@@brainiac75 I do calisthenics for more than 1 year and pb of ~120 squats in a row, I practice cardio and jumping sometimes but yours was really high! on an unmotivated day I wouldn't be able to do that.
electricity isn't lazy, it doesn't just go the path of least resistance. Electricity is greedy, It strikes everywhere at the same time as hard as it can, with the shortest path taking the brunt of the force.
@@brainiac75 I don't have a good description when it comes to transistors and impedance, though. It does whatever it wants then and transistors burn out and then everyone's sad.
30 years ago I experimented just like this as a kid. I found a tinfoil 'hat' that rose to a sharp point gave the best sparks, putting my finger above focussed the current on such a tight spot that it instantly burned me. The black-red dots stuck around for a few days, my hands and arms were covered with them as I never learned from my initial mistake. I could even use the tinfoil hat to start fires which even as an irresponsible child scared me so I stopped leaving it on 24/7. Several years ago my mum gave me a usb plasma ball for christmas, despite being in my thirties I felt just like you and was immediately a kid full of wonderment.
Ha! Did the same. Wrapped mine with a hemisphere of foil. Became quite familiar with the scent of toasted flesh. Also discovered if I fiddled with the controls juuuuust right, I could engage a "crazy mode" where the entire sphere would go pink, emit a ringing sound, and trigger the neighbour's garage door opener when touching the globe.
especially when working with high voltage/current systems, it's worth remembering that electricity follows *all* available paths (inversely proportional to each path's resistance) great video and i don't mean to be argumentative, just that this is one of the cases where "path of least resistance" can be misleading in a way that gets people hurt!
AlphaPeonix has a video titled `How does electricity find the "Path of Least Resistance"?` While I know exactly what what you mean, it's a super great demonstration. It can also be easily expanded to show how even if there is "infinite" resistance, you can still have energy flowing in an AC circuit.
@@arthurmoore9488 ooh yes, agreed! i'm only a dabbler in RF/EM stuff so wanted to avoid overstepping and saying something confusing or misleading. plasma lamps tho are getting into the voltage/frequency range where electrons start to get frighteningly "creative" with the definitions of "path" and "resistance" haha
Funny story actually... I once had a plasma ball that I bought off of eBay (this was 4 or 5 years ago) I was running it on 24 volts because I was curious what would happen. I was arcing a piece of metal to the glass and after a couple of minutes, the whole glass ball EXPLODED! Luckily, I was wearing glasses and none of the glass went in my face and I was fine but holy hell was it scary. It was something I was not expecting and I'm never going to do that again. I have a collection of old and new plasma balls and I'm still adding more to it. Let's hope that none of them go nuclear on me...
Sounds like internal stresses in the glass got released once your pinpoint hotspot either melted through or caused a thermal fracture. I imagine the higher quality globes might be annealed (heated and let cool very slowly to reduce internal stresses), but your cheap eBay one, I guess they skipped that step. What's a few severe eye injuries for the sake of PROFIT! 🙂
Yeah, the single spot overheated the glass. They probably use a cheap untempered "soda glass" which means that all the internal stresses will cause the ball to shatter upon impact or pin-point heating
Yep, it is surprising how cheaply they can be made today. The 5" globe was only around DKK 80 / USD 12 brand new including 25% Danish VAT. But without a heatsink on the transistor it is not exactly well-built ;) Thanks for the early watch!
Thank you once again, I've been watching your channel for a long time and have watched pretty much everything you've made. I find myself missing my plasma ball more now. Always great to see you exprimenting, no matter what you tinkering with. Hope you have a lovely day
Thanks for another awesome vid Brian!! Back in the 80's mine and my brother's 6in plasma-lights had adjustment knobs on them and at maximum power they would create large swarms of filaments like yours when you swapped globes. They must've had a large power supply already in them. Look for one of these from the early 80's and back. 😎👍
What is this nostalgic feeling is it simply because your quality content and imaginative tests or is it because I like you used to play with these when we were kids.😂
Capacitive coupling. I taught my 5yo daughter something similar a couple of years ago. Place a square piece aluminium foil over the plasma globe. Press it down flat around the globe, and twist each corner into a point.
Whenever you give the high voltage warning I have a PTSD moment and want to start listing the different way to keep safe if you are working with high voltage because I have been shocked hard. 10,000 volt DC transformer, 1 Farhad capacitor, 4 Farhad stiffening Capacitor, house hold 110v a few times, household main and the topper of them all, Lightning. I was struck in the back by a tendril of the main bolt. So I take electrical safety very seriously and thank you for giving a PSA about the dangers of high voltage, and all the others as well.
