Monster magnet meets plasma ball...

Hi! Have you ever wondered what happens when  a huge magnet comes close to a plasma ball?   I have since the electrically charged particles  in a plasma should follow a magnetic field.   Can I bend the plasma streamers  with a strong enough magnet?   I will also measure the light from the  plasma to figure out what gases are inside.   I was surprised by the output from one of  the plasma balls. And not in a good way... Don't play with strong magnets and high voltage unless you know what you're doing. I will also face some invisible, high  energy radiation. More about it later. Here, we have one of my  plasma balls doing its thing.  Now, let's see what happens to the plasma  as I put my biggest magnet near it.  A monster of a neodymium magnet  weighing in at 13 kilograms. Will we see any bending of the plasma streamers? Hmm. I don't see any noticeable bending.   Instead the filaments weaken and  disappear as the magnet comes closer.   It looks astonishing but not the effect I expected. Will a smaller plasma globe do the same? Whoops. Almost shattered it there. But it seems to react in the  same way to the magnetic field. Odd. Third time's a charm. This is a lively one and  does not lose its streamers.   Until my arms get tired from  the weight and lower the magnet. Now, it does the same as the other two. And that may be a big clue. The magnet is closer to the  base of the plasma ball. A base containing some electronics. Perhaps something in there reacts to the magnet? Looking into one of the bases it is clear that the wire delivering the high voltage to the plasma is coming  directly from an electrical transformer. Maybe the magnet is messing with this transformer  in a way that lowers the power output? I believe there's an easy way of testing it. The plasma globes have an AC  adapter for the electronics and this heavy one has a good  old-fashioned transformer inside it. Will it have a similar effect on the plasma  if I put this transformer near the magnet? It's a lot of iron to put near such a big magnet so this will be interesting... Were you too busy  watching if I lost a finger? - Going closer - Watch the plasma. The exact same thing happens. Looks like the power slowly fades away when I let the magnet near either of the transformers. *Relieved laughter* - Crazy. I'm not doing that again! - To explain why, I have built  this model of a transformer. Hope you like my effort enough to click like. A simple transformer has two coils of  wire with an iron core going through them. When an electric current passes through one coil  it works as an electromagnet  and magnetizes the core. The magnetic field goes through the  other coil where the opposite happens.  The change in the magnetic field generates  a pulse of electricity in the second coil. With an AC input there's a constant interchange  of magnetic pulses between the coils. Generating an AC output of another voltage due to  a different number of windings in the second coil. This works well until I put a  magnet near the transformer. Now, the permanent magnet magnetizes the iron core - making it harder for the coil to do it. When the external magnet is  very close to the transformer the core can be magnetically saturated. Meaning it is not possible for the coil  to magnetize the core even further. The transformer has stopped working. I can show this drop in power  by doing the experiment again. - I'm not doing that again! - You have to. This time with a voltmeter  showing the transformer's output. This is rather scary and painful  in real life. One final attempt. Yep. There's a clear loss in output. Sadly, this transformer is no longer working at all. The magnet's path of destruction is getting longer. - Ooohhh, we have a hard drive failure - And it doesn't even care. At least we now know why  the plasma acts like this. But why are the streamers not bent by  the magnetic field before they fade out? The charged particles should react. Like demonstrated with the  electrons in this old CRT TV. Well, because the electricity used to ionize the  gas into a plasma is high frequency AC - not DC. Let me show you a little trick. Take the negative lead off of a multimeter  and set it to measure AC voltage. When you point this at the  plasma globe... nothing happens? Switching to a more sensitive - but still  low budget multimeter - this happens. When set to AC it detects the electric field. When set to DC it measures nothing at all. On the table it appears to be  a better electrical circuit. However, with the lead having  no angle towards the plasma ball I'm detecting next to nothing. Pointing towards it I measure up to 170 volts. I am basically using the lead as an antenna to pick up the radio-frequency electric field emitted. The high frequency AC - and low amperage - makes the plasma ball safe to touch. Despite the high voltage inside it. But it also means the electrons and ions in the plasma are not moving in a line from one point to another. They are just vibrating in the  same place with the AC frequency. Not following a path that the magnet could bend. After a short message I will test  the plasma on a spectrometer. This way I can figure out what gases are inside. And I will tell you about the  bad surprise in the experiment. If you want to learn more about how  to set up experiments and conduct them   then I have a great tip for you. Brilliant is a problem-solving  website and app that teaches you   how to think like a scientist with  interactive courses and challenges. In their course 'The Chemical Reaction' you'll learn the fundamentals of chemistry  from the perspective of reactions. You'll work through puzzles and patterns  to see how charge, energy and probability combine to determine the basic behavior  of molecules undergoing chemical reaction. By the end you will be able to make  predictions about simple chemical systems. I'm a fan of science and always  like learning more about it. If you are like me then I highly recommend you go  to brilliant.org/brainiac75 and sign up for free. As a bonus the first 200 people using the link will even get 20% off the annual premium subscription. Then you can do more crazy stuff  without any safety warnings from me. Alright. Because of the electric field I keep  a distance between the laptop and plasma ball. And I turn off the room light so only  the light from the plasma is picked up. The large one emits mostly infrared and some  visible light from the blue, red-tipped streamers. There's even a tiny amount of ultraviolet. The infrared and blue peaks match  well with spectral lines from xenon  while the red and ultraviolet match with neon. Not a big surprise since a common mixture  for modern plasma balls is neon-xenon. Still it is a nice feeling to confirm  the gases by just measuring the light. Thank you, patrons! Now for the smaller one which has  violet streamers with orange tips. Surely it has a different gas mixture. Uh oh. Look at that spectrum. Barely any visible light. Only a little  infrared but a whole lot of ultraviolet. I did not expect this to primarily  be an ultraviolet light source. Even with output in the UVB range. You should wear sunscreen near this! Feeling skeptical, I tested if the ultraviolet  output is enough to make things fluoresce. And sure enough: The white paper clearly fluoresces blue from the ultraviolet near the small globe. Same story with a high visibility vest. What gases did they choose for the small one? The infrared matches with argon while the violet and ultraviolet match with nitrogen. They used an argon-nitrogen mixture. Probably the same as used  inside incandescent bulbs. A cheap, easily available gas mixture. They combined the cheap gas with more valuable  low-iron glass that lets the ultraviolet pass. Not the best design choice. Though it does look pretty pretty... I'm not sure about the origin of the big  UV peak around 308 to 309 nanometers. My guess is hydroxyl being generated  from water vapor by the nitrogen plasma. Comment with your guess. Thanks to my awesome patrons for helping out with  the expensive but well worth it spectrometer. I wouldn't have it without your support. If you want to help me keep  going with the videos too   I have a link for my Patreon page  in the description under the video. Thank you. Don't forget to click like and  subscribe for more discoveries. Thank you for watching. Bye for now.

Channel: Brainiac75

Views: 998,698

Rating: 4.9148207 out of 5

Keywords: plasma, magnet, plasma ball, plasma globe, plasma lamp, magnetism, magnetic, test, experiment, science, neodymium, fun, interesting, beautiful, educational, learning, safety, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, light, spectrometer, transformer

Id: 1ppPrYeXoek

Length: 12min 8sec (728 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 30 2020