OT: Static Charging

This has brilliant and twisted written all over it. :-)

I can't answer the battery part. I did find this cool web site on generating static electricity. I dimly remember such machines from high school physics. What is your source of static electricity going to be? Are you trying to find a way to make cats useful? Believe me. I've tried. Nothing works.

you have to hold them upside-down and push them around the carpet in a circle.

Good luck with that and let us know how many stitches it takes.

I believe whatever material you add electrons to will become more negatively charged, so you'll need to connect that to the negative of the battery to be charged.

I'm thinking that maybe you could use some material in the wind that develops a potential in static charge to the ground? I think all antennas do. Maybe some aluminum foil in the wind connected to a battery could make a wind generator with no moving parts?

hmm, I was thinking of how this ties in somewhat to windmills. They extract energy from the wind by slowing it down. I'm guessing that an antenna might slow the air down just a little by friction and gain some charge. Oddly capacitors might come in useful. They have a large surface area to store a static charge very well. The large surface area would come in contact with a large volume of air in a draft. Maybe you could cut one open and expose the electrodes to a draft of air.

I was thinking of a future wind generator: A big static ball in the wind! No moving parts.

I can't seem to find any references on harnessing static electricity except by harnessing lightning. Can you?

I haven't taken the time to go back into my notes but I know off the top of my head that Benjamin Franklin (and others of his time) did many experiments along these lines...using motion and friction to create a stored negative charge and then quickly discharge it. You just need to discharge it into a battery. My guess is that because much of the kinetic energy in the friction process is lost to heat transfer to outside of the system, the electron transfer will be slim. Probably not worth it...kinda the same issue with using your braking to recharge an EV battery on the go, right?

vinnie_basile, Hands down the best way to convert motion to electricity is a motor. I'm not really concerned with kinetic energy but with a cheaper way to harness energy. Its that simple. The only thing preventing renewable energy generation from becoming as practical as non-renewable is the cost. Could renewable energy generation be done cheaper?

Maybe taking a metal and using a new technology (such as nanotechnology) to dramatically increase the surface area will allow it to generate more static charge when placed in the wind. Maybe the technology can then be somehow improved and implemented in such a way to be cheaper than the traditional method of using wind to generate electricity: propeller driven wind generators.

What if you can develop a conductive paint that you can paint your house with that can than be used to harness static electricity from the wind?

The potential for renewable energy generation is huge. The energy is all around us. The problem is cutting the cost in harnessing it. If you can find a way to do that, than you can revolutionize energy production. The world is in dire need of an energy revolution.

Yeah, I see how your thinking about it and it is a cool way to think. I am just wondering about efficiency in terms of cost. Because we are not dealing with a closed system, we will loose energy throughout the harnessing process and with variables such as humidity I wonder if harnessing the kinetic energy of the wind through electrostatic conversion is the most efficient and cost effective idea. But, of course, that is probably what is keeping people from trying it in the first place. We are beyond Aristotlean science and actually TRY things out now, so go for it.

I have solar panels on my home and that system supplies enough energy for all my home and commuting needs, save heating and I'm working on that. I've always perceived as a need for a paradigm shift, not a revolutionary source of energy. But, then again, I have no idea how to shift said paradigm...

Vinnie

There is a book called "Draw The Lightning Down", and you should be able to request it at your local library (perhaps transferred from another branch).

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10002.php

There are several variations of the "shake charge" flashlight. Shaking a magnet back and forth across a coil charges a capacitor, which then bleeds electricity at a steady rate across a bulb to make the light.

Making a large capacitor that then slowly charges a battery is a scaled up variation of this existing system.

A Leyden jar is a simple homemade capacitor. Scaling up can mean building a pond with a lightning rod as a conductor, bearing in mind that a Leyden jar the size of a large pumpkin can kill a man.

Start off with something on a smaller scale, perhaps attaching 3 cats to a rotor that is spun by a windmill, and rubs against a bees-wax ball (Read the DTLD book). feed the cats a diet high in iron and salt to ensure they provide a solid magnetic flux path and an adequate level of electrolytic conductivity.

Perhaps we can call this the Cat/Li-ion battery charger? (I couldn't resist)

A dog will fight a burglar to protect you, and if you're injured it will go to find help.

A cat will hide until the assault is over, then it will come out after the killer is gone to see if any food was spilled next to your body.

"A cat will hide until the assault is over, then it will come out after the killer is gone to see if any food was spilled next to your body."

However, throwing your cat at an intruder is also an effective means of temporarily disabling (and possibly maiming) them.

Trust me. I have experienced this firsthand :O.

Hi,
Your aerials spheres etc are not collecting energy from the wind they are picking up the EM radiation travelling at the speed of light, thats why you got a shock, it takes a long time to build up , I have a small simple circuit to store this energy, it can just about charge a mobile, been working on it for a while now , lot of free energy out there flying about, eg. mobiles radio, tv, etc. spheres are good for storing static and sharp points to discharge Tesla knew some interesting stuff, I,m an electrician and still find it hard to understand but its fascinating good luck, James