@@JohnShalamskas you better believe it. How I'm alive is beyond what any doctor can figure out. Fortunately it hasn't done much to my brain but my heart has scars apparently. I apparently have 3 Lichtenburge scars on the outside of my heart that is visible as scar tissue in x-ray. The mark on my back from the lightning has mostly faded. When I got the full jolt of household power something happened to my elbow. When I took the 4 Farhad stiffening Capacitor hit it was fully charged and I rode through it till I could throw it away. I also don't see in the normal colour spectrum, it's slightly shifted towards the infrared side. I can't see white. Even titanium dioxide looks pink to me
@@MikkellTheImmortalsounds like the origin of a super hero. Struck by lightning and now has enhanced vision! I'm just not sure how you would put your new skill to use...
@@TwistedPresence if only. Actually my vision has kept me from getting a pilot license and a few career choices because you have to have proper colour vision for the jobs.
Many years ago i had a plasma ball, and did some similar experiments. However, i used a pencil instead of another coin. The graphite point would start the spark, and as the wood heated, it would char and start conducting electricity, forming some small lichtenberg figures. Another stuff i did was to replace the coin on the glass with a paper painted with graphite. The arc would cut the paper on where it struck.
I have actually been thinking about this for a while (the part with the powersupplies) and there is surprisingly little info on the internet about it. Tak for denne gode video Brian 😄
I believe it is effectively a small tesla coil. It would be interesting to see what happens if the power supply was replaced with a wire from a small tesla coil, such as the ones sold on Amazon that play music.
@@betterl8thannvr i have one myself and have taken it apart and such. Its not a small teslacoil but a small flyback transformer. I just didnt want to break mine as its quite old and has a cool effect.
@betterl8thannvr The cheap plasma globes use a much simpler fly-back transformer but a Tesla coil could be used. The plasma balls just need the right combination of voltage and frequency to work well. I do have a small music Tesla coil (unboxed on Patreon) so I might try your suggestion ;) Thanks for the early watch!
I have a few, some are attracted to each other, some push away and extinguisch the others when near. I guess it's either some polarity or they interfere with each others power supply.
You don't even need a coin. Any long piece of wire will do. But aside from being careful with electricity and sparks and fire hazards... Just note that your piece of wire becomes an antenna that can wreak havoc on other electrical devices, killing them. And in any other case, you could also technically be jamming radio frequencies. Which i am sure is illegal no matter where you live.
Nice video as always! I feel it might be interesting to see what happens if you put the internal high voltage wire touching the outside of the glass, and what if you had multiple HV wires on the outside, will it affect a normal plasma ball?
It doesn't make much difference for high AC Voltage. The insulating paint layer will act like a capacitor like the glass globe. Possibly the paints insulating properties will break down due to the high voltage and create a connection
For all the people who don't have radiators in their homes. They are grounded through the copper pipes. Usually they have a grounding cable connected to them where the grid connects to the house. It's very handy to be able to avoid shocking the computer parts when you build your own PC by touching the nearest radiator.
2:21 creating arcs outside plasma globes also creates ozone, which can potentially irritate your lungs, even while just touching the globe with your fingers. you can smell it. smells a bit like pool water or post-rain air to me
About the grouding, something similar also happens with electric guitars, if you dont touch it its very noisy, as soon as you touch the strings the noise vanishes
Your body acts like an antenna for electromagnetic energy. When you touch the grounded strings, that energy goes to ground via the strings, so you stop radiating it into the audio circuitry of the guitar.
Really nice ! I guess it explains alot. I originally thought that due to parasitic capacitance of our body to ground there could be flows of electricity like the plasma filaments (it was mentioned in a ElectroBOOM video but i could have miss rememberd the concept)
Interesting. The way I see it, it's high frequency, high voltage and very low current flowing in a circuit that consists of the step-up transformer, electrode, air, glass, noble gas, glass again, ball surface, (optionally) your body, air, ground, mains grid, power supply internal capacitance and coming back into the step-up transformer. It's all about capacitive coupling, and enlarging the surface area means there's more capacitance for current to flow through, making the impedance lower at high frequencies and forming the preferred current path. I'd say "the path of least impedance".
Try touching it with one hand, with the other hand stretched out as far away as possible, then bring the outstrecthed hand in towards yourself. I guess your legs will still mess things up, but you could always do it on the floor and tuck yourself into a ball as much as possible. I'm pretty sure you'll be able to have some control over how strongly the filaments are attracted to you, as you reach your hand out farther from the ball and increase the voltage drop across yourself.
the increased activity in the op globe after you touched it is due to the small amount of static electricity that was built up in your body got transferred to the glass, making it more sensitive.
My guess is that when you touch the undervolt one, you localized the ions inside, making that one stronger and more likely to stay there afterwards. With the overvolt one, it will pull that single filament towards it, preventing any others to form as strongly.
