Ibpointless2 Crystal Cells

[triffid]

This is a repost of mine mostly for Murfedits benefit.

Let me say something here.Putting these cells together requires quite a bit of skill using the materials we have available to us in the kitchen.While I can look at the catalogs on laboratory glassware and dream of paying out 150 dollars to 200 dollars for some really neat looking glassware.I know I really can't afford that.So I go to the grocery store ,buy cottage cheese and yogurt in plastic containers.That I can wash out and use for my experiments.I can buy applesauce in glass jars or pickles in glass jars.Wash those out and save them to use in my experiments.I can buy corn dogs and save and wash those wooden sticks to stir with or if they are flat like mine are.I can use them as a measure.So today I realized as I was treating my magnesium strips with borax that I was using stuff from the grocery store to work with.
triffid



low cost lab equipment to work with .plastic bottles to mix salt solutions with too.

[triffid]

Now I will add a little more to because I learned from Murfedit a little more.You can use scissors to cut out aluminum pop cans and plastic bottles to make low lying containers to put your stuff in.I have made funnels from plastic bottles and a sheet of paper(that was from me).
Now Murfedit uses plastic bottle caps as a base for his alligator clips(a trick I had never heard of before).Just a reminder that you don't have to buy expensive glassware to do your experiments with.triffid

[triffid]

Yesterday I measured the voltages on my soot partially covered piece of magnesium metal.My voltages were a lot lower.I could only get .015 volts max where I had .6 volts the first day and could only get .040 volts max on the bump of carbon on the backside where the day before I could get .59 volts.Of course these are maximums.Most of the times the voltages were lower but not zero!triffid

[triffid]

Different days give me different readings on my magnesium/carbon soot battery.Today I got max readings of .029 volts frontside and .116 volts backside.I will try to get a picture of this over the weekend.triffid

[ibpointless2]

Hi Triffid,


I see you're getting some low voltage from your new cell. Try recording the voltage of the cell and then hook the cell up to a capacitor and let it charge the capacitor. Try to use something like a 1uF capacitor. Let it charge over night and see if the voltage go up higher than they normally do.




Why I say this is that I have a crystal pressure cell that i let live in oil. I have had other crystal pressure cell placed in oil but what made this one different was that it wasn't allow to age like the other cells before placing it in the oil, as soon as this cell was made i put it in the oil. Well the cell look like it was performing nicely like the others. These pressure cells will start of at 1.3 volts and then go down to around 300mV and then climb back up to 1.1 volts. This pressure cell that was put in the oil right away went down to 200mV and stayed there, at first i thought it was dead but I was wrong! In-fact this cell is far from dead. This cell is playing possum. If i hook it up to a meter it will read around 200mV but that doesn't mean nothing. If i hook a capacitor up to it and allow it to charge the capacitor over night it will charge the capacitor beyond 1.2 Volts!


So to make this clear my crystal pressure cell is at 200mV, but hooking it up to a capacitor that is empty it will charge that capacitor beyond 1.2 volts. That is over a volt increase. Now the big question is ---- Where did this extra energy come from?    How can this be possible? a 200mV source can charge a capacitor beyond 1.2 volts, no circuits involved just a straight hook up to the capacitor.


This has gotten me so confused. This would be like a AA battery at 1.5 volts being able to charge a capacitor up to 2.5 volts, this would be impossible but yet my cell is doing this. I have run this test many times and i get the same result. I first used a 1uF capacitor that had less that 50mV in it and it was charged to 1.2, almost 1.3 volts the next morning. The cell had only 200mV in it when i mearsued it the next morning. I also removed the capactior and shortd out all day and when i came home from work i hook the cell back up to the capacitor and let it charge over night and i got the same results. So to make sure it was not a fluke I grabbed a 220uF capacitor that had at the time more voltage in it than in the cell, capacitor had 250mV and the cell was 202mV. I let it charge over night and now it is at 1.183 volts.


Its like the cell has more potential energy than what the multi-meter can read and the capacitor can see it just fine and is able to charge to that level. The meter sees only 200mV but the capacitor sees 1.2 volts. This is a odd thing to see.