Lab Pictures 5 - Physics - Bill Robinson's Website

Lab Pictures 5

December 2007; Room 102-A, Research II

NCSU, Raleigh NC

Changes, refinements, more tests. No ball lightning yet but still have a few steps to go before good experiments are possible (proper timing with the sparker etc.). Recently started trying a 2 liter round bottom flask to contain the sparker explosion. Also tried a bit of fine steel wool (shown below) but that didn't work, not long enough a pulse of microwaves. Next will try some carbon veil (non-woven fine mat of carbon fibers).

Notice the addition of a grid made mostly of 19 ga. stainless steel wire. This I have charged usually to -2000 V, and sometimes to -6000 V. I have just added a new capacitor bank and will finalize that soon which will initially operate at -3000 V. For an explanation of why, see the PowerPoint presentation on the Physics page. It won't make any difference until I can get much lower pressures after the machine shop works on my rig in late January. I've done away with the baffles separating the antennas (despite keeping them as a cool background for this gallery...).

There were severe problems with microwave leakage until I added aluminum foil around the 20 antenna feedthroughs on the outside of the sphere, as the photos show. There is still some problem with interference with the video but far less than before.