What Is Electricity? | FULL EPISODE COMPILATION | Science Max

science facts this episode of science Max is all about generating electricity where do we get this electricity that we use all the time we try to generate as much as we can using human power plus solar energy tidal energy wind energy and more all you need to do is turn the generator all on this episode of science Max experiments at Large greeting science maximites take a moment and imagine with me if you will a time when the only way to light your house was with candles or oil lamps there was no electricity that meant no power tools no video games no telephones and worst of all no TV fortunately we live in a world of electricity if you've ever lost power in your city or neighborhood you know how hard it is to get by without electricity even for one day but where does it all come from where do we get this electricity that we use all the time we make it that's the cool thing and I can show you how to make it as well check it out all you need is an electric motor electric motors are pretty simple all you do is get a battery and you attach it to the electric motor and that makes it work there we go attached to the battery it spins but if you spin the electric motor it creates electricity and that's what we're going to look at today creating electricity we're going to build a wind turbine But first you need an electric motor and you can probably get one from a broken toy just make sure that the toy is broken and that the broken part isn't the electric motor here's what you need index cards or construction paper scissors push pins science tape it's the same as invisible tape except I use this one for science a cork Chopsticks craft sticks and modeling clay and remember all the steps for this experiment are on our website to begin cut the index cards into strips and tape down a push pin so it sticks out then fold over the index card and tape it together then stick the pin into the Cork and repeat that step if you want as many blades as you can get on your fan you are welcome to do that next take your modeling clay and stick the Chopsticks in then tape the craft sticks in between with science tape then take the motor and stick the cork on the end then wedge the motor in between the craft sticks and tape it down so it stays put and there you go a fan that will spin in the wind you want to adjust the fan blade so they all face on a bit of an angle that way they will catch the wind and spin there we go now when it spins it will create electricity I'll show you with this it's a multimeter and a multimeter measures little amounts of electric current there the hair dryer makes wind spinning the fan blades and we are creating electricity now pretty much all electricity that you make comes down to turning a generator a smart motor like this isn't going to produce a lot of electricity barely enough to power one tiny little LED but it's a start and a good start is all we need because today on science Max experiments at large we're going to look at all kinds of different ways of generating electricity plus I want to find out just how much electricity one human being can generate although one human being is going to be kind of lonely I'm going to need an expert oh I know Anthony from the Ontario Science Center he can help I wonder if he's busy well come on [Applause] [Music] oh Anthony so I was wondering if you could help me with an experiment I want to generate as much electricity with human power what do you think I think that sounds awesome okay great let's go back to science Max headquarters is that the portal yeah don't worry all the Kinks are worked out I know what it is it's this where did you end up I was in the vents oh I ended up in the bathroom all right well now that we're here okay so this is what I started with and this is uh just you know an electric motor right right um so you can generate electricity you spin it so I figured in order to generate more electricity to get a bigger generator exactly yeah the bigger the generator the bigger the magnet the more the copper the more the electricity oh well you know what we should do is we should just get an even bigger one like a giant one that they use in like a power plant or something or not quite that would be too big for a person to be able to turn it'd just be impossible so you think this is a good size I think this is great so okay so that's that's good this is called a multimeter we're gonna hook up the wires we'll do black to uh black to Black the red and as you turn our generator we can see just how much electricity we're generating okay so here you hold on to that generator now it's time to play how much electricity did they make 2.4 volts yeah it's not bad oh 2.4 yeah it's not great that's just enough to power a small LED flashlight better keep trying boys I got some handles here that we're going to attach to the end of the generator so you can spin it okay let's try it huh no matter how fast I crank the large handle I couldn't make any more electricity than before okay let's try something else I bet it's a smaller handle perfect okay yeah that's good yeah well maybe it'll let us get more spins in oh yeah because I don't have to make as big a circle exactly yeah it's working already we're almost at like 3.5 now how much electros it is filmmaking 4.5 that's the same as three double a batteries maybe enough to power a toy car still a long way to go yeah it's a lot higher with the faster spins oh all right all right you okay I'm okay maybe we could use like some gears or something like that oh yeah you know that's a good idea because the the this circle that I'm making here I can only go so fast yeah maybe with gears you can do one Circle here equals like 10 circles on the other gear exactly yeah okay so kind of like the like the gears on on like on like a bike yeah the gears on a bike or something like that a bite of course yeah so okay so we get a bike and we attach the back tire to the generator the generator and then you can use the pedals of the big gear to power the small gear okay great we'll go get a bite yeah yeah high five ah all right oh right they're over here [Music] this is the generator it generates electricity when you spin it but how does it work what Wizardry