir. The separated charges have electrostatic attraction to each other and overcoming that attraction must be where the actual work is being done.

This is cool

Could You could say the magnetic lines of flux that surround the water drops?

+Thomas P yes and then pprobably not

I am wondering the same thing. and would the build up of energy increase if the gap was widen where it sparks? at would the energy increase along with the size of the coils and amount of water flowing through them?

***** more water would be more charge yes, bigger coils i dont think so. and yes if the gap was larger it would make a bigger charge built up, but he says in the video at some point it would find another place to go.

+Thomas P Just saying Hi :) and yea, random I would think

hey P Thomas... small world huh?

Roughly 271,240 years, a 2000 mAH phone battery holds around 29 kilojoules of energy, divide that by 6.5 to get 4.461 KJ per year divide 1210000 by 4.461 to get answer. Your better off time traveling the normal way.

@@RockGeek00 Thank you Sir!

Forever. Watts is a unit of power. Power is energy discharged per unit of time. In this case, 1.21 GigaJoules/second. Your question is the equivalent of asking someone to calculate how long the turtle will take to go 200 mph. The turtle doesn't produce that kind of displacement/second, regardless of how much time you give it. and likewise, the device, at the scale shown, will not produce that much energy/second REGARDLESS of how much time you give it. The turtle maxes out at about 1/4 mile/hour and this devices maxes out at about 1 femtojoule/second = 1 femtowatt. This thing produces about 1 femto-watt (about 10^-12 watt) You literally get more kinetic energy from the falling water than you do from the electricity produced.

@@RockGeek00 Wrong. You're calculating the accumulation of energy, not the RATE of energy production, which is what *any* WATTAGE rating requires.

@@Squidbillies1000 He's wrong. See my comments. I'm an electrical engineer. Believe me, I know this stuff inside and out. I also got 399 out of 400 points possible in the most difficult Electromagnetics course in the School of Physics at Purdue University.

Great explanation describing its instability. but where does the energy come from. Short answer is gravity. Consider like and opposite charges. They respectively repel and attract. A closer look at the whole process reveals that for a short distance water is pulled towards or accelerated by the charge separator loop. After it passes the charge separator loop, water is slowed down because of its attraction to the separator loop, and slowed down again with the collector plate because like charges repel. It takes energy to slow falling water, and it has to go somewhere. It ended up stored as an electrostatic charge potential.

Most likely can charge a phone faster with a water wheel hooked up to a small generator, then just let the falling water spin the generator.

The stronger the field present, the more energy it is able to extract from the falling water droplets to feed that field. So voltage rises exponentially until the static forces interfere with the trajectory of the water droplets, or the system is discharged.

I'm an engineer (master of science EE no less) and my first thought in response to his question was that the energy was based in entropy. If the water molecules were orderly (low energy, cold) then they wouldn't be out of alignment and wouldn't build up charge through this positive feedback mechanism.

I believe the energy comes from Gravitational potential energy of the falling water.

Chances are that by increasing the spark-gap you're never going to reach enough charge to bridge the gap.

I built a similar one of these. There were single drops and they didn't contact any of the rings. It builds up and yields charge like a van de Graaf generator. I had two coffee cans cross-connected to two small rings, all insulated. there was no friction, the droplets slow down as they go into the rings, give up charge due to faraday shield effect and thus turn kinetic energy into charge. Like a thunderstorm.

But it works with naturally falling water. So like he talks about in another episode about salt lamps supposedly producing ions... it's picking up free ions from the air would be my guess.

I believe this to be correct. A good test would be to try this with a liquid with "neutral" or I suppose more correctly "uniformly charged" molecules. (oil?)

Interesting theory however, what if instead of water drops we replace them with ice crystals? Friction of ice crystals can still strip electrons from each other ie: lighting in snow storms. It would stand to reason that the source of energy is completely kinetic derived from gravity. I commend you on your brain storming.

bain5872 Hmm, okay so maybe I was too hasty to ignore the effects of gravity. Okay, I think the point that both of us would i agree on is that the interactions (collisions) between water molecules cause self ionisation, so molecules do have kinetic energy. So now, I think in this scenario (when water is in a liquid state) both the gravitational potential energy and the thermal energy of the room give liquid water molecules the kinetic energy to self ionise. I think in your scenario (where water is in the form of ice) less electrical energy would be generated because the water molecules within the ice crystals cannot interact with each other and ionise. So yes, in your scenario energy is completely derrived from gravity, but with liquid water i feel that you can't ignore that thermal energy gives water molecules kinetic energy thus keeping the water in a liquid state,

I can agree with the concept however, to what degree thermal energy drives this reaction would be very small I think. I'm almost certain that if one was to use boiling water, one would never be able to extract even a fraction of the energy, from this reaction, than it would have taken to bring the water to it's boiling point before gravity forced ionization. In other words, doing this experiment with boiling water should show no noticeable increase in energy output from when using room temp water. I guess this would be the only way I could think of to prove your theory. I would be most curious as to the out come.

3:10

MrMinecrafter49 I'm guessing, not very much because once the charge builds up enough, it will begin to draw the water into contact with the upper coil and that would ground it.

I was just about to ask that

@@jsbrads1 except if you build a mechanism which will predict when its about to do that.. also if you put this in a huge scale on a HUUUGE waterfall .. will it work efficiently?

At that point it's only limited by corona discharge, i.e. the electrons running away from the balls. They're shaped as round as possible to reduce this effect actually.

Well actually it's coming from coal, oil, gas or whatever.

Well they could have bucketed the water into the tank by hand...

how about setting it up in rain or sth

Running the water through a turbine is always going to be orders of magnitude more efficient for power generation.

I don't know maybe making it the size of the Pyramid of Giza..... That's right somebody already did that only it was a different more understood Superior model plan, but it has the same concept and don't let me get into the electromagnetic pulse it creates as well