Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison

[Koen1]

Hi everyone

Ian, I agree with your reasoning that the use of sulphur would minimise
any chance of galvanic reaction.
The 10Mohm is not really very surprising, I have measured resistance in
some of my cells around the 10Mohm as well.
The thing is that the resistance is not very straightforward in the type
of material we want to make; we are aiming for a material that somehow
"pumps" electrons through itself, from one electrode to the other.
That would seem to imply a high resistance in one direction, and
a low resistance in the other direction, which gives rise to a bias in
charge accumulation.
And that appears to mean that we should be able to measure a significantly
lower resistance in that opposite direction....
But I haven't been able to measure any clear differences in resistance when I
reverse my multimeter probes for example, so I am not sure what is going on.
It may be that this bias is very localised and temporary withing the material
matrix, and therefore not "visible" to the meter probes that "only" measure
the electrode potentials and the relative current flow obstruction between the
two, which is of course different on that macroscale than it may be on the
microscale of the material martix.

As for my recent attempts;
I have made a couple of cells with various ingredients, which have been exposed to
a low voltage DC (9V) during cooling and solidification.
The substance mix I used had a homemade sodium silicate base, which was made
by boiling fine white quartz sand with water at a heat between 120 and 180 degrees C,
then adding NaOH, and allowing those compounds to react with eachother.
If you have used the exact correct amounts the mix should form sodium silicate
with water, and if you used too little NaOH it will form sodium silicate with silicic acid
which when it cools turns into sodium silicate with water and sand.
Well, I used that sodium silicate, and added some more sand to get a mix
of 60 to 65% sodium silicate and 35 to 40% sand. Added a little bit of water
to ease stirring of the mix while heating it to around 100 degrees.
I added two different combinations of ingredients:
1) a mix of titanium dioxide, ferrous oxide, cobalt oxide, pure aluminium powder,
pure copper powder and kaolin in proportions 2:2:2:1:1:2
2) a mix of chromium oxide, manganese oxide, and the above, in proportions
3:3:2:2:2:1:1:2
I made two cells of each, one cell connected to a 9V battery to attempt to
achieve some polarisation, and one not connected at all to see what it does
naturally.
The ratios of metal compounds vs silicates was about 1:15 in all cells.
Results: nada.
One of the cells with the #1 mix additive shows a voltage of 1,5V, but
at an amperage of only 0,01 mA and that's not even stable (drops to zero
now and then, then comes back to 0,01mA, sometimes briefly 0,02mA).
The other #1 cell, the one which had been connected to the 9V feed, showed
a voltage of 1,8V at first measurement, but this dropped to near zero quickly.
It has not risen above 0,1V after that. Zero amperage readings on that one.
The other two cells are not entirely dry yet, but one of them seems to have
reacted slightly differently and the resulting material is probably too porous
to be of much use. Too porous and it retains relatively much water, plus
there's lots of dielectric air in there which doesn't really help...
The other one looks better, but still needs to settle some more.

So far not much luck in this approach, but I still need to try high voltages
for polarisation purposes. Am still looking for a good adjustable hV power
source, and in the mean time I'm using batteries and planning to use
a simple hV pulse generator.

The use of the named metal oxides does have one cool effect:
the cell materials now look really funky
The #1 mix looks very dark grey with a blue hue and a metallic luster.
The #2 mix looks dark to "army" greenish light grey.
I imagine if I add a lot more manganese it may turn bright purple
But I wasn't really going for cool coloured ceramics, although it is a nice
bonus

Regards,
Koen

[Feynman]

Great work Ian, we are on the path to success

[jeanna]

Hi all,
I had the thought this morning.

Amber

You could grind amber into your mix or,

Maybe the fossilized form doesn't matter, since it isn't really a fossil. I mean it didn't get filled and replaced by local minerals, it just got old and hard.

Pine sap is what amber was.

So, I was thinking about heating or some other way of driving all the water out of pine sap - like alcohol etc. Then treat it to the HV or whatever is going on in the lab to give it some HV.


Fron left field then,

jeanna

[Koen1]

Amber?
Well, I suppose you could make a nice electret out of amber...
...but a cell that gives amps? without having to heat it? Idunno... 

Anyway, I seem to recall that the "Amber Room" was made from
panels of jewelry-grade amber that were created by pouring and
heating/baking amber resin (freshly squeezed from trees, yes ).
For the amber room I believe it was mixed with honey and gold
before 'baking', but I'm not sure.
Point it mainly that I think you can indeed make amber from
fresh resin. I just don't know what the exact procedure is,
or how hot and under what pressure etc the stuff should be baked.

[jeanna]

Of course,
I don't know how hot or how long either. Probably enough to get the water out of it.

John puts a probe up against the sides of a crystal in one of his e-rocks and gets a voltage.

From the beginning I have thought of an e-rock as non homogeneous material. Yesterday I realized I had never expressed this and that all the experimenters here are grinding things and making homogeneous powders.

I think of trails or lines going back and forth of different potential materials. an electret of one type adjacent to an electret of a different type that would hopefully build more and more as the path wanders from one side of the rock to the other. I guess I think of it like the folded layers of a capacitor.

Amber or sap being sticky could be a substrate onto which another material that would exhibit a voltage/amperage simply by its placement. It is how I have envisioned the crystal cells at their best ( ) potential.

I say sap because amber will dissolve if put into alcohol as sap or resin will. I just think sap is a good enough start point because I think it is about the water, but that may be wrong. But real amber probably should be tried.

jeanna

(I'll go back to my coil guns now.  )