Darlington Learns about Electrophorus

[packrat541]

If the plates of a charged capacitor are moved apart capacitance decreases but voltage will increase because energy is added by the work done to move the plates apart.

[williefleete]

i should name my cat Mosfet if i ever get one

[jvcrules]

darlington? does he eat transistors for breakfast or something?

[GTXAbunada]

Poor Darlington, BTW 6:10 is AWESOME. Great Work, love your videos

[jetfighters20fr]

hahaha,.. the way you used cat,,.. hahaha,.. brilliant,..

[9000osc]

Your videos are a lot better and informative.

[ngneer999]

You draw an etch-a-sketch picture of Tesla and name your cat Darlington. Do you live at the corner of Shockley Street and Faraday Ave.?

[kefsound]

meowwww :D

[AntiProtonBoy]

jeri + kitty + internet = win

[drumid1881]

thanks very much, LOVE your video's + i love your cat Darlington

[dashxdr]

Can you put a link to the science goddess youtube channel? Not sure which it is.

[jeriellsworth]

@dashxdr Her main site is joannelovesscience . com and she posted a response video to this one. I have a link in the video and I'll make sure there is one in the description.

[tharlowXY]

I once played a pinnie called Don't Touch My Electrophorus, but if you got a little too excited whilst playing and accidentally rubbed up against the cabinet, it would shock your balls. And then it was pretty much game over. Kind of like a variant of the tilt mechanism, I suppose. While I'm on the subject, here's a message for Darlington. Dude, I think they named you wrong. You put up with way too much crap from Jeri, and you need to grow (at the very least) a pair.

[BlowDevilUp]

You need an electric eel.

[jeriellsworth]

@BlowDevilUp Heck yeah!

[AmazGraz]

So cool. Now if I could only learn how to power a vehicle with one of those. In fact, why don't they use super huge capacitors to power cars, maybe, instead of batteries? Wouldn't it be lighter? And why can we not charge them with something like a vane cutting the wind? By the way, is your cat transistorized?

[CampKohler]

@AmazGraz Caps couldn't hold near enough energy to get you onto the street, much less to some far off place. If you could charge it with a vane, the energy required to move the vane is always greater than what it could collect or it would be a perpetual motion machine (not allowed by the law of conservation). However, if you made the vane very, very big and had sailing experience, you might just pull it off. :-)

[lexichronicle2]

Check out this guys video of a William Henley's electometer, he's getting enough youtube attention given his level of interest and ability (he built the thing for a start, and he's 16 I think);

youtube.com/watch?v=wxIxVaoFsX­­8

[lexichronicle2]

The guys into tesla coils have to DIY their own capacitors because the commercial high voltage ones cost a !fortune!

They stick bits of foil between sheets of craft paper or plastic wallets and stack them.

The guys in the north pole operating the LIDAR laser had to roll their own too - no spares shop, break out the tin foil

Another neat way is to stick the foil through a laminator, very smooth (no pin holing), uniform dielectric, flat and well sealed - I was doing this at 4am a few weeks ago

[lexichronicle2]

You know the jfet came about after the guys did their cat's whisker experiment, patented it being told "naaahhh it's not really worth working on" and then the company realized "sh11111111t, it IS worth working on" and came up with the gate so they could repatent another form

[pumkinvine]

Damn, even Jeri's cat is smarter than I am.

[markvergeer]

I agree about your opinion on the 'Science godess' - anyone trying to determine the density of gummy bears is a hero by my book!

[fronkenpoop]

I thought it was bulls that charged, not cats ;)

[thoxbui]

One day, Darlington will be as famous as Schrödinger's.

[overunitydotcom]

Great video again !

The cat is very cute ! ;) Funny, how she likes it.. Probably she is as interested in the science as YOU ! ;)

Well, I have to watch the video at least 3 more times to see, what you do there exactly with the electric induction...You really could make your videos a bit slower in explanation.

Hmm, was there the plastic baker still charged at the end or why did the charge still occur after disassembling ?

[burgerking220]

marry me??

[TheNewYorkPete]

How did you get Darlington to cooperate at 1:20 ??

[jeriellsworth]

@TheNewYorkPete I put him on the bench and he just plopped down. I had to keep shoving him off the bench for the next hour.

[Cokecanninja]

Darlington the cat is very chill. Neither of my cats would let me flip them upside down and rub them on a piece of cardboard.

[DanFrederiksen]

aww nice kitty : )

neat charge detector. wouldn't have thought that would work but I guess there is a gradient in the 'air'.

also neat about the separated capacitor. that has do with the fact that the ether (in this case polluted by air) is not nothing. fascinating it is

[drstampfli]

Amazing experiment... as usual! Thanks!

[joshcryer]

That's a really really great result. Fantastic. When you dismantled the capacitor and reassembled it, and it worked, I was so amazed. Also, Darlington appears to enjoy being a static energy source. :)

[jeriellsworth]

@joshcryer That cat loves any kind of attention. It's hard to keep him off the workbench.

