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[OT] But Kind of a Funny Incident

So, I have this really important rocket Powerpoint presentation to give to 5 groups of 5th. graders on Thursday. Everything is on my Dell Inspiron notebook... um, "moderately" backed up...

Last night, noting that the relative humidity was about 40%, me, and Number One son start screwing around with the VanDegraaff generator that me, and Number One daughter built for her science fair. The thing was utterly amazing! Just walking into our dining room, a full

10 feet from the operating machine, you'd start to see corona flying from your fingertips. The whole upper condenser was glowing purple. Anyway, after pulling some *really* huge arcs (some at least 10"), we shut the thing down, and he goes to bed.

I then *attempt* to boot my Dell, which had been sitting on a hot water radiator _off_, and _unplugged_, on the far side of the room (probably 12 feet).

Punch the power button, get the Dell logo screen, then black screen with the deadly "BIOS Checksum Error"!

GAAAAAAAA! I about crapped my pants!

About an hour later, after finding the BIOS flash file on Dell's site, I reflashed the BIOS, and to my amazement, lost nothing. Talk about scary!

Near as I can tell, the damn VanDegraaff was creating such a huge electrical field that a portion of it may've run through the computer to ground, thereby flashing the BIOS to null.

My God! What have I created?! A bundt cake pan, a dog food dish, some PVC pipe, a couple of sewing thread spools, cabinet liner for a belt, and a motor, and it did this?!!!

There oughta be a law...

Maybe the Feds should start issuing HVUP's (High Voltage Users Permit)?

Maybe the government should start regulating people like me?

Tod "Shocking!" Hilty

Reply to
hiltyt
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Where did you get the plans for that?

Reply to
Starlord

Yeah, how about posting them!

Ted Novak TRA#5512

Starlord wrote:

Reply to
nedtovak

Reply to
Alex Mericas

My daughter got much of her information here:

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A *really* good page!

Our design was essentially based on this one:

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Truely an awsome, and fun little machine to mess around with!

tah

Reply to
hiltyt

Maybe you should tell me how you built this monster! Sounds like a gas!

Scott McCrate NAR 71680

Reply to
Scott McCrate

Wow, right after my previous post I did a google and pulled the EXACT same links you provided!

Just for grins(and the inner geek) I just might build one.

Ted Novak TRA#5512

snipped-for-privacy@we> >

Reply to
nedtovak

Dunno, but it'd be an interesting experiment...

I've never seen it run as well as it did last night. It was almost scary getting close to it, as you could feel the hair on your hands, arms, legs, head, nose, ears, etc. rising up as you approached it.

I mean, with the ozone and all, it even *smelled* dangerous! It was sitting on the dining room table, humming away, glowing and sizzling like some hideous death ray machine gone amok...

I was just waiting for the thing to discharge an arc which would hit me in the eye, or in the crotch, or something...

Funny thing is, that from what I can tell, it's not even really optimized yet. I mean we covered the upper roller with teflon plumbers tape (a hugely "positive" substance), and last night, we were "boosting" the output with a little 7.5KV air ionizer transformer I picked up from American Science & Surplus, but apparently there are other mixes of materials that would yield even more powerful results.

It, in a most spectacular way, completely shorted out a homemade Leyden jar my son made from a Rubbermaid food container, and tin foil.

Wow.

Problem is, now I think I want to build an even bigger one! Maybe like this:

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I probably shouldn't though. I might take away from my "rocket time"..

tah

Reply to
hiltyt

Google was how we found it too, Ted. The "~billb" link is excellent, and we pretty much found everything else linked from that page.

tah

Reply to
hiltyt

Tod, found another link for a more *ghetto* style of DVG :)

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Jees, I have like 8 computers running in the home office....I think odds are fairly good I'll fry at least one of them :)

Ted 'will document > >

Reply to
nedtovak

I used to have a set of plans from Popular Science or Popular Mechanics, maybe dating from the 1970s showing how to make a VDG generator. These plans used 2 counter-rotating acrylic disks instead of the belt, and would be much easier to build than the belt-driven kind.

The cool thing was that you could see how the electricity was made - the whole thing was a sort of open electric motor with metal strips applied to the disks and some brushes on the arms.

Alas, as usually happens, I've lost the plans.

Anyone have back issues of those mags and could look? Or know what I'm talking about?

TIA,

--Kamus

Reply to
Kamus of Kadizhar

Well, I was almost right - here it is:

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--Kamus

Reply to
Kamus of Kadizhar

Sounds like a Wimhurst generator, rather than a Van de Graf generator.

Fun to play with, in any event!

- Rick "Sparky" Dickinson

Reply to
Rick Dickinson

If you woulda added a wad of ABC Doublemint and a tampon string, I'd nickname you "McGyver"... :-)>

Reply to
Gene

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