Technically no, it relies on a controlled flow of electrons, but.......turn the knob up a wee bit too far and bang, lightning in a bottle!
Real toasty here too. I went outside this morning to attack the relentless knotweed with a 6 HP weedeater on wheels. After two hours of that stuff, I'm done outside for today, dehydrated already. I could literally squeeze water (sweat) from my shorts and that's all I was wearing. I sweat like a mad man, even when shoveling snow, but this is crazy.
I was in Singapore in 1988. There are no cows on the island, so beef served in restaurants is flown in from elsewhere. We went to eat one night and the waiter asked if I wanted American beef, or New Zealand beef. Since I can get an American steak anytime I chose the NZ meat. I can still remember how much better it tasted. You can get grass pastured beef here, it's just priced out of my budget and Sherri prefers the flavored belt leather we get here.
I was in the gym at the Motorola plant where I worked several years ago when the building took a direct hit on the roof directly over us. The large kaboom did cause several people to lose vocabulary (and other) control. I was surprised by the large EMP that resulted. All the computers went bonkers and needed to be rebooted, but no electronics were permanently damaged. We WERE in an electronics research and development site in the lightning capital of the US, and the building was "lightning hardened." Strikes were fairly common, several per year, but most were on the 100 foot concrete tower out front for "bait."
All the CRT TV's had multi colored swirls on the screens. Nobody in the gym was old enough to understand what happened, and thought that I was crazy when I told the gym operator to turn them all off, wait 2 or 3 minutes, then turn them back on. Repeat until the picture was clear. They were even more amazed when it worked.
Attachments
I understand conventional valve/tube theory. Considering the high voltages could not positrons between anode to cathode flow before the diode effect established. It may not be true as it isn't an arc. Non the less the conditions just before strike are the same. To be honest it isn't life changing to know.
The facilitating possibility is day to day things need sophisticated physics to work way above the supposed working, we don't know because we didn't need to. We understand LED's better because the initial work on transistors required very weird thinking to make any sense of them. Holes and electrons. LED's were easier as the electrons can travel in a region that most often is an insulator. When the the electron descends to the lower band a photon is given out. What is more interesting is each colour has it's voltage related to the composition. Red circa 1.6V and Blue circa 3.3 V. These voltages as most know are good enough to use a band gap voltage references. Seeing as ideas like that can be expanded to be a BSc I don't claim that to be more than a peep into a room of secrets. If not greatly accurate I apologizes.
There is a common speculation the transistors came from Roswell. I neither believe nor disbelieve it. Against the theory is companies like Siemens were halted in their tracks when valves/tube came along. They had been developing semiconductors since the 1880's. The most interesting speculation is that the idea of doping silicon came from nowhere. Considering the interest in war materials I can imagine someone made the leap. Critics say the man who did was too stupid to be the one. What I did find fascinating is no one could stand the man and licenses were fairly cheap. The rest is history and the apples didn't fall far from the tree. Anything you read has a story that most don't see. Forget what you didn't witness. Just feel the pulse.
Reverse-Engineering Roswell UFO Technology - UFO Evidence
Lightning I suspect is far more mysterious than thought. Not in a supernatural way.
The facilitating possibility is day to day things need sophisticated physics to work way above the supposed working, we don't know because we didn't need to. We understand LED's better because the initial work on transistors required very weird thinking to make any sense of them. Holes and electrons. LED's were easier as the electrons can travel in a region that most often is an insulator. When the the electron descends to the lower band a photon is given out. What is more interesting is each colour has it's voltage related to the composition. Red circa 1.6V and Blue circa 3.3 V. These voltages as most know are good enough to use a band gap voltage references. Seeing as ideas like that can be expanded to be a BSc I don't claim that to be more than a peep into a room of secrets. If not greatly accurate I apologizes.
There is a common speculation the transistors came from Roswell. I neither believe nor disbelieve it. Against the theory is companies like Siemens were halted in their tracks when valves/tube came along. They had been developing semiconductors since the 1880's. The most interesting speculation is that the idea of doping silicon came from nowhere. Considering the interest in war materials I can imagine someone made the leap. Critics say the man who did was too stupid to be the one. What I did find fascinating is no one could stand the man and licenses were fairly cheap. The rest is history and the apples didn't fall far from the tree. Anything you read has a story that most don't see. Forget what you didn't witness. Just feel the pulse.
Reverse-Engineering Roswell UFO Technology - UFO Evidence
Lightning I suspect is far more mysterious than thought. Not in a supernatural way.
If you bothered to read that a speculation that came out was Bell will not show the original transistors as they are silicon. That's nonsense as they could fake them if they wanted to. Conspiracy people always are fixated on things which are easy to cast doubt over. They often skip over real questions. The Moon shot question is so much done in no time and why no robotic test of the lander on pre 11 tests. These questions are just questions. I infer nothing. One engineer said a vacuum is far more predictable than Mars. I will buy that and that is the answer I wanted.
People bring me these theories. I do put more energy into proving them false. There is always an Elephant in the room. The number one is we weren't there.
One speculation I rather liked is this knowledge has jumped us 800 years via Roswell. That has the ring of truth about it. Money alone might have done that. My speculation is the military had dreams of what they wanted. We bought the cheap things which were fuel to that engine. It could be a passive process of desire is enough.
People bring me these theories. I do put more energy into proving them false. There is always an Elephant in the room. The number one is we weren't there.
One speculation I rather liked is this knowledge has jumped us 800 years via Roswell. That has the ring of truth about it. Money alone might have done that. My speculation is the military had dreams of what they wanted. We bought the cheap things which were fuel to that engine. It could be a passive process of desire is enough.
Lightning suggests that the atmosphere/earth system has plenty of free electric energy to be used...we only have to tame it...