My brain realized it was capacitance quite quickly here I'm sure i learned it in school at one point but it was great that my intuition was correct in this thought, the energy has a distance to travel before it "realizes" it has no new path to ground which is why a length of wire works in this scenario.
A dangerous but fun thing you can do is wrap a coil of wire around the plasma ball. You can get scarily high voltages that way, more than an inch of arc in air. I learned that touching such things is unwise but probably not deadly as a 10 year old sitting with my bare feet on a damp concrete basement floor.
Glad you like the video - and my voice ;) My voice and accent were actually mentioned a lot when I asked why people subscribe to my channel (back when I passed 100K subs).
Relating to the increased attraction between the globes after your touch: The high frequency fields build static charge on the glass, wuich you neutralize by touching. The globes then likely then build the charge again, with a higher concentration of charge on the portions of glass exposed to greater electromagnetic flux. You could test this by rotating the globes after creating the "attraction," wish I had a second one to verify it myself!
I had one of these when I was a teen, and one day I left it turned on a shelf, I must've bumped it a little at some point and it got nudged close enough that it made contact with the wall; from what I remember, I did not see any unusual amount of sparks heading to the wall, but a little while later I heard a pop, and looking at it there were no flying sparks anymore, but there was a small round hole on the glass where it was touching the wall. I suspect over time the corona discharge concentrated on the spot touching, or nearly touching, the wall heated up the glass, possibly eventually to the point of making it conductive which would accelerate the process by providing a easier path for the sparks than the insulating cold glass everywhere else, and ultimately while I wasn't looking the sparks focused thru the tiny conductive hotspot on the glass and molt thru and let the gas escape and regular atmosphere in :( IIRC, there were no scorch marks on the paint on the wall, so it must've happened quickly.
Besides the electric shock warning, you probably should also add a warning about ozone; I still remember the smell these things produce after a while. I once read a sad story about some sort of equipment that indirectly produced ozone (maybe it was a Van de Graaf generator, or something, maybe a plasmaball too, I don't remember), was left turned on in a closet in a university where they also kept their lab animals; the space wasn't well ventilated enough, and next day, or after a weekend or something, when people came to get the animals, the ozone had killed them all :(
We used to do dumb stuff when we were young. We put a broken guitar string around one of the plasma lamps shaped like a spiral. If you want to burn a design onto your skin like an electric tattoo gun, that'll do it! 😆
I went into this feeling pretty sure the answer is that whether you get arcs here has little to do with grounding, and more to do with capacitance. The more surface area the thing that touches the globe has, the more the arcs would be drawn to it. I don't currently have a plasma globe to test this myself, but why not try various non-conductive materials as well? Human skin isn't even all that conductive really, but you have a lot of it for charges to collect on.
I actually bought one in the xmas sales just for nostalgia and wonder For as little as £10 half price Looks really cool up at the window at night, Seen from outside As the globe is less visable Looks very alien at first glance when returning home
Back in the early 1990's, Radio Shack sold Plasma Bulbs, and cheap LCD Watches. In some stores, they unwisely chose to display both on the front counter. From what I remember, customers discovered that placing the cheap LCD Watch near the Plasma Ball, would effectly zap the watch in short order, rendering the watch a glorified paper weight. It took manage a solid year, before they discovered the problem, & moved Plasma Ball away from the watches. 🤪
And a question, what is that element wich looks like microphone in both balls @5:41 between switch and huge electrolyte and @7:16 right to the switch in smaller ball ?
Yep, I just can't get enough of them. I still enjoy watching their inner and ever changing plasma structures. My only complaint is how dim they are when not touched. Not easy to film in a lighted room ;) Thanks for the early watch and comment as always, JustPyro,
You *are* high frequency ground. I did not figured out why however. Either you are capacitively coupled with Earth (several picofarads are enough) or air itself is kinda grounded and it slowly drains charge from you.
@ElectroBoom did a bit about a peizo electric switch effect where rolls of aluminum foil could be induced to form a connection with a nearby lighter-strike. I suspect it's that phenomenon...
Capacitance and a relatively large mass. the plasma balls run at a fairly high frequency in the low MHz, there is enough capacitance between the ball and you to make a good sized AC current to flow
I wa wondering why the background music of your videos feels so recognisable well it is because I have this on my spotifylist "adding the sun - Kevin Macleod " anyway I like your videos specially the ones with plasma balls and magnets are among my favorits btw have you done test with and old quarts lamp ?? the lamp ppl used before regular solarium rods I have one in my possession and lamp has tons of respect from me because of how dangerous it can be it is an old relic if I may say so
I have never owned a plasma ball... Why I never bought one is a mystery. But now as a middle aged boy I just placed an order. One for me and one for my 5 year old nephew.😊
I would guess that oils from your skin or possibly salt from a tiny amount of sweat or some combination of the two is what makes for higher conductivity on the surface after you've touched it. The tiny amount of moisture would probably evaporate and reduce that conductive effect, but I'd like to see what happens if you wear a conductive glove that blocks any sweat or oil from your hands from transferring to the globe.
