Insane 500,000v from rubber (Van De Graaff BUILD)

this video plus all subsequent shocks and loss of feeling in my fingers is sponsored by kiwico this is a mini van de graaff generator it's a brave little terrorist able to make sparks about an inch long from two double a batteries just as a neutered chihuahua is to a wolf it's merely a scaled down version of its true potential well meet the wolf this can produce almost a half a million volts pushing out sparks that are sometimes close to a foot long it's also great at creating sandstorms levitating hair and man is it so good at irritating my neighbor's dogs it stands close to three and a half feet tall is fully portable and also rechargeable if you have the right lipo charger a bit of solid state tech blends with traditional design making the power output adjustable from zero to a hundred percent the entire thing is custom built and it's wicked the first high voltage device that i ever built actually was a van de graaff generator i think that was 17 years ago and it's exactly what sparked my love for plasma physics so hopefully after you watch this video you'll want to go out and build one on your own as well it's also why i'm going to show you how i built mine talk about why you should build one and show you exactly what they can do let's go [Music] these things are disastrously fun van de graaff generators are known by most as that thing you put your hand on and your hair stands up which is a bit of a sad thing to be remembered by if you were the original device used to smash the atom which they did in 1929 but hey hair standing up is cool too they're brilliant devices which can produce tens of millions of volts by capitalizing on what's called the triboelectric effect basically they produce high voltage through a form of friction that relies on contact between different insulators similar to rubbing your socks on a carpet the triboelectric effect pumps electrons from the ground into the sphere up top the charge builds up and you get a massive spark or a bunch of size challenged ones i talk more about the science later normally generators of this size are more of a plug and play type of situation but i don't have the best track record with chords and my experiments tend to blow up sockets anyways so rest in peace little buddy and if need be van de graaff generators can be built real quick and cheap and dirty in like a single evening this was not one such build i mean they're they're super finicky devices they need more love than an abandoned kitten but if you build them correctly and you take your time they produce insane voltages they aren't as finicky oh god and they're just so much fun so what follows is a quick summary of how i built my generator and uh a couple of frustrations had along the way and then we'll get to terrorizing my neighbor's dogs for everybody's entertainment well as an ancient roman proverb used to say all foundations start with acrylic that's why the base is made of two 13-inch discs bolted together by these beefy supports i really like the touch of blue the top disc has a four inch hole cut in the center and directly under it sits a ball bearing assembly these allow a nylon roller to spin connected to the roller is a belt drive assembly going down to a high torque motor i chose a two to one pulley ratio to provide even more torque directly underneath the roller sits metal mesh this is used to spray electrons directly onto the belt which is essential those electrons come from the earth so the comb is connected to this grounding plate on the underside also in the base is a rechargeable lithium battery and a motor speed controller supporting the belt and top electrode is a beefy 4-inch acrylic tube i had no idea at the time but acrylic tubes of this size are not cheap the top of the tube houses another ball bearing and pulley assembly however this pulley is made of teflon and just kind of spins freely on its own the belt i used is made of neoprene workout band and i cut it to three inches wide by about two feet long i figured hot rod red would make it go faster right above the nylon belt sits a second metal mesh screen it doesn't come into contact with the belt but it sets a few millimeters above it and its purpose is to pick up charge previously deposited on the belt transferring that charge to this metal bar then this wire and into the metal sphere the metal sphere was tricky this is a 12 inch garden gazing ball but it required a very specific hole cut in its base so that i could slide right over the acrylic tube three hours of dremel work later and perfect fit now this whole upper tube assembly needed a firm connection to the base and as a point of preference i like to have all parts removable so that meant no glue and also i didn't want to bolt it into place and risk cracking the tube so my buddy jasper and i sketched up a mount design and cad that would provide a firm but removable connection between the tube and the base we then 3d printed it and it worked like a charm it just pops right into place my patrons will have access to the 3d files and with that that's the finished generator the design turned out way better than i could have hoped but to get it working it was a bit more of a complex process you see it didn't really work right away i had to do some adjustments and i had to do some tweaking for example i originally tried a blue latex belt which the generator really hated in fact it hardly produced sparks an inch long not exactly spectacular i mean the adorbs little mini version i built makes sparks an inch long and this beast is six times as large lovely after a bit of inspection i realized the latex belt was just too thin and it came covered with chalk powder so i switched over to the current neoprene belt which was much thicker that helped a