is inside well actually generating an electric current is fairly simple all you need is two things first you need a conductor like this coil of copper wire and you need a magnet now this is a galvanometer it measures small amounts of electric current and I have my copper wire attached to it watch as I put the magnet inside the copper I get a little bit of an electric current and then I take it out it goes in the other direction a little bit going this way and then I take it out a little bit going that way positive more negative positive negative this kind of current that goes back and forth is called alternating current or AC it's the same kind of electricity you have in your house but here's the cool thing watch this I put the magnet in and I leave it it goes back to zero you only get electricity when you move the magnet all right so let's create our generator instead of starting with a copper coil like this what if we just had the magnet and we have it staying still like that and we move the conductor past it like spinning it's good but not great because we're only getting a little bit of electricity as it passes so let's make it more efficient let's put in some more magnets one on either side and one on the top and now when we spin it it goes past all of these magnets and every time we get a little bit of electric current well this is how a generator works if you take an electric motor or a generator apart you can see there's a coil of copper wires on the shaft and it spins around like this and on the inside there are magnets so there you go when you put it together and spin it you get an electric current or if you put an electric current in it it will spin just like an electric motor and that is how a generator works [Music] Anthony and I are trying to create as much electricity as we can using just human power but so far it hasn't been going so well it all comes down to how fast we can spin the generator maybe we can use like some gears or something like that in order to get it spinning really fast we're gonna use a bike it's just a matter of getting a bike taking off the wheel putting it on a stand it is now a stationary bike it'll be even more stationary once we screw it down and attaching the generator hey the bike generator biker Raider what's what should we call this thing uh Viking a Nader bike no mater I like it so okay let's go over what we've got here okay so we've got uh two gears we've got a big one we got a small one we turn our pedals and the big gear turns the small one so this this is the whole point of this build is so that we can get one revolution here means a whole bunch is spinning exactly the more we get here the more our generator spins and the more electricity we get we get tons awesome and uh obviously using bike because you're using your legs uh-huh the strongest muscles in your body awesome uh-huh okay so now what's with this horn oh that is a loud horn I know I know I tried to warn you that is great I love that so Anthony and I hop on and give it a pedal we pedal as hard as we can and we produce a pretty good amount of electricity how much electricity did they produce we got up to maybe like 18 there a pretty good job that's enough for a power tool like a drill it's good you know what this this works well I think for keeping a good number for a long period of time yeah you can get up to like 18 20 but it doesn't we can't really get any higher than that yeah you know what we need is like one really hard pull like all of a sudden that way you can get like a spike yeah you're right so it's like instead of putting all that effort into a going for a long time yeah you put all the effort into one quick motion exactly yeah good idea so you wrap a rope around here and then you just pull it exactly exactly and that'd be a really fast motion spin it really quick and get a very high number High Spike exactly okay you know we we're gonna have to take the bike apart though ah okay all right well it's science Okay cool so I'll just get it oh you know what we actually don't have to take the whole bike apart we just have to take the generator off all right okay hang on a sec I got it and maybe we should attach the horn to the next thing too what do you know turn it off [Applause] [Music] so you want to generate some electricity but what do you choose to generate that electricity Hydro nuclear coal solar who knows I do I know and soon so will you in order to generate electricity you'll need to turn the generator turn the generator one of the most common ways to turn the generator is to use one of these it's a steam engine usually they're a lot bigger you see you heat the water to boil it and turn it to steam which works a piston which turns the generator huh pretty amazing right but what it really boils down to is heating water to make Steam boil water to make Steam to turn the generator full power burn the coal to boil water to make Steam to turn the generator natural gas that's different right nope burn the gas to oil water to make Steam to turn the generator nuclear power that's different right nope it creates heat which you use to boil water to make Steam to turn the generator wind power we don't even need heat for that just use the wind to spin the fan to turn the generator hydropower just pour water across something that spins to turn the generator no matter what make an electricity always comes down to turn in the generator it's always yada yada yada yada turn the generator except for solar solar does not work like that but other than that it's always yada yada yada yada to turn the generator and now you know your electricity generation hey Ramona you want to come and give me a hand over here my arm is getting tired it is hot out here oh in order to generate electricity you need to spin a generator most forms of electricity generation work like that but not solar solar panels like this one generate electricity from the sun's energy so how do they do it well this is a solar panel okay it's not really a solar panel I just sort of put this together but it works the same way there are two plates and on these plates are electrons I've got golf ball electrons up here ping pong ball electrons down here but they're all the same thing now this happy little fellow is a