Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison

[ian middleton]

G'day all

@jeff:  Many of the cells built so far contain quartz sand so I would think that crushing quart to a powder would be much the same.
However from all the test results there is no conclusive evidence that using quartz actually makes much difference. it was basically used because it is a piezo electric material. It was also thought that it's dielectric properties may be useful.
There are many minerals found with quartz, so you may find pyrites or galena in your pile. May be worth a look.

Anyway as you can see, the experiments continue and we are always searching for novel ways of using the materials we have.
I suppose you could always dissolve some in sodium hydroxide and make sodium silicate. Thats pretty useful stuff.
If anything comes to mind I'll post it.

All the best

Ian

[Koen1]

Yes, I agree with Ian sort of. We know quartz is piezoelectric and we know
sand makes a good electret material and sand is mostly quartz, so that
suggests it can be used for Cell building. But so far we haven't really been able
to produce any Cells with only or mostly quartz that actually produce anything
other than a permanent electrostatic potential... But as far as polarisable dielectric materials
go, quartz (and fine quartz sand) are quite usefull and easily integrated into various
ceramic and other chemical mixes.

I'm not sure about the Galena or Pyrites... Of course it is true that these regularly occur in
strata that contain quite a lot of quartz, but I think it depends on the region etc...
If there are any lead- or iron-mines in the region where you live (even if they're depleted)
then yes indeed you may be able to find some pyrites or galena in your quartz rubble.
If you can find those, then you could try making a cell with those materials. And your quartz.

[jeff0516161]

Thanks for the replys. I will inspect the mixture more closely and let you know if it looks worth while to experiment with.

[AbbaRue]

I bought some ss spoons at the dollar store 4 for a dollar, make great test beds.
I put some MAP into a spoon and heated it until it melted, and then placed a piece of Al. Foil into the melt.
Then zapped it with a high voltage arc, while it cooled.
I got 700mV and 90uA shorted across my amp meter.
But I tend to believe it might be galvanic in nature.
The MAP got really sticky and has a liquid in it after heating, don't know what the liquid is.
Didn't want to taste it to find out. 
I think it may be phosphoric acid.
The spoon is the positive terminal. 
I tried zapping it with the foil as positive at first and got 200mV, after leaving it for a while
the polarity reversed, so I reheated it and zapped it again with the spoon as positive.
That is when I got the 700mV.

Will do more tests after leaving it to cure for a few days. See if the liquid dries up.

[triffid]

I went  downtown where I live and found several sources of materials that could be picked up off the ground.Broken glass that could be crushed further.All sorts of sand/dirt.All for the picking up.I found a construction site where pieces of sheetrock could be picked up for free.I mentioned this because I was wondering where to get lowcost materials to experiment with.I have no real river nearby.I do have a few pieces of crystals( what I believe is calcite). And put a voltmeter to useby  putting the contacts on different areas on the crystals.I could make the minus sign appear and disappear almost at will on certain points of the crystal.Most of the time I could not get a minus sign at all except for about 8 points on the crystal.Again I really need a better voltmeter.Mine will not read millivolts.Triffid