Earth Electrical Energy Datalogging Experiments

[electricme]

mw383

Good advice this.

MW383
Before it freezes, can you drive in some ground rods.  Attach leads to them and run the leads inside.  That way if you get some idea in the middle of winter, you can access the rods without going outside.

Maybe experiment with res circuits and tune to something there?

You probably have already thought of this.

Mike, I have done the above at my house, tishatang is on the money with this method.

I got some fairly long extension leads (try hardware shops, Bills (Pirate) done this also) then cut the plugs of the ends and I fed the extension leads through my kitchen window to connect to my earth batteries outside. I got 5 extension leads to play with. put small alligator clips on each wire end, to clip to different EB or LEDs in the house etc etc.

The ends of the leads inside, I just drag them where they connect to instruments like a cro or the DMM or the LED etc etc.

It sure beats going outside to make measurements in bad weather, storm, sleet/snow/ dirt storms here, rain /hale or shine.
Terrific system.

jim

[electricme]

mw383

Way back on the Joule Thief thread Bill (Pirate) got himself a big magnesium block, and a couple of Carbon 1" thick rods about 14 inches long.
Bill has been able to get a fair bit of success out of this combination, you could PM him and sask how to get them if you needed one or some.

I gota hit the sack or I'll start to studder typing, need my beauty sleep, I too tired
Been writing bat files to access hidden boot files on my PC, in my quiet time lol

jim

attrib -a -r -s -h ha ha ha, good stuff

[tishatang]

The earth has many electrical properties.  The same as any electrical component.  Plus it has many more, not totally understood.  This is where experimentation has to occur to quantify what will happen when you do certain things.

You can look at the earth as a battery.  It produces DC.  Here different materials like maybe magnesium and carbon can be the rods.

You can look at the earth as a capacitor.  The rods are plates.  Here they can be the same material, iron or copper.  Our res circuits are formed by experimenting with inductors on the surface in tune with the capacitor plates (rods) in the ground.  See if we can find the best freqs for voltage and current through resonance.  We might assume they would be the same freq.  But, maybe not?

We can look at the earth as an inductor.  This is when we bury the earth battery (combination of inductors).  The earth induces energy into the EB.  We add the capacitors on the surface make up the res circuits. 

It is obvious, the earth makes a better inductor according to Stubblefield.  But, it may help to learn about the theory of res circuits first on the surface.

Maybe the easiest thing to do is get a copper pipe and an iron pipe for the res circuits.  Whatever is cheap and on hand.  Could be two copper pipes or two iron pipes.  Put a block of wood on top for protection and drive them into the ground with a hammer.  Connect your leads by sticking a bare end of the lead into the pipe and wedging a cork into the pipe to hold the lead in place.

[Pirate88179]

tishatang:

What you suggest about the earth is correct I believe.  Also, way back on the EB topic just to quiet the "galvanic only" folks I cut 2 pieces of copper pipe (from the same pipe) about 12" long and drove them into the ground aligned north to south along the meridian, spaced about 4 feet apart.  I still got almost a volt dc out of them and, interestingly enough, (according to my meter) the pipe to the north showed as being plus and the pipe to the south showed minus.  Same materials, same pipe and yet it was still making volts.

So, I think your idea for folks to get started with the pipes is a good one.

Bill

[electricme]

To all

I have my storm recording setup and running.
The scope is turned on, along with my Laptop with a remote controlled web cam.

I was test running it just before and captured a flash of lightning, but carntt tell if the scope registered anything.
The image quality is not good.

Anyway take a look at the results in the TWV below, look for the paper clip.

jim

I just went back and examined the scope display, it  looks like the instant the lightning flashed, the scope image was momentary blank, I think it is a scanning sync setup problem, there is no way this setup can be genlocked or frame locked together, never min, I will soldier on.

jim