the coca cola sweetner It turns into insecticide when it touches stomach acid, good luck

cheese wine Awesome! Coke®️ kills bugs in our stomachs. I will only drink CocaCola®️ from now on. Thanks for the tip 👌🏻

I'm a physics teacher, and I think I'm doing it wrong. This is amazing! Especially the DIY Van De Graaf

thank you, great to hear from someone from Korea

이주영 Too bad teachers in Korea lecture most of the time and students have to sit and take notes all day :(

His classroom is in Pennsylvania. It helps being in a cold climate where you need to heat the room in January/February to do these experiments, because heating the air lowers the relative humidity. Dealing with humid weather in September is a lot more challenging to do static electric experiments.

Yes, check my previous video on the triboelectic series

send me an email at Bgoknee@comcast.net

HI Blake, originally I purchased some through a science supply catalog, (not sure which). When I needed more I bought some vinyl and acetate sheets through a craft store and cut them to the size I wanted. I will check around and see what I can find

To my understanding, static electricity just means "stationary" or not moving/changing. Objects can build up a charge of static electrons to the point of saturation. Naturally electrons repel one another and hate having to be so close to their neighbors. Objects can continue to "collect" static electrons or charge so long as the object gaining the charge has a lower potential than what is delivering the charge. In other words, objects are constantly exchanging free electrons all the time. The clouds for instance, get many of these "free electrons" and build a static/non-flowing charge. Once the potential or "desire" for these electrons to repel/spread apart from their electron neighbors grows exceeding large, they create an ion highway to the Earth which has ample space for the electrons to spread apart. This process of using the Earth as a means of spreading out is called . grounding. Lightning is just a ridiculous amount of static electrons that built up a charge in a cloud and created a pathway to the ground to spread out. The dangerous part of lighting isn't the voltage (potential difference or the "desire" to flow/move) it's the volume of electrons flowing during the duration of movement. All of those electrons discharge in an instant. Causing an intense amount of friction due to "collsions" with the air molecules through which they flow. As you know electrons are high energy particles, so they transfer some.of their energy to these gas molecules on the way down to the ground which causes them to ionized and release photons of light which is the visible "lightning bolt". Thunderstorms are an incredible display of the forces that govern nature!! In summation. Static charges don't flow until the potential to flow is great that the electrons elect to flow through things like air (which they really don't flow well through to begin with). As they flow, they create a current, and the higher this current, the more volume of electrons there are flowing. We measure this as amperage.

that's awesome, I never heard of that before.

Hello EnergyCrafts, my understanding of what's going on (and if I am wrong, I'm also happy to have it corrected) starts with the generator which is positively charged. When we look at metal conductors, the positive charges or protons are locked in place in the nuclei and unable to to move, to do so would actually change the mass of the material. It is the electrons that are moveable and alter the charge on a material. We agree that the Aluminum foil starts out neutral and is attracted through induction to the generator. In this case no electrons are exchanged so the overall charge on the foil remains the same . The induction causes a concentration of electrons to move closer towards the positive charge on the foil causing the area to be negative while the outer areas of the foil temporarily becomes positive. In the second part of your question is where you have me confused. While conventional currents are designated as flowing from positive to negative, in many instances the current is able to flow in both directions. In metal solid conductors, it is actually only the electrons that are able to move. For the Aluminum foil to make contact with the generator and have the same polarity, it must give up electron to the generator to make it positively charged. So what happens during a positive charge dissipation? How else would a surface lose it's positive potential? Since protons are unable to move positions, my thoughts are for the foil to become neutral, the only way it can do that is for it to gain electrons from a nearby source, in this case the air surrounding it.. It would do so at the sharp edges of the foil. Further I would guess that as quickly as it is happening, the positive charge is not actually fully dissipated on the foil, but enough to allow induction to attract the foil and process repeats itself. If I am wrong in any of this I would be interested in being corrected or pointed towards some articles that you could suggest.

H.i Bruce, I did not forget about your comment, only too busy to reply until now. When I stated earlier "I think this is a case of positive charge dissipation to the environment not electron acquisition from the environment" I was considering the case of 2 neutral metal spheres (or balloons) held by nonconducting strings from the ceiling. Charge the first sphere positive. Now bring the neutral sphere in contact to the positive sphere. The previously neutral sphere does not become negative charged but becomes positive charged. Now without discharging them allow them to lose contact and now both spheres have the same positive and repelling conditions. The first sphere surface charge density became less as the second sphere made contact resulting in a lower density of charge per unit surface area. That is what I meant by dissipation. Now as to your view that the electrons were acquired from the environment, I have a problem with understanding that since it is well know there are few "free electrons" near the earth's surface and I find it hard to believe there is enough to make the fast results that your experiment shows. Where in the environment do you think they came from? If earth potential (ground negative) then a direct connection should greatly improve your results versus air of poor free electrons and conductivity. But to acquire electrons by other ways (robbing them) would cause the environment to become less negative (more positive) resulting in an imbalance. Then I would have to ask where the environment in turn gets its replacement electrons to return charge balance? I have a reference that you might enjoy about electric fields and your interest in particles interplay. See "Nonuniform Electric Fields" in Scientific American, Dec. 1960, p.107-116. I found the subject extremely interesting back in 1986 when I started doing many experiments with HV and electrostatics.

Hi Matt, good point, in this instance it is a combination of both. My hand most likely is negatively charged since I am holding onto the generator, and I could test it by bringing it near the two hanging plastic charges strips of plastic. The charged can would even still be attracted to my hand even if it were neutral.

THAT WOULD BE BAD!! A TOTAL PROTONIC REVERSAL!!!!!

Ultimately, that is exactly what contact forces in general do. Every force other than gravity that is familiar to you at the macroscopic level, is ultimately a manifestation of a electromagnetism. Compression forces are outermost electron repulsions, and attraction forces are intermolecular chemical bonds that depend on opposite charges attracting. But I get what you are saying, whether it is possible to make a body's overall charge able to move a ladder. It is possible, just not practical to do with a person's strength generating the charged bodies. It works better on small mass objects, so you don't need to relocate nearly as many electrons to make interesting results happen.

@@carultch thanks its all I have to go by at the moment. I've been trying to relate things in physics to how things in the paranormal work. Other than the obvious wind, vibration etc I've witnessed and captured ladders moving, items coming away from tables and go through the air etc etc and on each occasion I have gotten high reading of EMF so all I can say is there is a charge there but how is beyond me

wool was rubbed on the vinyl the other Orlon, or you can use paper towel and rub it on the acetate

I have one and have it on my to do list for a video

Hello Ethan, I would think your math is correct on the voltage on the generator, in a previous video I hold my near the dome and it is a pretty good jolt. In this case, the can is much smaller than the dome so I would guess it must be losing quite a bit of the charge to the atmosphere by the time it gets to my hand I'm only getting about 1/2 inch arcs which is what about 15,000 volts or so.

electrical charges' behavior is similar to poles on a magnet either attract opposite charges or repel the same type of charges

Yes, grounding a charge can go in either direction, it is able to soak up extra electrons or give them up to a positive charge.

yes, the original lightening detector