Plasma Ball - Cauldron Type

[vjm3]

Girls would be touching my ball all day long.

[14wasp]

hey this music is also in Test Drive Unlimited 2 :P

looks awesome btw :D

[321beth321]

awsomely awsome... btw are u in this science convention thingy?

[SuperCheesyMouse]

This is unbelivabley cool... I need this!!!

[tomattosfutleimierda]

that music + marijuana + plasma ball = SO FUCKING HIGH FTW

[julez90210fan]

i have a plasma ball like that one but its much smaller and the light ray things dont go as high as other plasma balls do, why is that??

[noospaseisde]

songs name please !

[swade98]

Plasma balls are one of the things that symbolize something important in my life, they have a certain feature to them, one like this would put me at such ease. Its remarkable.

[DARIO8417]

At my stone is running out of the plasma, as is charging? can make endless my lamp exploits the power run if you can not fill?

[japanesepank]

looking at this when high and drunk looks soo awsome.....

[PKarklouse]

if this was on a movie that would be a dna reader and disease scanner =D

[mystikjackal]

wonderful plasma, and the music is wonderful... what's the name of it?

[xpacterol]

maybe in a future version of windows that will be an animated logo of google earth =D

[dqSOBERqd]

WOW! Avesome!

[blahdob]

its THE DEVIL! SATAN IS CASTING HIS EVIL HELL PLAZMAH!

[soenarto321]

I WAN ONE!

[905SONICking]

were i can buy these how much they cost

[mikeq5]

@905SONICking Check ebay. They don't cost very much. I used to own one.

[Iamzim9]

This would look awesome in my room.

[retardiran1boy]

in mine room too... xex... i dont have this big :(

[watsisname]

Lol, I think this would look awesome just about anywhere. =P

[devilmastah]

hmm where to get one?

i could use a few for some events

[letsrollmike]

wow veryvery cool...great=)

[kur1tan]

VERY COOL!

SONG TITLE AND ARTIST Please...

5 stars

[OnlySoaa]

Eeeee, seconded! Song name and artist please.

[devilmastah]

here you go,

Boarding by Orbient

[windheavenX]

it looks like their on a bridge of some star trek liek ship :P

[Shannariano]

WoW!

This model is way cooler than the classic one (with the red ball in the center)

does this cost more than the other type? (more or less, I know it always depends)

[Chiiyo1992]

the song!! please give the artist & song name! ;_;

[kylethebest2]

i saw a buddah holding a plasma ball but not this kind the kind that the enegy comes from the center but he should beholding this kind be way cooler

[SealSoup2]

im the kind of person that wants to know how something works, and doesnt just care that it does work

[SealSoup2]

what is a plasma ball exactly..? besides ionizing gas nd such, what causes it to happen and why doesnt it burn through the glass like plasma shot from movies?

[affo2]

i want.... to .... tuch it

[EmperorDavros99332]

It looked like you were in Engineering on The USS Star Ship Voyager and The Lightning Globe was its Plasma Warp Core conduit! ;)!

[TheFourthHatedMan]

Seriously, who's the musician behind the music? :)

[khaos07777]

could i make one? I don't have alot of experience with that kind of stuff but I am good with my hands.

[Lolledape]

Go back in time a few hundred years with this... You´ll get sooo much respect...

[viacin]

wow ya.. i think a few people did go back in time and bring some of this stuff. maybe a few hundred years into our future we will know. Of corse, they were all deemed witches, or crazy

[lukas830]

cool, how much does it cost?

[lightningman2]

All of these lighning globes are copies of Bill Parkers work from the 70's 80's and 90's. I have seen many images on YouTube and they are all Bill Parker's chemistry mixes, designs, and colors. He did hundreds! Bill's first lightning sculptures were exhibited at the San Francisco Exploratorium in the 70's and commercialized in the very early 80's. There were several people that COPIED!!! Bill's work and claimed it as there own -kinda sad -- THEY KNOW WHO THEY ARE! and so do we.

[nerodesign000]

No. The Plasma Ball wasn't Bill's idea. Tesla was making these in the 1800s. Parker copied his designs on the work of two other plasma scientists and quoted them in his Patent-design applications (see US Patent registry). Parker withdrew from plasma nearly a decade ago. Only a few of his designs are patently new. Even the electronic drivers used are based on older designs. But he was the first person to commercially produce plasma as a display item & he mastered the gas mixes & specifications.