photon energy from the Sun in handy dandy particle form what happens is photons come from the Sun and hit the top plate and knock some electrons from one side to the other like this foreign s now these extra electrons travel up a wire in the form of electricity and we can use them to do work for us then they change to the other charge go back and we start the process all over again that is how solar panels work but remember it only works when there's sun and photons oh Anthony and I are trying to generate electricity using human power spinning the generator didn't work too well but we found if we used some gears like those on a bike it worked better you know what we need is like one really hard pull like all of a sudden using gears is a great way to get work done the good news is there are generators with gears already in them that means if we can turn the spindle once the gears inside will spin the coil a lot of times the only downside turning the spindle gets harder the higher the gear Anthony and I attach a spindle and then we wind up the Rope which takes a while okay so the plan is it's on a big spool now yeah and you just run as fast as you can got it and we'll hopefully get as many revolutions as we can depending on how fast your top speed is okay sounds good I can be pretty quick okay good all right ready on your mark uh-huh get set go how much electricity did they create 24 volts actually not bad that's enough to power their own personal scooter not too shabby boys we need like a hard pull all at once yeah something like really big but what if we could get uh like really high like okay like up there could we attach the generator up there you could jump down from there um and I would hang on the Rope yeah it's good but I don't want to jump from up there um oh what if we put a pulley up there and then the Rope goes through the pulley and then back down and then I jump from somewhere much safer like just on top of here onto a crash mat or something that sounds great and that's my full body weight on the on the rope that sounds great all right high fives yeah tidal power in 60 Seconds [Music] by now you know that in order to create electricity you need to spin a generator scientists and Engineers are always coming up with lots of new ways to use natural forces of the earth to spin a generator and create electricity one of those Natural Forces one of those Natural Forces is the power of the tides you see the water in the oceans doesn't stay still every few hours the water or the tide goes out and then a few hours later it comes back in So if you attach a Paddle Wheel in the water and attach that to a generator When the tide goes out it creates electricity When the tide comes back in it creates electricity that is how you create electricity using the power of the tides it's water power in fact hydroelectricity is also using water power do we have do we have time to talk about hydroelect we don't have time we we don't okay come back come back hydroelectric power in 20 seconds 20 seconds uh okay hi electricity comes from water Hydro means water so all you have to do is find a place where water pours down from a height and you can put a generator in there and ta-da you're creating electricity with the power of hydro I did it Anthony and I have pulled and pedaled and now we're going to hang on to the rope and use our whole body weight to spin the generator as fast as possible okay okay crash math uh-huh let me test it out looks good yep it's good for crashing so I go up here uh-huh okay I go up here climb on up we'll get you the Rope got your helmet for safety helmet for safety crash mat for safety so we have the rope and it goes up through that pulley and then back down to our generator right with the spindle on it and as I fall that spindle will turn exactly and hopefully the speed of me falling and holding and yanking it down as hard as I can will be the biggest Spike of electricity yet that's right we'll be measuring it on our multimeter okay okay ready you ready yeah here we go three two one I jumped down and my whole body weight pulls on the line oh that was awesome it was like our biggest Spike ever that was amazing all right high fives biggest Spike ever is it enough to power my house nope how much electricity did Phil generate almost 30 volts how much does he need to power his house 120 volts he's still off by quite a bit well we've learned something nuclear a wind Hydro a solar natural gas full power it's all great ways to generate electricity yeah and human power not so much not as good but human power is more fun yeah way more fun yeah so you your turn yeah and I'll take the multimeter okay and then we'll go and we'll do it again okay okay wait I gotta wind it up [Music] magnets are magnets you can turn on or off when you want we build our own electromagnet and see just how powerful we can make it it held a hundred kilograms plus ferrofluid Wizards and I try to get to the North Pole using a compass now that I'm here I realize it's really difficult all on this episode of science Max experiments at Large greeting science maximites my name is Phil and welcome to science Max experiments at large at this very moment half the lab is being held together with the power of electromagnets a magnet one turning off electromagnets are a really cool and Powerful way to interact with the world and when I say power that's because you need power to make them work or not work magnetism is an invisible force that has to do with the magnetic fields created by magnets that lets them attract things that are metal or each other but electromagnetism is a little different you see magnets are magnets all the time it's because of what they're made out of electromagnets are only a magnet when you have an electric current going through them which means you can turn them on or off ha today we're going to be building an electromagnet oh that was that was the wrong switch anyway like I was saying today we're going to be building an electron copper wire a very large nail or something metal to become your electromagnet electrical tape a battery an on off switch wire strippers or a craft knife and the help of an adult and finally something to magnetize like these paper clips and remember all of the steps for this