[10mintwo]

I like how the electrophorus creates the illusion of a perpetual motion machine or perpetually inexhaustible energy source. It looks like you're violating some law of physics by 'drawing electricity out' of the foam continually. I suppose the actual origin of the energy must be due to the fact that you are working against what must be a very small electrostatic repulsion when the two pieces are "forced" together, converting kinetic energy into an electrostatic field.

[jeriellsworth]

@10mintwo Foes seem like magic. It's the work of pulling the disk up. The foam in a perfect universe would never lose it's electrostatic charge.

[joannelovesscience]

Darlington is so cute! And how he was purring at the end, awesome. He approves of being your assistant! :)

[illustriouschin]

1:17 is so hypnotic. Also I completely don't understand what is going on with that capacitor thing but it is really cool.

[Bellerophon2200]

Ahh I see now. It is not JUST a thirsty mind. It helps to have a B.S. in E.E and being mad intelligent. ;P

Anyway, at my job I roll a large ladder around when I need to move printers and PCs. It has plastic caster wheels, metal bearings and a metal frame; and it rolls on a carpet. I'll climb the ladder, and won't notice the charge because the ladder and I are the same, but when I touch the grounded shelves I nearly fall off the ladder from the shock. I'm wise to it now, though.....

[Bellerophon2200]

@Bellerophon2200 ....I just bump the ladder against a metal base and grin thinking, "that could be me," LOL. It's not bad because it's disspating over a larger area.

The thing I can't figure out is why my flourescent light lights up in my room when I apply a shock, voltage, to the grounded wall plate. Shouldn't it just go to ground? Why is a potential difference created when I touch a grounded screw?

[CampKohler]

@Bellerophon2200 Before you can say the plate is grounded, you would have to test it. Older houses have no ground wires in the wiring, e.g. those with 2-prong plugs. Even modern houses may not have the switch frame grounded with the box being made of plastic, so the plate (or, if the plate is plastic, just the screw) may not grounded. BTW, what do you mean by "lights up"? Blinks or lights steadily or what? It doesn't feel right that a charge could make it up there without draining off somehow.

[Bellerophon2200]

@CampKohler It lights up for a moment in a weird dim purple light, like a flash.

[CampKohler]

@Bellerophon2200 If the switch was open, any charge that could make it onto the hot wire (usually black) would reach the lamp and go to ground through the neutral wire (white) or via the light fixture chassis if it is grounded until it was used up (hence the flash). You would have to investigate how putting the charge on the plate/screw gets it into the hot wire, which is not immediately apparent to me. It's just one of those things that requires study and fiddlin' around.

[Bellerophon2200]

@CampKohler Man, I don't even know. I'm not going to even try and look, or unscrew stuff. For now, however, I can't get a charge because we just got a humidifier. Maybe I'll build one of those triboelectric devices and recording the flash on video.

[jeriellsworth]

@Bellerophon2200 A friend pointed out that some shopping carts generate high voltage in a similar way.

[Bellerophon2200]

@jeriellsworth interesting; A primitive van de graff generator.  Hopefully it wasn't at a propane market xD

[dagger86]

Jeri, you're about as awesome as a gal can be. Best wishes.

Loran in St. John's

[shodanxx]

@jeriellsworth

in a previous article you mentionned that conduction in polymer was very complex, something about a series of π bonds (!?)

are these special characteristics having an effect in this rudimentary capacitor (can they accumulated more charge than say a glass cup of the same size and thickness ?)

I guess I'm asking, are the properties of the dielectric material important here or is the total surface by far the dominant factor ?

[jeriellsworth]

@shodanxx Those are great questions. I don't have the answers for this, but you're making me wonder what electronic interactions form a good dialectic. For instance why is a diamond a good insulator, but poor dielectric with it's high band gap?

[CampKohler]

@jeriellsworth But a good heat conductor. (Search "diamond heat sink")

[MrTechGuy1995]

I'm going to grow up to be an electrical engineer, You are my Idol!

[shodanxx]

if you turned the cup inside out somehow

would the polarity be reversed ?

(maybe if it was made of another plastic, or heated, would it lose its charge if heated ?)

[jeriellsworth]

@shodanxx My guess is that the polarity would be reversed. We could test this easier if it was made of flat plastic and flat foil.

Heat - Many insulators and semiconductors become more conductive because of thermal excitation. I don't know if heating this type of plastic will allow the charge to conduct.

[nik282000]

Gread video but plastic cups and electricity don't mix for me any more. Plastic cup capacitors can hold an ENORMOUS charge. I used my Van De Graff generator to charge the outside of a cup negatively and used a grounded wire to let the inside charge positively, this was without the foil. The charge on the cup was enough to deliver a very loud and painful spark. After 2 or 3 repetitions the charge eventually punched through the cup in a spiderweb pattern.

I like the science cat :)

[jeriellsworth]

@nik282000 Sounds like a successful experiment to me.

[sciguy14]

Best cat name ever. Did you adopt your cat from Bell Labs?

[jeriellsworth]

@sciguy14 It showed up at the house one day and I made the mistake of giving it food.