My thougts about the sparks while insulated, its an high voltage high frequency ac source. if the body is large enough like an bottle of water hanging insulated from an wire, it wil most likely also spark. first its get loaded with electrons on the positive cycle, then the electrons are taken away on the negative cycle creating a continuous voltage differential and thus a spark. Some sort of capacitive coupling. Can you try this with Franklins Bells (Lightning Bells)? Nice video as always, informative and entertaining. Thanks
The probably appear different after you touch them because you set up a higher current arc and it will take some time for the ions to diffuse in the whole globe volume.
0:54 steel Industries take advantage of this phenomenon with electric arc furnaces, used to melt hundreds of tonnes of steel scrap in less than an hour.
1st I'd like to know if its possible to increase the spark gap by insulating the ground wire in a glass tube so that only the ends are exposed, with the opposite end being in the lowest potential possible 🤷♂️ 2nd, I do hope you are planning on introducing the plasma ball to the magnets.
Hello good sir, i have a question about lasers. I do have a 532nm green diode laser pointer and it lights most of the stuff i shine it on in a bright green, as one would expect. But when it hits certain objects, it does not look green any more. This occurs when the object is of a neon colour, for example Red and orange Highlighters/ Textmarkers. Same goes for orange plastic clamps from the home improvement store. I also have a coffee mug which is neon orange. Pointing the green Laser at it makes it flouress bright orange only, no more green light can be seen. Several other random things made of colored plastic do the same thing, the laserlight returned is not green any more but different shades of red and orange. Do you have ovserved this effect already yourself? Do you have any idea what is going on there? Would this be a topic for a video? Best Regards 😊
Interesting. 532 nm can make some fluorescent materials fluoresce - though 405 nm violet lasers are much better for most fluorophores. I doubt all the green light is converted by the fluorescent materials. I think you experience a mixed color where your eyes combine the color of the green laser and the fluorescent color into a third 'apparent' color that is actually just a mixture of the two. I have noted it as a potential video idea :) Thanks for the early watch!
the ,,magical hands,, might be due to how electricity and plasma work. as we know, we need a ground to attract those filaments. the underpowered one might think the hi powered one was some sort of ground. or maybe the plasma just attracts itself due to an electromagnetic field idk
I thought the only thing that matters is the capacitance which in a long wire is already much higher than a coin.. would be interesting to see how a ceramic capacitor with one leg bent up would behave.
Would wearing thick rubber boots have a similar effect to jumping? With that in mind, if connected to something ungrounded for a long enough time, would it eventually stabilize, or would it serve as an "energy dump" indefinitely? The fact that, when you jumped, a few stray strands of filament wandered off makes me wonder.
I heard , from a very reliable source, that the discharge inside the ball forms a twisted pair !!! Can you confirm this by getting a closeup photo of the filament (twisted pair of plasma) thanks !
mabe its not the ground and it just using you as an antenna . maybe a receiver in the same frequency that the transformer works could capture some clues
I wonder what would happen if you put various passive components in the conductive path. A resistor, capacitor, and an inductor. Also what if the 2 globes touch. My theory on the mutual attraction is that when you touch it, it dissipates some surface static charge from the glass. I wonder if wiping it with a dryer sheet would do anything.
The electricity from the coins is high-voltage, very low-current AC so the components should be rated for that. Letting two globes touch each other can give some very interesting interactions. Will have to make a video about it! You might be right that I remove some build- up static electricity even though it is an AC signal. Still lots of experiments to try with plasma balls as mentioned at the end of the video :D Thanks for the inputs.
Ok question what happens if you hug a plasma ball not literally hug it but get most of your body mass right next to that electric field does it not want to flow to you in that instance 🤔
I think the plasma globes seem to attract each other because they affect the charge of the air around them by attracting air particles of the opposite charge, so the air in between the plasma globes has a stronger charge than the air next to only one of them and therefore attracts more tendrils. Not sure why touching the globe has a strengthening effect though.
"Feels good to know I am more attractive than air
and still can cause a spark."
haha
was waiting for this video for a while!
Still just being used for your potential.
@@barongerhardt damn.
@@barongerhardt you ok bro?
9:02 "explanation for the increased attraction after being touched"
🤔🤔
Relatable. @@pvic6959
10:20 That was a hell of a jump
Thanks, I am not athletic at all :) And having one hand fixed on a spot is surprisingly limiting to a jump...