experiment are on the website to begin take the copper wire and start at the top of the nail leave a little bit of wire sticking out then carefully start to wrap the wire around the nail don't go all the way to the end because you need some metal to turn into the magnet instead when you want to start again run the wire straight back to the top and start wrapping again in the same direction and keep wrapping and wrapping until you get to this now I've used some electrical tape here here and here to hold it all together using your wire strippers or a craft knife and the help of an adult remove the plastic coating from the ends of the wires attach these wires to the wires from the on off switch with electrical tape or attach them directly to a battery if you don't have an on off switch and ta-da you have an electromagnet with your on off switch all you need to do is take the things you're going to magnetize turn your electromagnet on and suddenly it becomes a magnet pretty amazing and then you can magnetize to your heart's contents but when you're done don't forget you want to turn it off so that's what we're gonna do today on science Max experiments at large we're gonna max out the electromagnet so where's my lab coat oh there it is we're gonna see how big we can make an electromagnet and when I say we I mean me and an expert let's see oh Heather from the Ontario Science Center she knows her way around magnets so let's see uh yeah I wonder if she's busy well let's find it and after we're done I'll need to come back and clean up the giant mess I made in the lab [Music] hey hi Heather how you doing good good to see you guys I was just wondering if you could help me with something are you busy no I've got time okay great because I'm gonna make a giant electromagnet experiment and I need your help that sounds like a lot of fun okay great let's go back to science Max headquarters yeah by the portal oh I'm gonna reassure you nothing will go wrong great okay okay oh hey we're here we're oh it's okay no I think definitely you all right yeah I was supposed to come in over there but I came in over here uh oh well so today Heather I want to max out the electromagnet turn it on and it's a magnet pretty good and turn it off and it stops being a magnet I want to make this into a much bigger maxed out version all right so what what are some of the things we can do to do that well actually if you have a larger battery one that has a higher voltage we can try that for sure okay there are batteries that are 12 volts yes we could try one of those let's try I think those are like bigger right yeah yeah bigger more powerful absolutely now that's one thing you could do you can also increase the number of wraps of our coil here so how many times we wrap that wire yes we'll increase that magnetic field making our magnet stronger and of course the nail which is important because that's the thing that that eventually becomes the magnet right right on yes so what I thought we would do is we would start with a bigger nail what right so a larger battery yes More Voltage and a lot more wraps of the wire right on and we have more space for that now which is smart good job great okay so uh we'll get to work Max historica ah if you've ever seen a compass you know that the needle Points North that's because a compass needle is a magnet and it points towards the Earth's magnetic north pole and I'm using this Compass to try to get to the North Pole but it isn't easy in fact scientists knew there was such a thing as the North Pole as far back as the 16th century but no one was able to actually get there on foot until 1927. you'd think it wouldn't be that hard right I mean the needle points you straight there just follow the needle right but now that I'm here I realize it's really difficult I mean the wind is incredible and the snow is intense and and it's so cold my hands are my hands um yeah so okay we're not really at the North Pole we were just sort of recreating uh that um but still I salute the brave explorers who tried to make it there in the name of Science and I got a sense of it because the the wind from the fan and the and the fake the fake snow was um okay everybody let's pack it up I mean that was that was that was pretty good I just didn't know about that other about that other camera so back to our main experiment where Heather and I are building a larger electromagnet an electromagnet works like this when an electric current is traveling through a wire it creates a magnetic field if you wrap that wire around something ferromagnetic that's something made out of a metal that is attracted to magnets like an iron nail then it becomes a magnet you can make a magnet stronger by wrapping more wire which gives more distance for the current to travel increasing the magnetic field and you can also increase the strength of the current Heather and I start with a coil of 30 meters of wire and start wrapping and wrapping and wrapping there the wire is now all done and remember if you're doing this at home do not use a drill unless you have an adult to help you out because drills can be very dangerous this one goes at a very slow speed so it was okay but yes definitely an adult supervised activity this then we attach another on off switch and make some leads that connect to a 12 volt battery so more wraps of wire and more current means the electromagnet should be stronger okay so we're going to try this electromagnet and we're going to pick up this stuff right here great ready you ready yeah three two one go is it on yeah yeah it really does you can't tell that it's on but no but bring it closer and oh yeah look at that okay let me turn it off all right hahaha let's see if this nail can pick up this nail all right ready ready go oh okay oh no uh no I don't think we're strong enough it's not strong enough I I think that we need to Max this out even more even more right so I'm thinking there are a lot of plunk oils and high voltage so we're in a lab here maybe do you have old appliances around I have I have part spins with a whole bunch of stuff maybe we could find some electromagnets in those let's do it okay great let's go [Music] moving back all right pliers battery copper wire now if you've already done the electromagnet