[jusTlikehmf2]

@nerodesign000 i just have to say; you raped lightningman2 real hard

[y512516]

@nerodesign000

Damn Edison

Such a rip off

American humor my ass

[CassiaBlueLava]

How relaxing, makes me dream!

[Crysal1010]

If you're going to type scientifically, then don't type with horrible grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation skills. Or Chtspk.

DON'T. SAVE. TIME!!

[Rastrillero4]

r these balls expensive?

[nerodesign000]

The globe in the video by itself was about $3K after shipping. From memory, this one was about 18 inches wide.

[genryuusai]

very nice, although i don't think i could ever give 3000$ for a plasmaball

[nerodesign000]

It's a shame they cost so much to make but if you run a casino, restaurant or collect modern art, nothing beats a large plasma sculpture for brownie points with the public. The globe size in this video used to sell for $28K in the 1980s . Remember that these are also brighter than the novelty globes.

[genryuusai]

oh i get the point :p i just have one of those regular 10$ plasma globes. its still quite fun to play with :p (and i don't own a casino/restaurant/... its just decoration for me)

trying to figure out some so called 'tricks' but only thing i found so far is the coin-paper-paper clip trick

[nerodesign000]

I catch kids doing the coin-zap regularly when I exhibit a large plasma in public. Some are outputting 15-30 kilovolts at high frequency so the zap they get is often a lot more powerful than the one they get from their novelty plasmas. You can burn skin doing that.

Incidentally, one of my favorite plasmas is a 6" novelty globe from the 80s. It's pink, orange and purple and looks like a bright blossom.

[genryuusai]

mine is pink/orange/purple

default plasma ball i guess

a bit like this (watch?v=8nR24XqGSGE) but less aggressive sadly

it can burn skin tho :p tried it

[dandelion0331]

does this amazingly beautiful plasma ball consume lots of energy?

[nerodesign000]

Not at all. They plug into a standard wall socket and consume less than 1 or 2 amps. The electricity is then ramped up to thousands of volts but at very high frequency where it is then sort of "injected into the gas". Most plasmas this size use about as much power as a home radio/stereo.

In air, it takes a lot of power to make a long, visible spark. But inside the globe, the gas is very conductive and it's under a slight vacuume so the arcs of power in the gas are much longer than in air.

[nerodesign000]

It's the "Frequency" of the electricity and the pressure which allow for the different effects.

The power is spiking every second... ideally, this is usually about 50 times per second or faster. This frequency of spiking is what makes the plasma slow or fast moving. I like the slower ones although the fast ones are also very cool but those make a little more noise. The sound of the strong arcs inside the glass is a bit like bubbles in a soda can but louder. This one is quite silent though.

[dandelion0331]

really nice..thank you.

[FireBirdsGo]

Someone should make a really big plasma ball. Like 2 meters wide or something. Now that would be awesome! :D

[file1116]

where did you got such a big glass?

[nerodesign000]

The spheres are handmade by three different firms in Europe.

They're not normal Soda Glass but 'Borosilicate' Glass.

[johnnyblazeinnyc]

I agree with Marco Tesla had the original idea and patent. Then is was furthered in 1937 by William Lee then parker patented mixtures and a small display device knowing patent law these mixtures were outdated quickly. And there have been several patents since then advancing the technology even new mixtures have now been patented and an actual plasma globe as we know it was patented by the Japanese. They have the rights to the globes we know and use today.

[maolyn666]

I want to touch it... haha XD

[lightningman2]

The kinetic light sculpture was invented by Bill Parker while he was at MIT in the early 1970's. He later went on to commercialize them. Several others copied his invention over the years. Bill has units as large as 5ft round and as small as 4" battery operated.

[nerodesign000]

Not at all. Bill Parker was the first person to market plasma displays (as they were then known) as an reproduceable artform. Plasma discharge lamps were in fact first patented in by Nikolai Tesla. It was Teslas Patents that Parker quoted when applying for his own commercial Patents in the late 70s. Apparently the TV series Lost In Space featured a plasma... back before Parker patented his own. Teslas plasma patent (U.S. Patent 0514170) was lodged in 1894.

[gangstabrutha]

what would happen if i took a hammer and threw

it at the glass and broke it? XD

[nerodesign000]

The gas would dissipate. There might be a slight hum as the power supply discharged straight into the air but there would likely be a slight smell of ozone from the electrical discharge. The power supply would sense a failure and would shut itself off in a couple of seconds.

