Single circuits generate nuclear reactions

[Yucca]

I haven't got big caps yet, so cant test yet.

Would this config stand a good chance of working, the black block in the middle is a ceramic magnet for mock up purposes, I will of course use carbon.

I intend to charge big cap up to 300V (slowly using puny voltage multipler circuit) then discharge through the carbon.

[Feynman]

I am not sure how to discriminate, since we cannot label our electrons and check their passports when they're coming out of the rod to see where they've been.
-Dr. R

rofl


@Yucca

looks good my friend. 

[Inventor81]

use a carbon composition/carbon film resistor as your carbon rod.

Already has electrical contacts, and it can be soldered to a breadboard inside a small toroid.

This is my evening's experimental setup. IF, and that is a big IF, everything works properly, then I should be able to take a photo with my phone, of my phone, powered by the setup, with the handy dandy Li-Ion battery lying disparaged on the workbench.

If not, then we're wrong and full of BS, and this is some other electromagnetic effect unrelated to beta capture.

Seeing as how we've got 300 amps worth of beta particles flowing through a CC of air at 1 foot from the device.... I tend to think this is about as real as it gets.

[aleks]

Maybe to build a good "rod" for this would be to use
an aluminium tube,

At first you should be sure that beta particles hitting aluminium will create displacement voltage in it. Otherwise there is no sense in using aluminium for capture. Industry-grade betavoltaics use diodes which leads me to think that aluminium is not such a great thing for betavoltaics. I personally think that a multi-turn toroidal transformer would be a better thing; or rather an electromagnet: there is no need for voltage transformation: you just need a lot of copper wire turns around beta particle emission. I'm also pretty sure that beta particles are emitted perpendicular to carbon rod axis. So, each beta particle hitting copper wire will create a displacement current in it. What may be also necessary is a bit of decoupling: probably segmented windings over toroid should work much better since beta particles are emitted 360 degrees around carbon rod in average. This will create counteracting displacements if a single winding is used, so this will lower achieved COP and produce heat. Probably having 8 or 16 multi-layered windings around single toroid could be beneficial for the case of displacement currents. You may then combine these windings to likening: more voltage or more current (of course decoupling between windings will be necessary or otherwise it will be roughly the same thing as a single winding).

[UncleFester]

Understood. Then it's a plain discharge since whatever input frequency is, the capacitor - after reaching required charge threshold - will discharge in a unit pulse (example would be charging a capacitor from AC grid power outlet and then using it as a stun-gun). So, genuinely your "carbon rod input" is pulse discharge - not an AC. It would be AC only if you removed a high-energy capacitor.

EXACTLY. And if I had another spark gap I could allow the power supply to disconnect during discharge which should increase current levels. Remember I am putting very tiny amounts of power in, even with the capacitor discharging it is only .055uF! Total input into the neon power supply was 6.04 VDC @ .430Amperes (half an amp roughly), and yet the output was 508VAC @ 64mA. This is not enough current to even light a small 120VAC bulb and that is what I was aiming for. So current levels need to increase on the input side. I believe this will allow much higher currents on the output.