experiment here's another experiment that uses all the same materials plus these ha neodymium magnets some of the strongest magnets you can get here's what you need a battery some neodymium magnets the same diameter as your battery copper wire and some pliers so here's what you do first thing is you put the batteries and the magnets together like that then what you want to do is bend the wire so it's touching the top of the battery and goes around the battery and then touches the magnets at the bottom here's what that might look like I say might because you can do any shape you want I've made a coil here and if I put it over the battery you'll see it only touches the very top of the battery and the magnets at the bottom and if I let it go it spins it's a homopolar motor what happens is the battery sends an electric current through the copper wire and that turns it into an electromagnet which is attracted to the magnets at the bottom and it spins so now let's Max it out haha a D cell battery which is larger and of course larger neodymium magnets and you do the same thing make a coil that only touches the battery at the top and at the magnet and ha ha hens maxed out homopolar motor but don't worry this is not the biggest size we're gonna do come on maxed out homophone and a neodymium magnet so I'm just gonna and then we get down okay so the first thing I do is attach the neodymium magnet to B batteries and I've got all the batteries taped together here so they'll sort of stand up like like this huh giant stack of D cell batteries okay now what I do is I take the copper I take the copper coil um I need to get I need to get okay hold on hold on I got this I just need to get there I did it okay so I take the copper and I put it on top of the D cell batteries like this and then I let it go let it go nope whoa hobo puller motor [Music] okay so that didn't work but that's okay I like it when it doesn't work because that's science it's not science if it works perfectly over time I mean you gotta have some room for improvement Heather and I built a larger electromagnet but it still wasn't as powerful as we hoped so now we're searching for parts that came out of an appliance that are pre-built electromagnets what about this I think that'll do the trick do you think this is a this is that does look like an electromagnet it does yeah and there's a whole big bunch of copper wires coiled around so you think we can use this yeah let's try it okay great we built the next version of the electromagnet this one already has the copper coils so it's just a matter of attaching wires and an on off switch and attaching all of it to a 12 volt battery if you think 12 volts will be enough let's find out I think so try that once we do it works much better oh no problem at all ready yep turn it on on whoa pretty good okay neat in case it was really strong I have the next step horseshoe okay ready whoa that's Fair I can't pull that off I okay wait we'll grab this okay work together yep all right so that's past all of our tests this is really strong um what a way to test it further in order to test how strong our magnet is it's as easy as seeing how much weight it'll lift Heather and I find a metal table all right Phil so I brought the electromagnet okay let's put it right here yep we had some sandbags for more weight and then attach a scale so we can measure how much weight we're lifting we use a chain hoist a simple machine made for lifting heavy things this one can hold up to 454 kilograms wanna turn it on already yep here we go you can read on the scale how much weight is being lifted in that scale it's going up pounds on this side kilograms on this side keep lifting until oh okay so how much did it hold it held a hundred kilograms oh that's more than I weigh which gives me an idea come on [Music] this is feral fluid it is ferromagnetic which means it's attracted to magnets and I know what you're thinking you're thinking it's not that interesting well watch as I put it next to this magnet um very interesting and because it's a liquid it behaves in very interesting ways watch this unlike most things ferromagnetic like paper clips or iron filings ferrofluid is a liquid which means it behaves in a unique way the spikes it creates are following the magnetic field lines of the magnet you can see the magnetic field in 3D it's even more impressive when we Max it out this is ferrofluid outside of a glass jar now it's sitting in a pool around this electromagnet and this is a dial which I can use to change the voltage of the electromagnet making the magnet stronger watch this changing the current going to the spiral in the middle turns it into a magnet the more current I put in the stronger that magnet becomes allowing the ferrofluid to climb the spiral to the top and remember even though it looks all spiky it's still a liquid I will demonstrate with my plastic spoon and watch this when I turn the magnet off stops being spiky turn it on turn it off science The Wizard Academy all you have to do is demonstrate true magic and you will be granted entry [Music] who is the next applicant for The Wizard Academy and prepare to be over well would you be flabbergastified if I balanced this coin on its end not really no what would you be impressed if I was to balance this coin on top of this coin possibly prepared to be flustered and stupefied stupid stupid flustered as I balance three coins on their ends on top of this class where that certainly would seem like magic let us see okay no pressure over one more you can do this and now I say a magic word a magic word and now you must let me into your Academy [Music] wait what's under the cloth what what cloth this growth nothing oh is that a magnet this mode the pull of the magnet is what's keeping those coins up the magnet is just strong enough to keep the coins from falling no this is set set dressing it's just it was a good trick but it's science not magic well yes and you will see you will see I will be back I overwhelmo will return and I will do such magic that you will need extra socks because I will knock them off with my magic you will need at least two pairs of maybe three pairs of socks we can still see you no you can't so back to our main experiment Heather and I have created