[XsavioR38]

Nice work with the directional charge finder. Its some counter intuitive awesomeness. Usually floating pins are the enemy and make things /not/ work.

[jeriellsworth]

@XsavioR38 I know about this, because I've left many pins on transistors float on accident. :)

[ptdecker]

My cat would have enjoyed that too and my daughter got a kick out of "Darlington".

[obc993]

omg iluv u

[Films4You]

Darlington Transistor Pair Learns about Electro-pus, Meow.

[spektrum1983]

wow, this is great. so educational :)

[SciStarborne]

There's a Cat5 joke in here somewhere. :)

[alphabeets]

Damn cool! Jeri Rules.

[sturgeon333]

Jeri, could you give us a tour of your home workshop/lab in a future video?

[jeriellsworth]

@sturgeon333 I'll have to get more of my stuff out of boxes before then.

[schoolmaster1945]

Now I know why hard drives are enclosed...to keep cats from rubbing against the platters!...:)

[WisdomVendor]

For your next vid , you should clone darlington. Surely you want a darlington pair.

[DPS670950]

I've been lucky playing with oil filled capacitors in that I've only had one shower me with hot oil, wax paper and aluminum foil; when it exploded. Some things haz gots to be learnt the hard way...

Darlington haz potential! (I mades a funny...)

[pieznice29]

Wow, i never knew layden jar capacitors kept their charge even after dissasembly, although it does make sense now that i think about it... Does that work for all types of capacitors then?

[jeriellsworth]

@pieznice29 My guess is yes, but it might be hard to disassemble some types. :D

[allmyenemies]

@pieznice29 Ya! Obviously the charge is stored in the dielectric, by the displacement current... anyway because in real world, some charge have been lost by the way :) This is due to fact that leaving charge from a metal is too easy but isn't so easy from an insulator (the dieletric in this case).

The cat is so quiet.. amazing :))

Bye Jeriellsworth, always on top!

[CampKohler]

@pieznice29 Not air-insulated caps. :-) Seriously, I don't know what would be in oil, say, but I know they warn that even after big oil caps are shorted, when unshorted, a charge will build up again. I don't know if it seeps back from the plates or the dielectric. Discharge resistors are built in to many appliance caps, because those expected to be around them tend to be clueless about that fact.

[halentimo]

poor cat :(

[jeriellsworth]

@halentimo No kittys stopped purring during the making of this video.

[FlyByPC]

@jeriellsworth Best laugh I've had all week. Putting the "cat" back in "cathode"?

[bobcat0]

There are quite a few Julius Sumner Miller videos on youtube, in case folks don't know who you are referring to, they should take a look.

[jeriellsworth]

@bobcat0 I wonder if there are official videos for his work, so I can link? I don't want to link to someone who might get shut down.

[bobcat0]

@jeriellsworth They've all been up for three years, I think we're safe as kittens.

youtube.com/results?search_que­ry=julius+sumner+miller

[Winsucker]

I have watched 10 of Joannes movies..lets just say that i didn't subscribe.

But i love your movies! Their are great and first thing that i click at the morning, with blogs, my projects and gmail. You know..before the "work" routine...?

Have a great December!

[th3dig1tal0n3]

neatpicking: JFET device is active device.

[jeriellsworth]

@th3dig1tal0n3 It does not touch the device under test. That is what I call it a "passive test"

[sonicase]

kitty loves science

hmm i got a little nixie lamp i should try that, too bad my cat friend moved away :/

[thepackrat]

Darlington seemed " unphased " ... I guess I expected him to get more of a "charge" out of the experience.

:P

!vc test100 rim-shot

[dxg999]

Re production values: I lecture at a University for a living. It is easily possible to spend hours crafting perfectly-produced diagrams. I do this. But what the students love more than anything else are quick illustrations hacked together on a whiteboard in response to their questions. It's the content that matters. Students very quickly discount presentation.

[bhtooefr]

Why am I getting a Dr. Evil vibe when you're holding Darlington at the end?

[Kevbo4]

Okay, I duplicated the experiment and while the Leyden jar take-a-part and reassemble with charge intact worked, my reassembled hard drive no longer works. Thanks a lot, Jeri.

[jeriellsworth]

@Kevbo4 LOL

[coinoptv]

hah cool!

[frac]

...and I hope you never change anything. Not even the production values. That's part of what makes your videos accessible, charming, and non-threatening. Of course, the amazing instructor with her contagious desire to learn is a big part of it, too!

[markiduval]

Cute kitty! :)

[da959]

Your cat is an excellant assistant. My cat can build up quite a charge just sliding her across a carpeted floor. Hmmm, I wonder if I got more cats, maybe I could power my whole house with them...

[Afrotechmods]

oh my god I almost died laughing at the cat

[jeriellsworth]

@Afrotechmods He's thinking "What is this crazy human doing to me?"

[NCWAWEB]

@Afrotechmods lol that was the best

[w0mblemania]

Hi Darlington!

[jeriellsworth]

@w0mblemania Meow!