Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison

[ian middleton]

Koen,

I bought a very powerful bug zapper, the ones that fry flies when they hit the mesh. It puts out 2.2Kv.
I'm not game enough to try and measure it's current.  Also I am using an air ionizer (6000V) and it;s current is only uA. But as I have found out ( the cell in the plastic tub) a mean charge accumulates at the boundary and when I tried to move it, it knocked be backwards. It had enough charge to jump the insulation on an electrical screwdriver. So far the damn thing is holding half my kitchen hostage 

It looks like we are getting very similar results ( respectable voltage but little current). A large surface area p-n junction is what we need I think.

Well Koen even if your cell won't power a motor (yet  ) it still looks bloody impressive.

Cheers
Ian

[Koen1]

Ian,

after spending an evening amusing myself by watching all Hutchison Cell related videos I know once more,
I want to ask you where you got the info that H uses clinker... I only know one video that shows him
demonstrate his "dirt cheap" method (the "invent this!" tv footage), and in that video I can't really see
the pebble he picks up very clearly. It seems to be a whiteish little rock, sort of the colour of pale concrete...
But in the video where he shows his large "artillery shell" sized cells, where he explains that those very large ones
only put out about 0,5V, he also shows what he refers to in the "invent this!" video as "the Blob":
a solidified puddle of silicate material with several fingertip-sized pieces of different rocks embedded in it.
Now that video has a better resolution, and the "blob" clearly contains several different types of rock.
He only pins the multimeter probe down on one specific spot though, so that could mean only that particular
rock or that specific region of the blob has voltage, and the rest doesn't or much lower... Or it could mean
he just happens to randomly stick his multimeter probe, and it has nothing to do with the rock at that location at all.

Oh, and when you say "clinker", you are talking about the "clinker" used in concrete and cement mixing, right?

Furthermore, in the "invent this!" footage, Hutchison can be seen crushing a few rocks into powder, then adding his "secret
chemicals", and then mixing them in an old newspaper. When he is busy crushing the rocks, you can see him crush a rock
that looks whiteish, probably the pebble we see him pick up on the street, but on the newspaper on his lap we can see what
looks like crushed dark (near black?) stone. I am not certain about this, but that's what it looks like on my screen.
Can anyone confirm the colour of the rocks he uses in that video?
Are they indeed whiteish and blackish rocks? Are they clinker types or are they more like mica?

[ian middleton]

hi Koen,

Same as you, I've watched those videos over and over. A closer look at the blob will reveal that some of the rocks are clinker. By coincidence the front garden bed and surround outside my local electronics shop has exactly the same stuff. Dark brown to rusty coloured clinker and greyish rocks of a similar nature. I think the reason he uses the clinker is because it contains many fused silicates, iron, aluminium, magnesium and good ol quartz. Also if you look closely at the blob you will see that it has been painted or sprayed in parts, I think with a conductive material, aluminium paint or something.. And the whole thing seems to be set in a block of plaster of paris. Listen to the clunck it makes when he puts it down.  Yes I believe the clinker is the same as that used in concrete.

JH makes a reference to exotic silicates when he picks up the white stone, that in itself is a massive clue. I spent most of last evening reading up on the different subclasses of silicates , I'll get you the web site shortly.  The thing I noticed was that the more "exotic" the silicate the greater the negative charge it had in the crystal structure, most were -3 and some at -5 . Enter pyrites, that sits at -4 along with many other common sulphides.
As you know the aluminium cans he puts his mix into have a valence charge of +3. I can see now why JH is looking for the more exotic silicates to get the greatest potential between the molecules.
This brings me to a question I was going to ask you. Or at least a point I'd like your thoughts on.

I've been using aluminium cans to make the cells and I get a voltage of some sort every time. But I suddenly realised that the Al cans would have been naturally coated with aluminium oxide, which is a darn good insulator. Have you ever prep'd your Al cans or tubes to get rid of the oxide? Doing that may increase our current output.

Back to his blob for a moment, I have seen 3 different videos of JH demonstrating his blob and each time he puts the prob on the same point and who knows what the other prob is attatched to because we never get to see the back of it, so I'm assumming it must be a metal plate embedded in the base.
As with all of JH's videos I think he is just giving us rough examples, as with the blob, I don't beleive that all the rocks in it actually do anything. Mostly for show.

His referrence to Thomas Moray is probably the most significant clue.  I think we both worked out pretty early on that the rock battery was a complexed form of diode or rectifier. I think what we are trying to achieve is a battery mix made up of millions of diodes all aligned the same way.
The voltage created by the silicates,peizo or petro ) and rectification by adjacent sulphides,pyrites or galena. All these were used in Morays experiments. Your charge diagrams ( which I think are spot on) may be the blue print for such a device.
I have had some success with making the anode a copper oxide junction.

At the moment I am crushing up as much iron pyrites as I can find ( hard work  ).

I'll get back to you shortly Koen with that web address.


Ian

[ian middleton]

Hi Koen

Try this web site.

http://www.galleries.com/minerals/silicate/

Very good info here.

Cheers

Ian

[Koen1]

Thanks for that info Ian, very usefull

Oh, and about the aluminium cans/tubes/cylinders;
Yes, in most cases I make very certain that there is no isolating layer on the inside of my cans/pipes.
Common aluminium cans, like RedBull cans for example, most often don't actually have an aluminium oxide
layer because aluminium if ingested in large enough quantities can lead to serious (infant) growth defects
and other poisonous phenomena, so they want to keep it out of the food chain as much as possible.
Most of the time some thin plastic type film is used on the inside of food/beverage cans. This is usually
quite a tought material, and I have sanded many an aluminium can down with sandpaper on the inside.
Also, pure aluminium pipes/tubes will indeed form an oxide layer in air, if they don't have an isolating layer.
This oxide film is usually extremely thin, just a couple of atoms thick. But it isolates the aluminium from the
air completely.
Often, such merely oxidised aluminium does not actually need to be treated before use. First of all because
no matter how often you sand down the oxide layer, another will form unless you sand it down in an argon
atmosphere or something like that, and most people don't have these lying around
And second because the chemical reactions involved (consider sodium hydroxide, borax, sodium carbonate,
or simply boiling silicic acid) tend to easily overcome the low oxidation energy and simply absorb the oxide
and meld with it. But of course this depends a little on how much you want your mix to absorb aluminium...

In any case, yes I do often sand down the aluminium and other metal tubes/cans I use, especially if the can
is visibly or tangiably coated in some foreign material (on the inside). When I say "sand down", I mean I
remove that inner layer somehow, often using a corrosive material and actual hands-on scrubbing with coarse
material, or by applying a blowtorch and burning the plastic off. But in most cases simply using good sand
paper works fine.
I have been doing so ever since I found that can oatings can indeed have great influence on the chemical reactions
and electrical properties, during my early experiments.

hope that helps?