Yep, It was a very spritely-leap!! 😳😆
was about to comment the same, damn good jump
Yeah that jump is crazy
@@brainiac75 I do calisthenics for more than 1 year and pb of ~120 squats in a row, I practice cardio and jumping sometimes but yours was really high! on an unmotivated day I wouldn't be able to do that.
"Petting a vibrating cactus" You Danes have really weird hobbies
My vibrating 🌵 is named lefty.😂
Please, no kink-shaming. ✌
He's Danish? I had no clue where he was from, I don't know accents haha.
electricity isn't lazy, it doesn't just go the path of least resistance. Electricity is greedy, It strikes everywhere at the same time as hard as it can, with the shortest path taking the brunt of the force.
Yes, greedy is a way more precise, subjective description. Will have to remember that ;) Thanks for the early watch!
@@brainiac75 I don't have a good description when it comes to transistors and impedance, though. It does whatever it wants then and transistors burn out and then everyone's sad.
7:08 @@brainiac75
it only hurts for a second. typically
If it strikes everywhere it isnt greedy either. Its aggressive
30 years ago I experimented just like this as a kid. I found a tinfoil 'hat' that rose to a sharp point gave the best sparks, putting my finger above focussed the current on such a tight spot that it instantly burned me. The black-red dots stuck around for a few days, my hands and arms were covered with them as I never learned from my initial mistake. I could even use the tinfoil hat to start fires which even as an irresponsible child scared me so I stopped leaving it on 24/7.
Several years ago my mum gave me a usb plasma ball for christmas, despite being in my thirties I felt just like you and was immediately a kid full of wonderment.
Ha! Did the same. Wrapped mine with a hemisphere of foil. Became quite familiar with the scent of toasted flesh. Also discovered if I fiddled with the controls juuuuust right, I could engage a "crazy mode" where the entire sphere would go pink, emit a ringing sound, and trigger the neighbour's garage door opener when touching the globe.
i see high voltage. I click
That's dangerous, don't touch high voltage
Oga boga high voltage
Thanks - I do like a good spark :) Especially when they relatively safely can be handled...
It's safe to say that high voltage attracts you
@@artisticyeti22 I assume that you also watch Styropyro?
especially when working with high voltage/current systems, it's worth remembering that electricity follows *all* available paths (inversely proportional to each path's resistance)
great video and i don't mean to be argumentative, just that this is one of the cases where "path of least resistance" can be misleading in a way that gets people hurt!
AlphaPeonix has a video titled `How does electricity find the "Path of Least Resistance"?` While I know exactly what what you mean, it's a super great demonstration. It can also be easily expanded to show how even if there is "infinite" resistance, you can still have energy flowing in an AC circuit.
@@arthurmoore9488 ooh yes, agreed! i'm only a dabbler in RF/EM stuff so wanted to avoid overstepping and saying something confusing or misleading. plasma lamps tho are getting into the voltage/frequency range where electrons start to get frighteningly "creative" with the definitions of "path" and "resistance" haha
Funny story actually... I once had a plasma ball that I bought off of eBay (this was 4 or 5 years ago) I was running it on 24 volts because I was curious what would happen. I was arcing a piece of metal to the glass and after a couple of minutes, the whole glass ball EXPLODED! Luckily, I was wearing glasses and none of the glass went in my face and I was fine but holy hell was it scary. It was something I was not expecting and I'm never going to do that again. I have a collection of old and new plasma balls and I'm still adding more to it. Let's hope that none of them go nuclear on me...
Sounds like internal stresses in the glass got released once your pinpoint hotspot either melted through or caused a thermal fracture. I imagine the higher quality globes might be annealed (heated and let cool very slowly to reduce internal stresses), but your cheap eBay one, I guess they skipped that step. What's a few severe eye injuries for the sake of PROFIT! 🙂
Yeah, the single spot overheated the glass. They probably use a cheap untempered "soda glass" which means that all the internal stresses will cause the ball to shatter upon impact or pin-point heating
I remember when the plasma balls were first available in the mid 1980s. They were over $2000 then. Now they're a commodity.
Yep, it is surprising how cheaply they can be made today. The 5" globe was only around DKK 80 / USD 12 brand new including 25% Danish VAT. But without a heatsink on the transistor it is not exactly well-built ;) Thanks for the early watch!
@@brainiac75 I would love a link. All the globes I find are too expensive for a curiosity.
@@ThePickledsoulhome bargains, dollar tree type shops sell them,
A friend of mine got one in probably the late 80’s. I think he paid $100 or $200.
Awesome new video! I am in love with high frequency high voltage circuitry! Very awesome.
well your in luck they are also attracted to you!
