Quote from: Pirate88179 on December 30, 2007, 05:38:36 PM
@ Freezer:

Interesting links.  Thanks. I am pretty sure these materials are available somewhere for a decent price.  We just need to find what industry uses them, and then find a good supplier. Example, the carbon rod I bought is a gouging rod used in the welding industry.  It was about 1/10 the price (about $20) than quotes I received on similar rods. I am in the process of finding some magnesium in different forms very cheap.  I know someone mentioned auto wheels but, they have to be an alloy as magnesium is way to soft for it to be pure in that application.
Bill

An interesting related article on magnesium anodes.
http://www.anodesystems.com/pro5.html

@Jenna, are you sure your meter is not blown.  You should get current from a 1 galvanized nail, and a piece of copper.

@Mramos I will make sure not to split em up

bills picture of what he has may be deceiving if you don't read his post carefully ... He Connects the led in parallel wtih the cap and it yeilds a brighter result .... not in series... Im next to sure of this.. jenna was just giving you an example... MY point is the larger the resivor ... cap the better results we seem to be getting with a constant load even tho a small light ... it doesent logically make sense
                                                                         Joe

@Mramos
    Thanks for the quick reply. I was just touching on the point that if we hook the led directly to the ground electrodes and it glows a little, why does it glow brighter if we add a cap in parallel to that arrangment >? should make no difference. Thats the answer were after .
Thanks for the advice as well we all appreciate it.
                                                                                                       Joe

after watching a movie i had gotten a few mental pictures. someone once posted here about what materials and methods were available to the people in the older days and why did they have better luck? 

Hans maybe you can help most of all with this.

talking from vague memories please correct me if im wrong, in the older days i believe they operated from easily smelted items such as copper and iron.  in their crude smelting processes piles of charcoal or regular coal would be topped with iron or copper ore and set ablaze!  this yielded a high carbon iron alloy known as tool steel or pig iron. pig iron is usually used for iron that has so much carbon and impurity in it that the outer "skin" of the iron is nothing more than carbon!. this is how im sure the older spikes were used for grounding, as they would be easy to cast and as they hardend the excess carbon (steel doesnt like too much carbon) would bleed out forming a skin.   

also at thier disposal was the copper and teslas wonderful coils, im sure there was some old forms of coils being used on the telegraph lines right?  so if this is true then i can only assume we are indeed getting ac or a form of it and through these old "transformers" they were adding voltage to the lines,  i read a report i think it was posted here how after a while no more batteries were needed for the telegraph only ground spikes.

hope this makes some maddening sense.  i think they used 2 steel or iron which happens to be magnetic rods coated in carbon essentially miles appart  

i would imagin these spikes would be very similar to rail road spikes? maybe square one inch thick and a foot long.

Quote from: Localjoe on December 30, 2007, 10:11:25 PM
@Mramos
    Thanks for the quick reply. I was just touching on the point that if we hook the led directly to the ground electrodes and it glows a little, why does it glow brighter if we add a cap in parallel to that arrangment >? should make no difference. Thats the answer were after .
Thanks for the advice as well we all appreciate it.
                                                                                                       Joe

@ Joe

My guess is because the cap is perhaps filtering the "ac" picked up and this is being add to the output power.  Which brings me to my next point. 

@ Bill

The simplest way to explain induction, is a magnetic field, "inducing" current into a wire.  The big magnet makes makes the electrons that are on the surface of the wire, move.  This can be accomplished one of several ways.  Moving a coil, through vibration, (or rotation) in a magnetic field.  Or moving a magnetic field over stationary copper wire.  The TPU is a bit of both.  It has rotating magnetic fields that induce DC current into the collectors, with a little AC overriding and it has a lot of coil vibration.  If you want to know more about the TPU, go to the thread, and the link that says "Start Here".  But be warned, it is like starting a very loooooong game of Monopoly, it just keeps going!  LOL

Stubblefield's earth battery was not a battery.  It was an induction coil, with a secondary wound on top for greater gain and increased voltage, IMHO.  He was probably using the Telluric current, but also, the earth's magnetic field.  So, how did we get to the earth's magnetic field?  It is part of the cause for the Telluric current, as well as lightning.

Now if that very smart theory is to be believed, which I do, it would explain a whole lot.  So we have Earth (induction coil) moving inside of a magnetic field.  Now this is where it gets tricky and we have to use our brains.

The earths magnetic field strength is only .5 gauss.  .5 gauss is 4 field lines per inch.  This is very weak and bad news.  BUT there is some good news.  The earth's rotation, moving in this magnetic field is rotating at 465.11 meters per second, which is about .46 Kilometers per second.  And it is moving all of the time.  (Obviously!)

The induction coil has to be designed properly, so that the 4 field lines per inch cut perpindicular to the coils to induce current.  We need surface area in our coils, low resistance and Iron in the middle.  Similar to Stubblefield.  If we can get 1 coil to produce some small wattage, then we can put as many of those in the North/South magnetic line, wire them in series, parallel or what ever.  The perhaps will also pick up the Telluric current and that too would be added to the output.

When I get home, (Late next week) my first goal is to repeat your progress on the earth battery to keep my oscillating micro tpu running 4 ever.  During this time I will attempt to build an induction coil, that I am even now studying and planning out.  I also am going to use my then forever running micro tpu oscillator, to pulse a different type of coil arrangement, looking for more power.  That is my game plan for now.

The advantage I see, if we get induction current out of the earth, is the ability to pull out as much power as we want.  I am also still interested in seeing what happens if we smack the earth battery electrodes with some higher voltage!  (Besides causing all of the earthworms to the top of the soil.  )

Lastly, Bill, I would suggest going to Radio Shack and for $2.00 USD purchase a full bridge rectifier, to turn any AC into DC on your output.  It is simple to use and the diagram on the back of the package tells you how.  This way you will be measuring all of your output as DC and it will be more accurate.

I hope this explanation has helped.  Great experiments and great news about the increased amperage.  A little drawing of that new circuit would help!  Thanks!

Happy New Years to All!!


Bruce