Plasma Globes were invented by Nikola Tesla some time before 1892. Glass-enclosed Tesla coil terminals containing low-pressure gases were part of his effort to develop a new source of lighting not covered by the Edison patents. The same device became an art object when William Parker, an intern at the Exploratorium museum in SF, redesigned the ol
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der "Argon Candle" science exhibit to produce a long plasma streamer. Parker named the device "AM Lightning". His later devices were spherical and contained various gas mixtures producing a wide variety of nonlinear plasma phenomena. Parker exhibited these in Cambridge MA at the MIT Compton Gallery in 1985. First built a tiny Tesla Coil based on a flyback transformer. Flyback units can be had from old TV sets or dead computer monitors. Build your Tesla Coil using one of the following schematics: Your coil needs to be able to generate a spark of about 1. 5cm length. Next, obtain a "decorator" 40 watt 4-inch clear spherical light bulb. Large hardward stores like Ernst or Fred Meyer carry these. Connect the high voltage lead from your mini tesla coil to the base of the light bulb. (It doesn`t matter which light bulb contact you use. ) Turn off the lights and turn on your coil, and you`ll see purple "plasma fingers" spewing out of the filament supports in the light bulb. (In some cases you can improve this by taping some aluminum foil to one side of the bulb. Connect the foil to ground. Even better, you can improve the visual contrast. Just use black spray-paint to coat the foil. ) If you want to get ambitious you can eliminate the light bulb. Instead build your own glass globe. Use a glass jar, or better yet a boiling flask from a mailorder chemistry supplier or a lab glass outfit. Stopper with a 3-hole stopper. Provide two...
This project fits more for custom made battery casing that can have more space to hide things inside. This switch with few alterations can be used for any other project as well but is designed based on e-bike needs! This project use a clever functionality of....
The circuit described here uses ultrasonic oscillations and operates based on the propagation velocity of these oscillations in the air. Thus, we can easily determine the distance of two points if the time within which the wave travels this distance is....
Sometimes the precious metals are hidden too deep and are not detected except with complicated devices. In many cases, however, small pieces of precious metal buried near the surface can be detected by relatively simple means. Everyone is very attractive to....
Many times for various reasons we forget or can not water the plants that we have in our homes. And many humidity sensors units just notify us with a beeping sound or with a flashing light, that the pot needs watering. But what if we are away from home? This....
The principle behind a metal detector is really very simple. Proof of this is the circuit that follows, in which it proves that the construction of a metal detector can be done in the minute, with few components that we find very easily everywhere. With the....
The sub-harmonic bass generator is a sound producing unit for guitars. The sound it produces looks very much like that of the bass guitar. The octave generator is sometimes quite unusual since it does not produce any of the usual ways of coloring the sound,....
In the past the sounding (sea bottom measurement) was done with the "bullet", that is, with a heavy lead object that the seamen plucked into the sea hung from a calibrated rope. As soon as the "bullet" reached the bottom, the depth appeared directly from the....
This Amplifier was designed to have the following specifications: Distortion less than 0.1% at full power of 100W even at 20KHz. Power has to be attributed to an extended bandwidth. The output transistors must be protected against short circuits. The power....
A series of LEDs serve to alert the gardener when plants need water. Using two conventional digital integrated LEDs and a series of LEDs, we make a very useful device for gardening. The device detects the amount of water in the pot and alerts the grower.....
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