lot and i was getting sparks upwards of two to three inches which really got me excited yeah but a 12 inch sphere is supposed to develop 450 000 volts so it needed more work next i tweaked the upper coma bit adjusting it closer to the belt which encourages easier charge transfer the same thing was done for the lower comb as i would have hoped that just in the combs made the biggest difference by far after cranking up the power to 40 50 this beast was pumping out 10 11 12 inch sparks which is exactly what i'm going for what i wasn't going for was the first spark literally reaching out and hitting me in the face i think it likes me if you're wondering about safety well a generator this size only produces about 1.7 joules per spark basically it's not going to cause any serious damage to you beyond irritated skin repetitive shocking is not too healthy for your peripheral nerves but who's keeping track right those with a pacemaker or heart condition should be more cautious though love me some sparks but for a generator this size that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg prior to showing you the other crazy things it's capable of i cannot stress the importance of self-learning enough especially as a child it's actually exactly how it got to where i am today and kiwico sets the standard in that category they create really cool hands-on projects and toys designed to expose kids to concepts in steam they do monthly crates which teach varying themes through hands-on learning that are actually designed by experts but then tested by kids kiwico offers 8 subscription lines each catering to different age groups and topics each box comes with all the supplies needed for that month's project detailed instructions plus additional educational material on the crates theme turns out my niece and nephew actually love the monthly subscriptions so when i asked if they wanted to put together a walking robot that kiwico sent me from the tanker crate the answer was resounding yes my nephew had a blast putting it together i could see him learning engineering and visual spatial intelligence all pretty much disguised as fun he didn't realize it but he was basically learning he really enjoyed the build process and the instructions were super clear and here he is excitedly running off to turn it on after some final tweaks it provided him hours of entertainment it was cool since kiwico has sponsored this video you can get 50 off your first month of any crate by going to kiwico.com plasma channel which is also linked in the description down below it's a sweet deal you know kiwiko and i actually have the same mission which is to inspire people at the most influential time in their life it's actually a huge driving force behind a lot of my videos so i'm really excited to partner with them kicking off the demos this one's legit if you place your hand over a tray of charged sand the high voltage dc can drive a pretty vicious sandstorm this happens because when you bring your hand near the sand is attracted to your hand making it fly upwards but once it touches your hand it loses its charge and falls back down and the cycle repeats this generator also gives you the ability to charge a person up merely by pointing at them you heard right here you can see me helping my little niece and nephew terrorize my dad electrons were streaming from my fingertip charging him up against his will when they learned he could be shocked well it was pretty much game over and you can't show a van de graaff generator without raising a few hairs oh my god this is so much better than last time touching the sphere her body's negatively charged from the generator as like charges repel and hair is able to move each strand is repelled away from the next she's also helping with audience retention because physics by the way sweet cow socks huh and after about eight hours of use it just plugs right in for a quick charge speaking of physics all of this all these crazy effects are made possible by what's called the triboelectric effect it's what makes van de graaff generators tick the triboelectric effect is the creation of electric charge through the contact of two different materials and these generators are basically engineered to take advantage of that so my lower roller is made of nylon after contacting the rubber belt the roller becomes positively charged that charge attracts electrons from the ground brush but since the belt is in the way electrons are sprayed onto the belt instead the belt then cycles up and contacts the upper teflon roller teflon develops a negative charge after being contacted by the belt repelling the electrons toward the brush due to its proximity to the belt and sharp points the upper comb collects these charges and deposits them onto the sphere hey hopefully you enjoyed watching this video and if you did please consider subscribing and drop on a comment down below so i can see your thoughts on this project if you'd like to support longer crazier projects while getting some pretty sweet perks like watching my videos a day early please consider supporting my work on patreon as well thanks for watching and i'll see you next time you classy cats [Music] you

Channel: Plasma Channel

Views: 157,453

Keywords: “Water bending”, Water bending, controlling elements, Avatar, Plasma, physics, Science, Discovery, High Voltage, “High Voltage”, “Voltage multiplier”, Tesla Coil, Vandergraff Generator, Electrostatic, “static electricity”, Lightning, Electronics, Plasma globe, Plasma Channel, Jay, Plasma Nation, Van Der Graaff, Marx generator, high power, Ozone, Ionic wind, Corona, Van De Graaff, Atom smasher, westinghouse, atomic, Nuclear, maker, diy, how to, biggest

Id: nxagMrTVonQ

Length: 10min 56sec (656 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 24 2021