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Wilson

Sat Mar 11 2006, 12:15PM

Registered Member #78 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 11:27AM
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 133

I was playing with HV from a FBT yesterday and noticed a strange effect- By holding an electrode over the centre of a ferrite ring magnet from a microwave, the plasma forms a vortex. Reversing the connections results in a reversal in the spin direction.

Any comments on why this occurs?

I have an unsubstantiated theory that there is a force acting on the plasma arc , similar to how a force acts on a conductor in a magnetic field, such as in a motor, producing a spinning effect.
Either that or the plasma with all its loose electrons is responding in some unique fashion to the magnetic field.

Either way its a rather cool party trick

Enjoy the Video
(Ignore the unsafe tofu container, lol)

...

Sat Mar 11 2006, 06:27PM

Registered Member #56 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445

wow!

That sort of reminds me of my quasi water diode experiments. The plasma was less dense than normal where it touched the water, so I guess that made it more unstable and thus it could give erratic behavior?

Madgyver

Sat Mar 11 2006, 07:14PM

Registered Member #177 Joined: Wed Feb 15 2006, 02:16PM
Location: Munich, Germany
Posts: 214

Actually its a simliar effect like in a cylcotron.

Check out this page (german):

Sulaiman

Sat Mar 11 2006, 07:54PM

Registered Member #162 Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 10:25AM
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3140

Nice One !!!
That was fascinating, well done.
I've been 'playing' with high voltages on and off for 30 years
and never seen that before, never even thought about it.

You'd better Copyright it - could be the next Plasma Globe/lava lamp etc.

P.S.
The current in the arc will experience a force at right angles with both the current and the magnetic field, (Flemingâ€™s Left Hand Rule etc.)
Each ion in the arc is electrostacically attracted to the electrode/magnet
and gets 'pushed' sideways continuously by the magnetic field
this continuous sideways acceleration produces a spiral in the direction of the electrode
- your vortex.
You have effectively re-invented Faraday's motor
using plasma instead of wire.

Sounds like there's a fortune to be made on eBay under 'New Age'

vasil

Sat Mar 11 2006, 08:25PM

Registered Member #229 Joined: Tue Feb 21 2006, 07:33PM
Location: Romania
Posts: 506

I wonder how would behave an arc between two ferrite rings, covered with alu foil and connected to the HV terminals. It would rotate?

Tipp

Sun Mar 12 2006, 01:59AM

Registered Member #215 Joined: Sun Feb 19 2006, 09:14PM
Location:
Posts: 30

Thats extremely cool, nice job.

Magnets + HV = some very intresting effects

Omicron

Sun Mar 12 2006, 04:20AM

Registered Member #131 Joined: Fri Feb 10 2006, 09:25PM
Location:
Posts: 185

Could it be the magnet is pushing out some of the ions and pulling some in? That would make a twister effect. I have used strong magnets to move Alpha and Beta particles.

Wilson

Sun Mar 12 2006, 06:55AM

Registered Member #78 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 11:27AM
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 133

I made another video. This time with 2 magnets separated with 2 ceramic spacers, and no water.
Here's the link

It is interesting to note that the top magnet is not connected to GND like the bottom one.
The 2nd vortex while forms is also rather unstable

Enjoy

the_anomaly

Sun Mar 12 2006, 04:03PM

Registered Member #19 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 03:19PM
Location: Jacksonville, FL
Posts: 168

Well I had to do some playing and found some cool effects. If you increase the voltage the arc seems to spin faster. Iâ€™m using a flyback (dc) powered by the ZVS flyback driver powered from a variac. increasing voltage

The highest I tried was about 40 volts because my variac was nearing its current capacity(5amps).

And also when arcing to strong Nd magnets the arc seems to widen where it touches the magnet.touching magnet

The camera does not do justice. This is really cool if you try it yourself.

cjk2

Sun Mar 12 2006, 07:36PM

Registered Member #51 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:17AM
Location:
Posts: 263

Well after seeing others results I wanted to try this myself. I used a 1" "Super magnet" in the experiment below. I also tried with a magnetron magnet but it was not as impressive. Its cool how the entire surface of the magnet seems to glow rather than one small point like you would expect. and arc also seems to like dancing in a circular pattern instead of staying in one place. I powered the setup with my "super ZVS" using just 30v in of filtered DC. I would have gone with a higher input voltage, but the core was spraying corona to the secondary because the power supply was just a variac and not isolated from the mains...

Video

and a picture:

Edit: Trying it inside the microwave magnet is really cool! The plasma spins so fast you just see a bright disk of gas.

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