Raindrops creating electricity? But.... wouldn't you be better sticking a solar panel there? I assume you can't have both? Or could one fold up when not in use?
- posted
10 months ago
Raindrops creating electricity? But.... wouldn't you be better sticking a solar panel there? I assume you can't have both? Or could one fold up when not in use?
If that is what I think it is, its crackpot stuff. Now if you could harness the power in a thunderstorm that might be worthwhile. Brian
Don't you just need a kite and a battery big enough to store the energy from the lightening strike? Power for life.
You can.
There's a whole book at the public library about this :-)
Even at a young age, I was suspicious of the contents of some of my library books. This particular book was a high quality print, with details on making fractional horsepower motors to run off an electrostatic field kite. There were colour plates of the finished electrostatic motors. But no plates showing the motors connected to a Wimhurst machine for test.
But I was not tempted in any way, to build anything I'd seen in that book. It all seemed like a very dangerous "crock". Even at a young age, Paul could "imagine himself being blown out of his socks" :-)
I have built one of those tiny corona engines (rotor with needles arranged tangentially with corona coming off the needles). But that wasn't using an electrostatic source, that was using a high voltage project to drive it (my 15kV flyback). the amusement of doing that, lasts for, oh, thirty seconds or so.
*******If you do a Google, you can see topics like this are alive and well. The same silly experiments, only with a twist. The individual here, uses a drone instead of a kite! Eureka! I wonder what happens to a drone hit by lightning ?
And yes, falling water can generate electrostatic energy.
Kelvin water dropper
I built one of these as a kid, and it really works. Where the criss-cross wires go to the collector rings, there is a thin arc discharge between the wires, about once a second. Holding an AM radio near the unit, the sound on the AM radio, helps the audience when they can't see the arc. The thinness of the arc, hints at the small number of joules involved.
Kelvin water droppers are self-defeating. As the voltage potential builds on the ring, the "beam" of water droplets no longer fall straight. The water can fall to the side of your collector bucket. And translated into English, this means there is a maximum voltage the cans can develop, before the generation process is upset. That's why you set up the unit, to discharge the cans at regular intervals (once every two second is good). Setting the spacing between the two crossing wires, sets the arc-over voltage point.
Mine was built with three 48oz juice cans. Two paraffin blocks (out of a 2.2kg box of paraffin blocks) serve as insulators under two of the cans. The third can is elevated above the collector rings, and is the water reservoir for the generator.
Paul
I think that has been done. Isn't it where Dr. Frankenstein got the power to rejuvenate the body he assembled?
Put a plate on the roof and connect it to an audio amp and a speaker.
I did that as a kid and heard all sorts of weird stuff. I don't recall the sound of raindrop impacts, but they would be cool.
Earth averages a e-field above the surface of a couple hundred volts/meter. A kite with a bunch of needles can collect charge and deliver a small amount of power to the ground.
Why is anything called Abstract so hard to read?
Have you guys ever heard of LIGHTNING?
Because the full version requires you to have a beard.
You heard your neighbour? You created a parabolic dish? Or maybe aliens?
I used a motor as a speaker. You could actually hear the words if you put it to your ear.
It's been done in both Back to the Future and Stargate Atlantis, so it must be possible.
You do have to throw in vertical winds to separate the self-charging raindrops from the charge they disperse while getting charged.
Somebody who once knew something about aeronautics might have worked out that rain on it's own isn't all that electric - it takes a storm cell to generate thunder and lightning.
No, it was just an e-field probe. Of course there was a lot of verying harmonics of 60 Hz, but lots of distant atmospherics, lightning and once in a while the "dawn chorus" of round-the-world lightning echoes and stuff. It was fun, but I was a weird kid.
That's probably true. The length of the life after you have captured a lightning bolt might be an issue ;)
Andy
As long as you have a kite with a very thick string. Or is the current low and brief enough not to melt it?
Also, you might boil the battery charging it abruptly.
I once had a 12V lead acid car battery in parallel with 30 others violently explode when it lost a cell and became a 10V battery, sucking a huge amount of current from the rest. I wasn't at home at the time, but came back to a very strong smell in the driveway and thought there was a dead animal somewhere. I later found a battery missing from the shelf in the garage, and found pieces scattered everywhere.
You don't have to hold the kite. And people have survived strikes anyway, you just get a cool fractal tattoo.
There might be an impedance mismatch charging the battery.
There is a battery that consists of a beta emitter coated rod inside a metal tube. It develops hundreds of kilovolts at low current, and the problem has always been, aside from the radioactive hazard, how to convert that down to something useful.
There is no AC involved.
I've never heard that term applied to DC and don't know what you mean. I only understand it for audio amplifiers.
Can't be that hard, we convert voltages all the time.
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