Light a bulb without a closed circuit

On a sunny day (Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:48:48 -0700 (PDT)) it happened snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in :

Any neon will do it, stick one end in the mains, long piece of not connected wire on the other side, or series resistor of a MOhm and touch it. In RF environments you need no wires at all with neon bulbs.

More impressive still vertical fluorescent tubes will glow quite nicely when you pass under an EHT power line. There was a nice art installation of hundreds of them plonked in a field under supergrid pylons a few years back in the UK. Made the front page of several papers.

Regards, Martin Brown

On a sunny day (Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:21:17 +0100) it happened Martin Brown wrote in :

Yes, volts per meter. If the HV line is for example 100 kV, and 25 meters high, then you have 4 kV per meter. That should give 4 kV over the length of a 1 meter long vertical fluorescent, enough to trigger ionisation.

With RF, it's easy. Put a dead fluorescent lamp in your microwave oven next time you heat up the coffee, or connect rabbit-ear antennae to an incandescent lamp and stand next to a transmitter.

Of course, all of these phenomena can be analyzed under normal rules when you include parasitic capacitance to ground, which can be empty space if nothing else; for instance, as I recall the Earth is around

Tim

you can light a up a dead fluo tube say 40watt with a car ignition coil by osillating it like ccfs

It is more fun if the ignition coil is used to drive a Tesla coil - then you really can get some interesting illumination effects from vacuum tubes.

Regards, Martin Brown

The experiment I was refering to was able to capture the slight current that is caused when you connect a peice of metal to a potential, there was no voltage 'field' involved.

No it was without any sort of induction or field, it was purely by capturing the tiny movement of very small amount of charge in a wire when you connect it to any voltage, like how you can measure static electric field that is different in different parts of the same circuit, as charge accumulates unevenely even at steady state.

On a sunny day (Wed, 1 Apr 2009 18:07:02 +1000) it happened "MisterE" wrote in :

I think you are terribly confused, and you terminology sucks too.

ing

ct

I'm not sure what that means. There is an old experimental technique using a 'ballistic galvanometer' that can capture charge transfer on contact (like when your shoes rub the carpet and a static charge transfers). There are very real fields involved there, of course. All material objects generate and shape electric fields.

"small amount of charge in a wire when you connect it" could cover ANY kind of electric light.

Not all. To explain radiation (like, electric energy more than one wavelength away from the antenna) requires Maxwell's equations, not just the "usual" Kirkhoff rules.