@@Dindonmasker I should have saw that coming... haha
Thank you for showing us all unique things that sturr our minds to understand the unknown.
Thank you once again, I've been watching your channel for a long time and have watched pretty much everything you've made. I find myself missing my plasma ball more now. Always great to see you exprimenting, no matter what you tinkering with. Hope you have a lovely day
Thanks for another awesome vid Brian!! Back in the 80's mine and my brother's 6in plasma-lights had adjustment knobs on them and at maximum power they would create large swarms of filaments like yours when you swapped globes. They must've had a large power supply already in them. Look for one of these from the early 80's and back. 😎👍
Loving the scientific jumpshots! Wonderful little experiment with the plasma globe, cheers!
What is this nostalgic feeling is it simply because your quality content and imaginative tests or is it because I like you used to play with these when we were kids.😂
Capacitive coupling. I taught my 5yo daughter something similar a couple of years ago. Place a square piece aluminium foil over the plasma globe. Press it down flat around the globe, and twist each corner into a point.
High voltage is so fascinating. It's great to see another high voltage video from you. Thanks for your amazing work!
That driver set....I need this
Hehe, you are doing stuff on your channel that I used to do back in 2010-2011. If only had I known that I could turn this into RUclips content 😁
5:45 2016, that is time I've started watching your videos. Man I feel old
good to see that you feel happy that electrons are attracted to you.
Whenever you give the high voltage warning I have a PTSD moment and want to start listing the different way to keep safe if you are working with high voltage because I have been shocked hard. 10,000 volt DC transformer, 1 Farhad capacitor, 4 Farhad stiffening Capacitor, house hold 110v a few times, household main and the topper of them all, Lightning. I was struck in the back by a tendril of the main bolt.
So I take electrical safety very seriously and thank you for giving a PSA about the dangers of high voltage, and all the others as well.
Did you have lasting health effects from any electric shocks?
@@JohnShalamskas you better believe it. How I'm alive is beyond what any doctor can figure out. Fortunately it hasn't done much to my brain but my heart has scars apparently. I apparently have 3 Lichtenburge scars on the outside of my heart that is visible as scar tissue in x-ray. The mark on my back from the lightning has mostly faded. When I got the full jolt of household power something happened to my elbow. When I took the 4 Farhad stiffening Capacitor hit it was fully charged and I rode through it till I could throw it away.
I also don't see in the normal colour spectrum, it's slightly shifted towards the infrared side. I can't see white. Even titanium dioxide looks pink to me
@@MikkellTheImmortalsounds like the origin of a super hero. Struck by lightning and now has enhanced vision! I'm just not sure how you would put your new skill to use...
@@TwistedPresence if only. Actually my vision has kept me from getting a pilot license and a few career choices because you have to have proper colour vision for the jobs.
lol
Saw stop uses a similar effect to detect blade coming in contact with flesh.
“Well let’s see, I’ve got a ten Kroner, a five Kroner, a twenty Kroner…no, wait-that’s another 10 Kroner.”
Many years ago i had a plasma ball, and did some similar experiments. However, i used a pencil instead of another coin. The graphite point would start the spark, and as the wood heated, it would char and start conducting electricity, forming some small lichtenberg figures.
Another stuff i did was to replace the coin on the glass with a paper painted with graphite. The arc would cut the paper on where it struck.
I have actually been thinking about this for a while (the part with the powersupplies) and there is surprisingly little info on the internet about it.
Tak for denne gode video Brian 😄
I believe it is effectively a small tesla coil. It would be interesting to see what happens if the power supply was replaced with a wire from a small tesla coil, such as the ones sold on Amazon that play music.
@@betterl8thannvr i have one myself and have taken it apart and such. Its not a small teslacoil but a small flyback transformer. I just didnt want to break mine as its quite old and has a cool effect.
Glad to be able to give you some answers ;) Velbekomme :D
@betterl8thannvr The cheap plasma globes use a much simpler fly-back transformer but a Tesla coil could be used. The plasma balls just need the right combination of voltage and frequency to work well. I do have a small music Tesla coil (unboxed on Patreon) so I might try your suggestion ;) Thanks for the early watch!
@@betterl8thannvr Styropyro tried this a few years ago on youtube, and like he usually does it's not a tiny cheap coil
I have a few, some are attracted to each other, some push away and extinguisch the others when near. I guess it's either some polarity or they interfere with each others power supply.
Your 'grounding' to the radiator won't work properly unless you file the paint away on the radiator and have a clean metal to metal contact.
You don't even need a coin. Any long piece of wire will do.
But aside from being careful with electricity and sparks and fire hazards... Just note that your piece of wire becomes an antenna that can wreak havoc on other electrical devices, killing them.
