Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison

[Koen1]

Lol Jeanna the 75kV lady

that is not a bad idea, and to be honest I have considered getting an old
electrostatic generator... I was thinking of a Van De Graaf generator,
but a Wimshurst will work too.
I've actually got a little 9V DC powered hV generator lying around,
but it gives 1kV pulses and not only is that quite little, it's also pulsed...
I thought of using a simple hV diode+resistor+capacitor setup to
get out a less pulsed and somewhat more constant output, but
I'm still left with it only being 1kV... Plus the darn thing doesn't
indicate which output wire is which (+ or -), and I've already killed
another multimeter by exposing it to too high a voltage...

... ah well, I'm not even sure we really need many kilovolts...
I have noticed that most of my cells don't seem to polarise very
differently whether I use only 9V or 230V (simple rectified gridpower).
The end result is a very similar voltage in most cells,
and I can't really say I see much of an amperage difference either.
But then again, I have mainly been making silicate and quartz and/or
metal oxide based cells recently, so I can only speak for those
of course.

[Pirate88179]

@ Koen1

You can make your own like Walter Lewin did at MIT.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=oY1eyLEo8_A

Just a few buckets of water and there you go.

Bill

[Koen1]

Hey thanks Bill
Walter is great, but I didn't know that particular video yet.
... fun to see that a Dutch profesor is one of the most popular at MIT

[Pirate88179]

I love that guy.  I am taking his entire on-line video courses for free.  I am learning a lot.  I have not seen the video with the water buckets in a while but I believe he was getting 20,000-30,000 volts out of it.  Could probably be built for maybe $10.00 or less.  Energy is everywhere.

Bill

[Koen1]

Actually, the water bucket setup is a simple version of the Kelvin waterdrop electrostatic generator.
It's one of my personal favorites. As I recall the story was that (lord) Kelvin wanted to simulate
a thunderstorm and came up with this setup. I've seen versions with 'baskets' woven of copper wire
instead and stacked four high, that could generate really big sparks and quite a bit faster than
this one too. I'ts an idea to build one...
...may have to, can't seem to find any affordable good quality hV adjustable/lab power sources...