a very strong electromagnet that can hold a lot of weight it held a hundred kilograms oh which gave me an idea all right you ready let's do it electromagnets super maxed out experiment we've got two electromagnets one two and those are wired two two batteries which are on my belt just like this so that I can carry them around and we've got a crash mat here because we need to keep you safe because you're going to be using these electromagnets to get across this massive beam above us that's right I'm gonna stick to this metal beam and go across with the electromagnets we hope I I'm glad you do I've got a helmet for safety goggles for safety glove glove for safety but in this case sometimes the lab coat is more safe and sometimes it's less safe this time it will get all caught up so no no lab coat all right you ready to go I'm ready okay my goodness what okay because each of our electromagnets can hold more than my whole body weight I can use them to cross the beam when they're on they stick like oh well magnets and when I turn them off they stop being magnets and I can move them along as I go now this is something you should definitely not try at home come on Phil [Applause] okay I'm going again [Applause] [Music] on this episode of science Max I'm on a quest to harness the power of lightning it's balloon sticking hoop levitating hair raising power is all thanks to static electricity hold on to your grounding rods there's electricity in the air oh on this episode of science Max experiments at Large greeting science maximize welcome to science Max experiments at large my name is Phil and today on science Max we're going to be harnessing the awesome power of lightning how are we harnessing the power of lightning you ask with this balloon I know what you're thinking you're thinking Phil what's similar between a balloon and lightning well nothing right now but behold as I use the power of static electricity and rub the balloon on my head because basically that's how it starts you see when I run this balloon on my head it's stealing electrons from me creating a positive charge in my hair and a negative charge in the balloon and the interesting thing is you know that things with opposite charges attract each other right something that has a positive charge will attract negative things and vice versa but anything with the charge will attract anything with a neutral charge see all these things on the table they all have a neutral charge which means they've got equal amounts of positive and negative right now this balloon is building up a big negative charge which means it will be attracted to all of these things this can of science Max soda it has a neutral charge the balloon has a negative charge which means the can will be attracted to the balloon and this paper is neutrally charged which means the paper will be attracted to the balloon and if you hold the negatively charged balloon next to neutrally charred sugar haha sugar storm and you probably wait I don't want to get sugar in my hair and you probably know this trick if you rub a balloon on your head you can stick it on the wall but what does any of this have to do with lightning well the same thing is going on with a lightning bolt the clouds become negatively charged and that negative charged wants to equalize itself with the ground which is neutrally charged and that lightning bolt is the electricity jumping from one place to another and you can see this yourself if you rub a balloon on your head and you put it next to something metal like a doorknob they'll be a Sparks but here's another thing you can do if you don't have a balloon which I guess I don't anymore rub your feet if you're wearing socks on a carpet and then turn out all the lights and touch a doorknob you might be able to see a spark jump from your finger to the door that's lightning in a very very small form so that's what we want to do today on science Max experiments at large max out lightning I think I'm gonna go to the Ontario Science Center and ask Heather her advice she really knows her stuff I'm gonna go see if she's busy right now come on [Music] you got the portal Place well it's not exactly fixed it's still got a couple bugs that I'm ironing out but I stopped coming in 10 feet above the floor so that's a step in the right direction anyway Heather I've come here because I want to ask your advice on something yeah for sure awesome so what I am doing is creating lightning so this is where I'm at right now so this is a balloon I blow up the balloon and then I rub it on my head and it creates a static charge right yeah just like in the lightning bolt between the clouds and the ground so I was wondering if I was wondering if you could help me maybe Max that out and I thought the perfect place to start would be a larger balloon oh right on action so what I figured is I'll just start rubbing it on my head okay and then we could maybe stick it to the wall or something yeah I think instead of a wall we can even try on this this white board here oh okay great keep Robin I'm rubbing do I get ready yeah so that um that didn't didn't exactly work yeah both of us rubbing our heads on the balloon [Music] okay and go wow that was a whole lot of nothing well we've got a really heavy balloon here and I feel like our heads are only this big so we can't cover as much surface area of the balloon fortunately you can also build up a static charge by rubbing a balloon on a sweater or if your balloon is giant rubbing sweaters on your balloon but even that didn't work so well I think what we need to do is come up with a better way to create a difference of charge yeah yeah let's forget about the balloon you have something else I have something else really awesome here at the Science Center absolutely yeah right should we take the sweater in the balloon here we'll leave them here okay [Music] so here's how static electricity works normally everything has equal numbers of positive and negative charges that's when things are said to have a neutral charge but when you rub a balloon on your head the balloon develops more negative charge than positive because it pulls electrons from your hair the same thing happens in clouds during a storm the cloud develops a negative charge when water molecules