And in any other case, you could also technically be jamming radio frequencies. Which i am sure is illegal no matter where you live.
I liked the references 😂
Also "increased attraction after being touched" 😂 I caught that one! 😏
Nice video as always! I feel it might be interesting to see what happens if you put the internal high voltage wire touching the outside of the glass, and what if you had multiple HV wires on the outside, will it affect a normal plasma ball?
Thank youfor amazing experiments
Are you sure the wire was grounded? The radiator is painted.
Looks like it wasn't. But it was capacitively coupled for sure.
It doesn't make much difference for high AC Voltage. The insulating paint layer will act like a capacitor like the glass globe. Possibly the paints insulating properties will break down due to the high voltage and create a connection
For all the people who don't have radiators in their homes. They are grounded through the copper pipes. Usually they have a grounding cable connected to them where the grid connects to the house.
It's very handy to be able to avoid shocking the computer parts when you build your own PC by touching the nearest radiator.
2:21 creating arcs outside plasma globes also creates ozone, which can potentially irritate your lungs, even while just touching the globe with your fingers. you can smell it. smells a bit like pool water or post-rain air to me
About the grouding, something similar also happens with electric guitars, if you dont touch it its very noisy, as soon as you touch the strings the noise vanishes
Your body acts like an antenna for electromagnetic energy. When you touch the grounded strings, that energy goes to ground via the strings, so you stop radiating it into the audio circuitry of the guitar.
Really nice ! I guess it explains alot. I originally thought that due to parasitic capacitance of our body to ground there could be flows of electricity like the plasma filaments (it was mentioned in a ElectroBOOM video but i could have miss rememberd the concept)
Interesting. The way I see it, it's high frequency, high voltage and very low current flowing in a circuit that consists of the step-up transformer, electrode, air, glass, noble gas, glass again, ball surface, (optionally) your body, air, ground, mains grid, power supply internal capacitance and coming back into the step-up transformer. It's all about capacitive coupling, and enlarging the surface area means there's more capacitance for current to flow through, making the impedance lower at high frequencies and forming the preferred current path. I'd say "the path of least impedance".
Ive always wanted one of these
They've never been cheaper than now. And surprisingly enough still available off-the-shelf in some Danish supermarkets... Thanks for the early watch!
Beautiful footage ⚡️
Try touching it with one hand, with the other hand stretched out as far away as possible, then bring the outstrecthed hand in towards yourself. I guess your legs will still mess things up, but you could always do it on the floor and tuck yourself into a ball as much as possible. I'm pretty sure you'll be able to have some control over how strongly the filaments are attracted to you, as you reach your hand out farther from the ball and increase the voltage drop across yourself.
the increased activity in the op globe after you touched it is due to the small amount of static electricity that was built up in your body got transferred to the glass, making it more sensitive.
My guess is that when you touch the undervolt one, you localized the ions inside, making that one stronger and more likely to stay there afterwards. With the overvolt one, it will pull that single filament towards it, preventing any others to form as strongly.
i wasn't expecting the NBA grade jump 😮
My brain realized it was capacitance quite quickly here I'm sure i learned it in school at one point but it was great that my intuition was correct in this thought, the energy has a distance to travel before it "realizes" it has no new path to ground which is why a length of wire works in this scenario.
A dangerous but fun thing you can do is wrap a coil of wire around the plasma ball. You can get scarily high voltages that way, more than an inch of arc in air. I learned that touching such things is unwise but probably not deadly as a 10 year old sitting with my bare feet on a damp concrete basement floor.
Adding a mechanical pencil to the copper windings creates a low powered etcher,
Lightly burns paper
I was waiting for the word "Capacitance" to rear its head.
And your body mass makes a nice capacitive plate, much more so than a coin.
5:50 oh you know deep down you want to touch it...electroboom would have. 😅
Your voice is so enchanting 😮 great vid btw 👌💪👍
Glad you like the video - and my voice ;) My voice and accent were actually mentioned a lot when I asked why people subscribe to my channel (back when I passed 100K subs).
That was a really good jump.
Relating to the increased attraction between the globes after your touch:
The high frequency fields build static charge on the glass, wuich you neutralize by touching. The globes then likely then build the charge again, with a higher concentration of charge on the portions of glass exposed to greater electromagnetic flux.
