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Registered Member #1103
Joined: Mon Nov 05 2007, 06:02PM
Location: Houston
Posts: 80
It's quite possible that a HV source may not be required, but I don't have experimental evidence to support this hypothesis.
Yes, coin shrinking would be insane. Use some crazy gauge wire like 000, but even then I'm almost sure the wire would vaporize or be blown apart from the ENORMOUS energy. I'm not even sure if the coin would stay in one piece at this energy....
Use it for a raingun, or some other crazy device. This wasn't really what I planned on using it for, but it would be interesting to see the results of said experiments.
Registered Member #56
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445
Really, the currents in lightnight aren't all that great when you compare it to what we can get from a decent set of pulse caps. The energy is huge because of extreemly high voltage, but the amount of pratical energy that we can harvest isn't much more than a few tens of kJ. Especially for quarter shrinking where you need the feild in a tiny spot, you would probably have better luck buying some large maxwells than the time/money/saftey of trying to get triggered lightning to work.
Registered Member #1103
Joined: Mon Nov 05 2007, 06:02PM
Location: Houston
Posts: 80
I'm not too sure about that. Wikipedia has to say this about lightning:
An average bolt of lightning carries a negative electric current of 40 kiloamperes (kA) (although some bolts can be up to 120 kA), and transfers a charge of five coulombs and 500 MJ, or enough energy to power a 100 watt lightbulb for just under two months. The voltage depends on the length of the bolt, with the dielectric breakdown of air being three million volts per meter; this works out to approximately one gigavolt (one billion volts) for a 300 m (1000 ft) lightning bolt. With an electric current of 100 kA, this gives a power of 100 terawatts.
Also, it doesn't seem like it would take too much time or money to make this happen, however the safety issue is still fairly large, but yeah, like I said earlier, using lightning for coin shrinking isn't my purpose.
Registered Member #10
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 09:45AM
Location: Bunbury, Australia
Posts: 1424
Wikipedia is wrong on this point. Lightning is not billions of volts and 100TW is not the energy of a 1000ft stroke. Evidence points to the role of relativistic electrons triggered by cosmic ray events causing runaway breakdown as the cause of the hugely increased spark distances and other unexpected phenomena such as x-ray production. The 100kA is reasonable though. Here is what (an estimated) 100kA looks like in 1-2 ft of exploding wire. I didn't measure this current but it does 100-200kA measured into a short discharge path. Not hot enuff fer yer ehhh?
Registered Member #1103
Joined: Mon Nov 05 2007, 06:02PM
Location: Houston
Posts: 80
I tried to verify the source for the wikipedia information, but didn't have enough time. Now that I think about it, I remember hearing something about the trigger mechanism of lightning being caused by cosmic rays.
That's pretty freaking hot it looks like! What temperature do you estimate it to be? I need roughly 10,000C, but more is always better in this situation. How much energy was that discharge?
Registered Member #10
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 09:45AM
Location: Bunbury, Australia
Posts: 1424
The temp should be about the 8000C in the spark channel which might only be 5mm thick. The air in the channel is only 1/20 the density because of the heat. Once you start to try to heat things up they will vaporise into a gas at 1/20th density as well. Can't help much more without knowing what you are planning.
Registered Member #1103
Joined: Mon Nov 05 2007, 06:02PM
Location: Houston
Posts: 80
I'm planning on vaporizing transition metals, and then testing the residual product to determine if they exhibit any odd behavior. I've heard claims that when certain transition metals are vaporized they turn into a form of "white" residue that might exhibit room temperature superconductive properties, and odd interactions with gravity.
If you've ever heard of ORME, then you should know what I'm talking about.
EDIT: Please note, I just received a message from a member telling me to remove the reference to ORME because it reeks of pseudoscience, and I agree with this member - it does reek of pseudoscience. I'm using REAL science to debunk this stuff once and for all. However, I will not remove the reference, but I will add this disclaimer.
Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
Oh, well remember to publish your results here then, even if they're negative! (Especially if they're negative.)
/me puts his James Randi hat on...
You might want to analyze the chemistry in a little more detail. What residual products do you think will be left when you vaporize metal?
To really vaporize some metal, you'd need to do it in a vacuum or an inert gas atmosphere, and all you'd have would be metal vapour, which would condense back into metal as soon as it cooled.
I can't see how there would be any residual products, unless the metal was impure to start with, in which case, you might end up separating the impurities in a process that was basically a form of distilling.
If you did this experiment in air, I think you'd end up burning the metal, not vaporising it, and I guess the result would be metal oxide. That's probably the white residue that people have seen, in which case it's sadly not anything exciting or new to science!
You could always try an arc welder, maybe with a carbon electrode instead of a welding rod. Last time I tried one of these, they could burn and vaporise metal no problem, usually when you want to weld it
Registered Member #543
Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992
From: Lightning Analysis in a High-voltage Transmission Environment by Erich R. Smidt Typical characteristics of a lightning flash Stroke diameter: 1 cm Subsequent return strokes: 2-3 Peak current: 5-300kA Stroke voltage: 100 million to 1 billion volts Stroke temperature: 50,000 °F (28,000 ° C) Nominal duration: 20-50 microseconds Polarity: Negative or positive
Source:
There is a very interesting paper, Runaway Breakdown and the Mysteries of Lightning, here:
Registered Member #15
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068
MODERATOR NOTE:
Lets keep the discussion on theoretical discussion only and not on any practical applications of actually doing something this dangerous.
I'm sure i speak for most of the moderators here, in that the 4hV group is certaintly not going to condone any type of experiments such as this. Not only is it extremely dangerous, it is ILLEGAL and against all model and high power rocketry regulations presently in place, at least in the United States. This type of experiment could be successfully implemented as part of a research arrangement, but there is lots of red tape to cut through befeore one gets authorization for something like that, and it usually has to be university affiliated etc...
From National Fire Protection Association High Power Rocketry Code: NFPA 1127
4.17.1 No person shall ignite and launch a high power rocket horizontally, at a target, or so that the rocket's flight path during ascent phase is intended to go into clouds, directly over the heads of spectators, or beyond the boundaries of the launch site, or so that the rocket's recovery is likely to occur in spectator areas or outside the boundaries of the launch site. (There are other regulations that are violated in this document, but i don't have time to list them all)
There are also FAA mandated regulations for high power rocketry as well, but unfortunately, i don't have the document in front of my to list a references.
Any more discussions on this subject in the practical sense and this thread will be locked.
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Rocket Triggered Lightning