Now if you threw a hammer at the glass the globe would shatter. With the slight vacuum, it might implode slightly. However, the sound of me kicking your @ss would overwhelm any other sounds you might otherwise perceive.

[gangstabrutha]

now i know why'd you'd

kick my ass......

i broke a 30 year old antique plasma X_X

[nerodesign000]

Ouch! Was it still running nicely before you broke it?

This didn't happen at the Wollongong Science Center by any chance, did it? I hear an intern dropped a VERY pricey historical Jim Falk globe there some years back.

[gangstabrutha]

no....

hypotheticaly,if i broke one of

your very old plasma from 1988,you'd kick

my ass

[nerodesign000]

Only if it was deliberate. Or to make me feel better.

/I recently broke a 24" plasma which was 20 years old. Bad feeling to do that.

[gangstabrutha]

-_- there goes a pricless

artifact

[nerodesign000]

Nikolai Tesla's plasma patent for ionized gas in a glass discharge container was lodged way back in 1894 (U.S. Patent 0514170). Parker has often quoted Tesla's patent when applying for his own. The main difference with Parker's patents was that he isolated the electrode with a glass insulation sheath to stabilize the gas.

[xannmax]

when I tried this my camera broke. LOL

[saywhatnowdude]

Awesome!!! I got something with the same type of electrode called "Lighting Lamp". It's another type of novelty device in the shape of a lava lamp. The lamp is covered with a thick rubber coating (1/4 mm at base to 2&1/2 mm at top) to prevent misuse and shattering. Not as cool as what you show here, but a cost-effective alternative. $20.00 US

[johnnyblazeinnyc]

Larry Albright is retired great friend of mine but he is enjoying retirement he made some amazing pieces over the years. I will be posting a few soon marco so you can check them out.

[walkontom]

Alrite, ur videos have a very relaxing vibe, you obviously know alot about the plasma balls, in the film "The Goonies", when the kids go into the attic, chunk starts playing with a big plasma ball, the thing is nobody turned it on when they were up there, do they generate electricity 2 the house or something, maybe a stupid question I know but just curios?...

[nerodesign000]

The plasmas in "The Goonies" were created by Larry Albright who may have retired recently. If you look carefully, all the plasmas are functioning when Chuck says "Laser beams!" and grabs the larger plasma. I believe Larry has a patent on the use of "Dewar" type plasmas which are the double-walled tube plasmas that the other kids can be seen handling in the shot. Plasmas have been around since the late 1800's so they were ideal for old 'attic props'.

[nerodesign000]

No, the plasmas can't power other household items but since the attic was full of old curios, it was probably a cool touch that the original owner had them in storage (an eccentric collector of sorts who chased treasure and was interested in modern science). The big plasma had been gassed to look like others made long ago.

[nerodesign000]

Larry is a friend of Steven Spielberg, who was very much in touch with Michael Jackson at the time The Goonies was made. MJ even showed up on the set the day Chunk did the 'Truffle Shuffle'. It seems Michael collects Larry's plasma art as I saw him leaving the studio once just as I was arriving.

[walkontom]

Wow, Thanks for that Information, you now your stuff...

[D14852001neko]

How do you build things like these??

[nerodesign000]

You need a high frequency Power Supply and a large Pyrex globe filled at a slight vacuum with inert (and suitable) gasses. You can find tips online although it can be a difficult and expensive process. Easier to buy one than to make it. This one has an electrode fitted around the exterior neck of the globe rather than inside it - like most other plasma devices.

[pthodor]

Yeah, tell us what the song is, it sounds really cool!

[ZTron57]

dunno what this exact song is, but if you like this type of music you will probably like most music classified under "Ambient".

[theicewarrior01]

i love these even though myne broke and put me in a coma for 3 years (my fault)

[VCat2006]

Really? What happened? Did you dream like in The Odyssey?

[theicewarrior01]

i felt hot then i just blacked out woke up one day felt like it was mornight (not that i knew what that was) i couldnt remenber anything i may have dreamed theres no one to tell me that

still im ok now :)

[alabaster12345]

Yeah what happened?

[theicewarrior01]

it was a high voltace plasma ball made cheaply the glass cracked and my wife had to turn of the mains to get in the room

[scorpion9090]

i want one of those, i got one of the regular ones but its cheap and boring

[Envyse7enSin]

...I think im High

[myamyitzuthinn]

very lovely and romantic...I like it...

[Aeryk333]

Mesmerizing!

[Chiiyo1992]

source of song?!

and great plasma ball!!^^