start bumping into each other a lightning bolt happens when the negative charge in the cloud gets so big the attraction to the positive charge in the ground gets strong enough that the electrons can make the jump all the way from the cloud to the ground and you get lightning course Heather and I tried to max out the static on a balloon but a big heavy balloon just doesn't hold the same charge that didn't didn't exactly work but we're only interested in maxing out the static charge and Heather knows just what to use wow so this is the Ontario Science Center electricity show yes okay so where's the electricity part the one we're going to be playing with is right there so the giant mushroom does look like a mushroom I'm gonna make some sort of electricity salad all right head on up onto that platform right there and I need you to put one hand on that silver ball yes so the way nothing is happening patience okay once I turn it on when I engage it this is going to steal your negative charge so it's going to steal your electrons so if it seals electrons you're going to be positively charged so it'll make me more positive even more positive I am positive here we go whoa this machine is called a Van de Graaff generator and it pulls the negative charge away from the person touching it that is great instead of having equal amounts of positive and negative charges you become positively charged science hair yeah yeah like when you try to put two positive ends of magnets next to each other each hair on your head starts to repel the others and be repelled from your head science [Applause] food so your hair stands up [Applause] I can't see anything so this is more of a machine to generate hair standing up but it doesn't make lightning oh well actually I have a demonstration in my back pocket this is going to help us okay to create lightning this is our grounding rod it is my scepter of Science and so we're gonna use this to continuously provide that negative charge that's why it's plugged in that's why it's plugged into the ground yeah okay okay so then if you touch it to that metal ball got it uh not too exciting right so pull away and let's see what happens whoa whoa this is what I'm talking about the Van de Graaff creates a positive charge the rod has a neutral charge when the difference becomes big enough the charge jumps the gap behold I have the power of lightning [Laughter] so it's the difference between the positive and the negative is what we want when we want to make a lightning fold yeah so is there something we can use to make that happen large difference of charge yeah I think I have just a thing oh yeah you want to check it out absolutely all right okay let's go [Music] so you would like to move electricity from here to there well what you need my friend is a conductor all right a little more arpeggio this time no not that kind of conductor All Aboard no not that kind of conductor either um this kind of conductor I know what you're thinking you're thinking hey that's just a piece of metal well that's right that's cause you're smart this is a circuit electricity flows from this battery along the wires and into the light bulb but why Don't You cleverly observe the light bulb is not lit this is true that is because we have a gap in the circuit and the air is not a good conductor of electricity is metal a good conductor of electricity let us find out [Music] metal is a good conductor of electricity oh boy nope what about this horseshoe is a good conductor will this sandwich conduct electricity nope no plastic fish nope what about this pickle no pickle is not a good conductor that's why we make electrical wires out of copper and not pickles you know in case you were wondering lightning bolts make interesting patterns that's because the electricity is searching for a way to get from one side to the other but it's hard to see the patterns of lightning bolts because they happen so fast fortunately using the power of science we can observe these patterns for ourselves in a motion we can perceive I'm going to use electricity to recreate a lightning bolt pattern I've got two Nails in a piece of wood here and I'm going to attach electrical leads to both nails now the electricity wants to go from that side to that side but it can't it has to go through the wood and wood is not a very good conductor of electricity now this is very dangerous I need a special machine even to pull this off so this is definitely not something you want to try at home in fact I'm going to stand way back here when I turn it on like water electricity tries to find the easiest route to get from one place to another but sometimes that involves branching out until the right connection is made lightning bolts do the same thing when they Branch out between the clouds and the ground finally there's a spot where the branches meet and the circuit completes itself then the electricity follows this one path ignoring all the others and there you go we just watched a lightning bolt happen in slow motion science to our main experiment where Heather and I are on a quest to use static electricity to recreate a lightning bolt our experiments with the bandograph generator had some hair raising results but Heather has another experiment she wants to show this is Jacob's Ladder oh so this is another way to make lightning yes yes let's do it all right how do we get it to go all right so we want to turn it on behold oh turn it on okay go you can actually see that like climbing up between the two copper wires that's why you call it Jacob's Ladder because it's got the rungs of the ladder yeah between these two points there's a really great charge difference right okay so what's the difference 10 000 volts if you're looking at a 10 000 volts and volts is how you measure the difference in charge exactly why does it go up so it goes up because rather than just staying at the closest point is because we're heating up the air so hot air rises hot air rises and it takes the electricity with it so if we cooled the air it wouldn't go up wouldn't immediately go up yeah and there it goes and it Heats back up again yeah that's neat okay so we have a Van de Graaff generator we got a Jacob's Ladder are there any other devices that make lightning like this