For this experiment of today I have my 12,000 volt neon sign converter back, just like this thing.
This is the Jacobs ladder that I have built for the crazy science Minion project
and it allows an arc of electricity to rise again and again.
Now, if you would go back in time and would think about the fact that the genius in the electric field is Nikola Tesla
had no access to fixed capacitors and relays like we do today.
Instead, he had glass, aluminum foil and salt water to build capacitor banks for his experiments.
For this experiment today, I thought it would be nice to build a simple salt water capacitor bank
and for that we only need a glass bottle like these cola bottles, which I picked up at the supermarket and some aluminum foil.
We will have to start by removing the caps and removing the liquid and replacing it with water.
Salt water, to be precise.
Then we use a small amount of aluminum foil or some aluminum tape, which I have from the hardware store, to bind it around and our capacitor will be complete.
So let’s collect these materials and go to work.
These bottles are not the best, because they have an abnormal shape. It would be better to have something with a straight wall, but what does it matter.
This is what we have done. The bottles actually had no labels so we could not remove them either.
So we just packed a simple piece of aluminum foil, wrapped it around the bottle and flattened it so that it has the shape of the glass.
Now it is so that the smoother the film is, the better this will work, but I think that it will do very well.
I took another piece of aluminum foil and I folded it to these straws to make these homemade aluminum wires.
The go right in the middle of the bottles.
It looks like a tasty bite-sized metal soft drink.
So all we have to do is to put the liquid in it. For this we use water with a little salt.
To make the salt-water mixture I have filled this cup with water and I have picked up this real sea salt.
We could use the sea salt from a previous experiment if we want to.
What we are going to do is pack a bit of this and we put it in the water, we mix it for a moment until it is dissolved in the water.
Then we pour it into the bottles until the liquid reaches about the height of the foil.
That should be enough.
Now I have packed all the bottles for fun and made them into capacitors and they all look the same.
Except for this, the foil is a bit lower, but that does not matter.
This is a basic capacitor, because the salt water on the inside works as the capacitive plate,
the glass is the dielectric and the outside, the aluminum foil, the electrical tension builds up.
Capacitors have so many applications in electronics.
I do not go into the theories why capacitors are so important.
Instead, I am going to show you the difference between these devices when we attach them to the elevator ladder.
So, let’s talk about the elevator ladders.
When we take the two high-voltage electrodes and we attach them to the terminal, the electricity will curve on the path of least resistance,
what is below, where the two points are nearest.
When the air warms up around the arc, it naturally wants to go up.
And while it does, the electricity will keep going through it, because that is the path of least resistance.
Until it reaches high enough so that it extends so far that it snaps. At that moment he comes back down again and he goes round this circle.
For fun now, let’s connect this bottle to the system in parallel,
and let’s see what difference it makes for the bow.
So here is the quick setup that I have for our parallel circuit,
We still have our high-voltage electrode, which passes through this terminal.
But now you can see how a squeezer connects the thread with the stick that enters the bottle.
On the other hand, we have a second squeezer that is not attached to anything, the high-voltage wire that is not attached to anything
and we have the outside of the bottle wrapped in aluminum.
The idea is that we will see the same reaction when we connect them.
But when we make contact with the outside of the bottle, that reaction will change a little.
We have our high voltage power and we connect them.
And we have the same reaction as before, great!
We make contact with the outside of the bottle …
We get a fat halo.
That looked nice, but nothing happens to the elevator, until we make contact with the other peg.
Look!
That’s a bit different, is not it?
We go from a beautiful arch that goes up to a very sharp arc that stays below.
That smell that you smell is ozone. We are just making ozone!
That is actually toxic, but not in small concentrations. So it goes well!
The other thing you might notice is that it is terribly loud.
It is so loud, namely, that it would be a good idea to wear earplugs, because my ears are squealing.
We are just shooting small lightning on our worktable, and that does not just happen on our elevator ladder,
but you can also see it when I come close to the bottle itself.
We can shoot lightning bolts between the electrodes and the aluminum foil on the outside.
It is great to think about how a little salt water, a bit of aluminum foil and a Coke bottle can make such a big change.
But what if we take it a step further and we fix all the bottles to it.
We will do that now!
* bad laugh *
We are done, we have packed our six bottles.
We have secured them in parallel so that all six bottles make contact both on the inside and on the outside.
Okay, I made my system parallel to it, let me show you how.
I have the two pegs with the high voltage terminals that go into them.
If I turn it on, the Jacobs ladder would do its normal job
A pinch goes to the top, which is already placed, the second wait until it can touch the side while the system is busy.
We can touch it in real time, with a hand on the back, and we can see what difference it is going to make.
Here we go!
You can see that the elevator is working as it normally does, now if I make this connection with the capacitor bank,
he will give the capacitor energy and we will see what difference it will make.
Here we go!
That is very loud!
And you can see that I can actually touch each bottle with the same effect.
It does not matter how high that arc is: when I touch the bottle, it goes straight down.
That is because there is so much energy that the air can no longer raise it.
It goes right through the path of least resistance.
The reason why I have a hand behind my back is because it can stop my heart by the amount of power I accidentally touch.
We are now working on a higher voltage and a higher amperage and that is a dangerous duo.
If I keep it at the constant distance, you can see that it takes a second to build up the tension,
but then it starts flashing when the voltage is high enough to bridge the distance.
That is very similar to how the lightning works: you have the clouds and the ground which work like the capacitive plates,
you have the air in the middle, which is dielectric, and when the tension is enough
you have a lightning flash that connects the two and smoothes the voltages.
Very dangerous to be busy with this, so it is pretty awesome.
Now my whole workshop smells like ozone.
That is also the smell that you smell after a thunderstorm due to the lightning strikes.
That’s it, people.
A very fat experiment that you can do with some glass bottles and aluminum foil to make a simple electrical capacitor.
Not very practical at the moment, but it is what Tesla used.
Nice that you participated in this crazy science experiment. I’ll see you in the next video!
This is the elevator that I built for mining
This is the elevator that I built for my
This is the Jacobs ladder that I made for my crazy science Minion project, and it allows a bow to go up again and again.
Hello people, I drop in with the door to invite you to my Instagram page.
I have a very active page where I post pictures and stories from behind the scenes every day and every day is an adventure.
It only takes five seconds of your time to click the link in the description to follow me as ‘King of Random’ on Instagram.
See you there!
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