Just make your own leyden jar and bleed off the energy into a supercap. First person to make a working radio or amplifier (tube or transistor) powered at least partially by lightning gets my admiration and awe. I would suggest a safe distance between you and the radio
And my condolences to their family.
And my condolences to their family.
Last edited:
Franklin bells - Wikipedia
Maybe converting the electrical energy directly into mechanical energy would be safer and less dangerous.
Through electromotive force from lightning you could theoretically make a pendulum move upwards towards an electromagnet which has been energized temporarily by a lighting bolt going through its windings, you could then transfer that power slowly from the pendulum into another electric motor generator.
Or you could make a flywheel and use the lightning to energize the flywheel through pushing of a permanent magnet away from an electromagnet which is energized by lightning. Then you can convert the electrical energy directly from the flywheel or through a gearbox and into a storage battery/supercap.
You could then have the entire mechanism safely away from your house as it is charged up by lightning and then go and retrieve the supercapacitor once the lightning has died down AND the thunderstorm is far far away, which has a sufficiently large enough charge to it to power a radio. I would recommend however a spark gap either permanently mounted on the device or ready in hand to discharge any latent static electricity which may be present around the device before touching it and picking it up.
I would also recommend the use of plastic components as insulators for the manufacture of the mechanics of the device.
Maybe converting the electrical energy directly into mechanical energy would be safer and less dangerous.
Through electromotive force from lightning you could theoretically make a pendulum move upwards towards an electromagnet which has been energized temporarily by a lighting bolt going through its windings, you could then transfer that power slowly from the pendulum into another electric motor generator.
Or you could make a flywheel and use the lightning to energize the flywheel through pushing of a permanent magnet away from an electromagnet which is energized by lightning. Then you can convert the electrical energy directly from the flywheel or through a gearbox and into a storage battery/supercap.
You could then have the entire mechanism safely away from your house as it is charged up by lightning and then go and retrieve the supercapacitor once the lightning has died down AND the thunderstorm is far far away, which has a sufficiently large enough charge to it to power a radio. I would recommend however a spark gap either permanently mounted on the device or ready in hand to discharge any latent static electricity which may be present around the device before touching it and picking it up.
I would also recommend the use of plastic components as insulators for the manufacture of the mechanics of the device.
Last edited:
The trick is to use this potential electric energy BEFORE it accumulates to a point that it results in a lightning...besides, even non-lightning-prone regions have abundant ambient energy...as soon as I end my amplifier journey I will start investigating this topic.
I'm tired of this 95 degree weather, so we are going to pack up and drive about 1000 miles south into Florida tomorrow, where it is actually cooler.
I'm armed with some new camera tricks so maybe I'll have some cool lightning storm pictures when I return.
Two months ago we went to the outer banks of North Carolina where I took about 32,000 pictures. The weather was nice with zero rain or storms, so it's all "pretty weather" stuff. It always rains in Florida during the summer, although it doesn't always rain on the island where we will be staying.
I plan to use some of the pictures for creating some time lapse videos. Still learning Blender and DaVinci Resolve, so it might be a while before I have a YouTube worthy masterpiece.
I was limited to about 32,000 pictures in NC because I filled up every bit of storage media that I brought. The cameras now have upsized memory cards with a 256 GB card in the FZ1000. I have about 3TB of empty hard drive space with me too.
I'm armed with some new camera tricks so maybe I'll have some cool lightning storm pictures when I return.
Two months ago we went to the outer banks of North Carolina where I took about 32,000 pictures. The weather was nice with zero rain or storms, so it's all "pretty weather" stuff. It always rains in Florida during the summer, although it doesn't always rain on the island where we will be staying.
I plan to use some of the pictures for creating some time lapse videos. Still learning Blender and DaVinci Resolve, so it might be a while before I have a YouTube worthy masterpiece.
I was limited to about 32,000 pictures in NC because I filled up every bit of storage media that I brought. The cameras now have upsized memory cards with a 256 GB card in the FZ1000. I have about 3TB of empty hard drive space with me too.
Well, we are supposed to be good at electronics...I am sure we can do better than that.
I'm thinking that some guys here in this thread have made some kind of new moonshine that needs to be given a sparkle by some lightning first before drinkin'.
This just proves it.
Of course that ain't nothing to be ashamed of but good friends oughta look out for one another so be sure to put a raincoat on before you go out there.
Me I'm probably gonna spend the rest of winter falling asleep in front of the Sanyo CRT tv and dvd player.
Last edited:
Well we are on our fifth day of heat wave with temperatures on the ground in my neighborhood peaking at between 95 - 101°F (35 - 38°C) with high humidity making it feel even warmer than it is.
My friends in the Florida and other parts of the South have been commenting that I should come down there to cool off.. LOL
I'm hiding for the most part in the man cave and other air-conditioned parts of our house. I think we are probably going to invest in a ductless system in the not too distant future.
My friends in the Florida and other parts of the South have been commenting that I should come down there to cool off.. LOL
I'm hiding for the most part in the man cave and other air-conditioned parts of our house. I think we are probably going to invest in a ductless system in the not too distant future.
We are starting to warm up again but thankfully not like you guys. I notice that the 30º we're going to get is on the verge of uncomfortable but 35º and up is tough on this ol' body of mine. Hottest ever here was 39º (inland) and it seemed that survival was all that was on anyone's mind. Remember, no one here has A/C. That may change in the future.
We use two surprisingly ineffectual LG portables, and one window unit that works pretty well. The living room, man cave and bunny room are the only rooms that have AC. Most of the main floor does benefit from the AC in the living room, but at just 8000 btu it really doesn't get the job done once the outside temperature exceeds 85°F/30°C. A bigger AC isn't wise given the vintage of the wiring in that part of the house.
