Joule Thief

[Freezer]

@ Freezer:

Thanks!  Geeze, I thought I was the first....darn. (ha ha)  I tried my hand first as I have read that this work...but...nothing.  Then I got my very strong neo (it was out of one of those shake flashlights) and it "pulled" the light down the tube as I went.  When I removed it, it went out so, for the photos, I just left it sitting there.

Well, I did one 48", and then two, and I was going to go for three but....after what you said....now I don't know. (I would have to buy two more as they only come in a 2-pack)

My Fuji came with an industrial  AA bat.  But, it has to be weak by now with all of my testing. (maybe not)

I may go ahead and try for 3 in a few days.  I have plenty of magnets and maybe it will take a few of them to get it to light.  I am not really sure why the magnets do this.  I have an idea but, if I am right, leaving them on there (taped to the tube even) does not bother me.

It reminds me of when I got my cheap TV from Walmart.  It always had a blue spot near the upper right side of the picture.  One day, I was messing around with a small neo (God only knows why) and I found that when I held it behind the picture tube (screen) at the blue spot, it went away and functioned normally.  So, I taped that small neo to the tv and it has worked great ever since. (3 years)  I love magnets!!!

Bill

My fuji's came with panasonic industrials but they didn't light the tube as well as the duracell, and the energizer industrial seems better than the duracell.  I think you should still try and light more, the two that I bought had different transistors and transformers but were wired the same, so you never know.  Weird story about your tv, usually a magnet will damage a screen and cause discoloration.  I agree, that magnets are magical. 

[Pirate88179]

@ Freezer:

Yes, I have learned there are differences in AA batteries.  I bought a solar light with 13 ultrabright leds and it came with el-cheapo rechargeable AA's (4)  I replaced them with some very good high mAhour batts and the light was much, much brighter.  do you think we can go to C size and up the power a bit to light more?  The volts would be the same but do you think the transistor could handle it?  I really want to stay with the AA's until I hit the wall then I will be looking for more.  I guess we could go with 2 AA's in parallel right?  Keep the volts the same but up the mA's?

I guess you can tell I won't be happy until I smoke this thing.  Ha ha.

Merry Christmas

Bill

[Pirate88179]

Also Bill...try a magnet on the opposite side of the tube from the first magnet...a couple on the first tube wouldn't hurt either, using various polarity arrangements.

I am intrigued that you have a magnet having an amplification effect on electricity.

There's a lesson in here somewhere.

Unfortunately now you're stuck buying more tubes to find out where the limit of the system lies.

Regards...

@ Cap:

I am not sure if it is an amplification effect or not.  I think that maybe, just maybe, it alters the field inside the tube (or aligns it) allowing the excitement of the gas molecules inside it in some way.  Why?  I don't know.  In other words, if I just stuck the magnet on the right end of the first tube, nothing happened.  I had to go down to the left where the light was and "drag" it to the other end.  Maybe it is kind of like putting a bowling ball on your bed and pushing down in fornt of it and the ball rolls down toward where you pushed down?  And if you kept pushing down and moving forward, the bowling ball would follow the furrow you were making?  Better said this way:  I don't know.

Bill

[electricme]

@ freezer
Hi there, I have come out of christmas hibernation/vacation to give a part answer about the LED topic 

No worries, I went and did a quick checkup in the time alowed me and found this Chromaticity diagram which is a bit difficult to understand but once you can, it explains it.
D65 is the colour temperature kelvin, as you know ones eyes are the sensitive to the brighter ranges of the 3 main spectrim colours.
Light Red + Light green (as you pointed out so very kindly to me) + light blue, the middle area is white or D65, which basically means a combination  ratio to produce white light.

As you found using your LED torch, some things just looko different, using a different frequency colour to illuminate them, I agree totally, the bumble bee can see ultra violet or violet, we carnt, if we could, flowers for example would look way out of normal colour range that we are used to see.

The same with the "white" LED, at least this is how it effects me, things illuminated by using one or a combination of them if they are the bright white LEDs, the light just seems to lack something, I think the white ultra bright LED has a great more of the blue component in it, thus forcing a whiter brighter light.

If you look at the diagram, the more one delves towards the blue end of the spectrim, the darker it becomes in relation to the other 2 primary colours.

Im going to do a bit more looking up on the net about this over the weekend.

Have a good weekend and christmas freezer
Im looking forward to getting together with my family
hooroo all
jim     

[Freezer]

@ freezer
Hi there, I have come out of christmas hibernation/vacation to give a part answer about the LED topic 

No worries, I went and did a quick checkup in the time alowed me and found this Chromaticity diagram which is a bit difficult to understand but once you can, it explains it.
D65 is the colour temperature kelvin, as you know ones eyes are the sensitive to the brighter ranges of the 3 main spectrim colours.
Light Red + Light green (as you pointed out so very kindly to me) + light blue, the middle area is white or D65, which basically means a combination  ratio to produce white light.

As you found using your LED torch, some things just looko different, using a different frequency colour to illuminate them, I agree totally, the bumble bee can see ultra violet or violet, we carnt, if we could, flowers for example would look way out of normal colour range that we are used to see.

The same with the "white" LED, at least this is how it effects me, things illuminated by using one or a combination of them if they are the bright white LEDs, the light just seems to lack something, I think the white ultra bright LED has a great more of the blue component in it, thus forcing a whiter brighter light.

If you look at the diagram, the more one delves towards the blue end of the spectrim, the darker it becomes in relation to the other 2 primary colours.

Im going to do a bit more looking up on the net about this over the weekend.

Have a good weekend and christmas freezer
Im looking forward to getting together with my family
hooroo all
jim     

I think I understand what you are saying.  I read that during the day or in bright conditions, the human eye is more sensitive to the warmer end like the reds, oranges using mostly the cones.  During the night or low light conditions, our eyes are more sensitive to the cool end like greens and blues, with the rods being predominant.  So I guess it's subjective, and also dependent on the surrounding conditions.

Have a great Christmas.  I still got to pick up some more presents, and am not looking forward to weaving through the crazy mobs.  Today it took 20 minutes to find a parking space. :/  When I was leaving an old couple was patiently waiting to take my spot, and in swoops this jerk and takes the spot from them..I should went back and said something, but I didn't feel like getting into a confrontation over a parking space.