oh yeah there's other things like the Tesla coil really high I have a Tesla coil you know Tesla coil I do I've got one at the lab I've just never known how to hook it up oh I can help with that yeah really yeah okay let's do it let's go back to the left um yeah no yeah I'll turn that off okay yeah safety first okay yeah [Music] by now you're probably an expert on what happens when you rub a balloon on your head right the balloon becomes negatively charged which means it will attract anything of an opposite charge or anything positive or anything that is neutrally charged like um well like me look at the hairs on my arm when I bring the balloon close whoa you see the neutral charge in my body is being attracted to the negative charge in the balloon so if something is negatively charged what happens if you bring something else negatively charged nearby well they'll repel each other and here's an experiment you can do to make something fly using static electricity you'll need a balloon a sweater scissors and a plastic bag out of the thinnest plastic you can find fold the bag up and cut off the bottom you don't want that part then cut another strip from the bag this will give you a hoop of plastic I find it works better if you break it and tie it again lie it flat and rub it with the sweater this will give it a negative charge you'll know you've got enough of a charge when it really wants to stick to the table then take your balloon and rub the sweater on the balloon to charge it up because both the balloon and the hoop have negative charges they repel each other then put them together and it will repel and you can get the hoop to levitate haha if floating bag of static charge but here's the thing you need to keep it away from your body because if you get close the bag will stick to you because you're neutrally charged and the bag is negatively charged pretty cool right well let's Max it out Max down floating static ring yeah look out look out oh no sorry about that uh uh oh well it was it was fun while it lasted I gotta charge these up again [Music] cooking up science recipes is my specialty I'm Busta Bika and this is cooking with science [Applause] oh hello I didn't see you there my name is Buster Baker and welcome to cooking with science let's say for example I've spilled a salt oh no look at me I've spilled the salt oh there's salt all over the place not really a big deal right all you have to do is clean up the salt put it back in the container but oh no I've also spilled pepper on the salt but that's all right you might be able to carefully separate the set but no oh dear look the pepper in the salt were all mixed together what do I do well here's how you can save the day using the power of science all you need is a cloth and a plastic spoon like like this one here just rub the plastic spoon on a cloth and you'll be charging it up with a negative charge of static electricity if it's got a negative charge it will attract anything that has a neutral charge just like the salt and pepper but I know what you're thinking how will we separate them well here's the answer my friends pepper is lighter than Salt observe so if you hold the spoon high enough the pepper will be attracted and make the jump up to the bottom of the spoon but not the salt as long as you've got it high enough up because the salt is heavier you'd have to bring the spoon closer which we're not going to do and if you tap it off to the side you'll make a nice little pile of pepper and there you go separating the pepper from Salt using the power of science [Music] thanks for watching cooking with science I'm Buster Baker Heather and I have been on a quest to recreate lightning using static electricity we've gone from balloons to a bandograph to a Jacob's Ladder each more lightning ye than the last finally Heather suggests we use a Tesla coil oh is this named after Nikola Tesla yeah he invented it oh one of the founding fathers of electricity right I love Nicola Tesla he's cool so how does it work so the way this works is it is a Step up Transformer meaning we take a lower voltage and bringing it up and ramp it up to a much higher voltage okay so normal voltage is 120 volts that's what we have a normal plug-in typically we're getting it out of yeah and we're going to ramp that up to really high mounts I'm 25 000 maybe even 250 000. wow that's a lot and all that charge build up we're gonna see something pretty amazing happen okay I see it yes um we stand back there right let's check it out and the Tesla coil builds up a charge which jumps through the air to this neutral Rod just like a lightning bolt we made a lightning bolt that totally jumped a long way that was impressive that was a really good one so can you control it yeah okay all right I'm going to lower my frequency okay let's see what happens oh that's amazing oh it's like a scattered lightning bolt oh wait a minute you can play different notes hey different notes hold I need five minutes hold on okay okay all I need is five minutes you know I was thinking is if you can make different hold that for a second if you can make different frequencies that means you can make different notes right right so oh I don't need that either hold on ah that's not what I mean okay one more thing can I get that hammer yeah okay ready to go so what is this when you told me the Tesla coil could play different frequencies I thought we could make different notes come out of the Tesla coil so I programmed it to play the notes of the science Max theme song yeah you want to hear yeah let's try it [Music] science Max experiments at large lightning bolts lightning dance [Music] [Music] my name is Phil and I take your everyday science experiments and do them big this is science facts experiments at harsh [Music]

Channel: Science Max - 9 Story

Views: 565,183

Keywords: Electricity, static electricity, motors, electromagnets, Science Max, Experiments, Kids, Science, Bill Nye, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Awesome, Awesome experiments, Home experiments, educational, tvo, science max experiments at large, science experiments, science experiments for kids, science for kids

Id: Dd8-shfewj0

Length: 62min 58sec (3778 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 27 2023