You could test this by rotating the globes after creating the "attraction," wish I had a second one to verify it myself!
also that jump, im man this dude got some ups and helt lightning ball, cool
I had one of these when I was a teen, and one day I left it turned on a shelf, I must've bumped it a little at some point and it got nudged close enough that it made contact with the wall; from what I remember, I did not see any unusual amount of sparks heading to the wall, but a little while later I heard a pop, and looking at it there were no flying sparks anymore, but there was a small round hole on the glass where it was touching the wall. I suspect over time the corona discharge concentrated on the spot touching, or nearly touching, the wall heated up the glass, possibly eventually to the point of making it conductive which would accelerate the process by providing a easier path for the sparks than the insulating cold glass everywhere else, and ultimately while I wasn't looking the sparks focused thru the tiny conductive hotspot on the glass and molt thru and let the gas escape and regular atmosphere in :(
IIRC, there were no scorch marks on the paint on the wall, so it must've happened quickly.
Absolutely loved it
Besides the electric shock warning, you probably should also add a warning about ozone; I still remember the smell these things produce after a while. I once read a sad story about some sort of equipment that indirectly produced ozone (maybe it was a Van de Graaf generator, or something, maybe a plasmaball too, I don't remember), was left turned on in a closet in a university where they also kept their lab animals; the space wasn't well ventilated enough, and next day, or after a weekend or something, when people came to get the animals, the ozone had killed them all :(
We used to do dumb stuff when we were young. We put a broken guitar string around one of the plasma lamps shaped like a spiral. If you want to burn a design onto your skin like an electric tattoo gun, that'll do it! 😆
The date on the PCB indicates when it first was designed. So it gives a range of being made after 2016-today
Quite amazing, specially when you jumped 😉
I went into this feeling pretty sure the answer is that whether you get arcs here has little to do with grounding, and more to do with capacitance. The more surface area the thing that touches the globe has, the more the arcs would be drawn to it. I don't currently have a plasma globe to test this myself, but why not try various non-conductive materials as well? Human skin isn't even all that conductive really, but you have a lot of it for charges to collect on.
I actually bought one in the xmas sales just for nostalgia and wonder
For as little as £10 half price
Looks really cool up at the window at night,
Seen from outside As the globe is less visable
Looks very alien at first glance when returning home
Back in the early 1990's, Radio Shack sold Plasma Bulbs, and cheap LCD Watches. In some stores, they unwisely chose to display both on the front counter.
From what I remember, customers discovered that placing the cheap LCD Watch near the Plasma Ball, would effectly zap the watch in short order, rendering the watch a glorified paper weight. It took manage a solid year, before they discovered the problem, & moved Plasma Ball away from the watches. 🤪
You kinda jump high as hell lml but it could be just the plasma globe 😂😂 great video
Superb !......cheers.
And a question, what is that element wich looks like microphone in both balls @5:41 between switch and huge electrolyte and @7:16 right to the switch in smaller ball ?
Great Video as always!
I definitely need to buy myself a plasma ball again 😅
Yep, I just can't get enough of them. I still enjoy watching their inner and ever changing plasma structures. My only complaint is how dim they are when not touched. Not easy to film in a lighted room ;) Thanks for the early watch and comment as always, JustPyro,
You *are* high frequency ground. I did not figured out why however.
Either you are capacitively coupled with Earth (several picofarads are enough) or air itself is kinda grounded and it slowly drains charge from you.
More like 70pf for a human body at radio frequency.
This misconception has been around since forever. Unless you're standing bare foot on a conductive floor. No electricity will flow through your feet.
Not true for AC. The dielectric materials all allow some current at some frequency
That was a good jump :)
@ElectroBoom did a bit about a peizo electric switch effect where rolls of aluminum foil could be induced to form a connection with a nearby lighter-strike. I suspect it's that phenomenon...
Capacitance and a relatively large mass.
the plasma balls run at a fairly high frequency in the low MHz, there is enough capacitance between the ball and you to make a good sized AC current to flow
I wa wondering why the background music of your videos feels so recognisable well it is because I have this on my spotifylist "adding the sun - Kevin Macleod "
anyway I like your videos specially the ones with plasma balls and magnets are among my favorits
btw have you done test with and old quarts lamp ?? the lamp ppl used before regular solarium rods I have one in my possession and lamp has tons of respect from me because of how dangerous it can be it is an old relic if I may say so
As far as I know Radiator paint is not known for its conductive properties. A better connection would i think give better results
Plasma in plasma globes is one of the very few things that is attracted to me...
I have never owned a plasma ball... Why I never bought one is a mystery. But now as a middle aged boy I just placed an order. One for me and one for my 5 year old nephew.😊
I would guess that oils from your skin or possibly salt from a tiny amount of sweat or some combination of the two is what makes for higher conductivity on the surface after you've touched it. The tiny amount of moisture would probably evaporate and reduce that conductive effect, but I'd like to see what happens if you wear a conductive glove that blocks any sweat or oil from your hands from transferring to the globe.
The coin and the glass blub is act like a capacitor, so the the AC current can flow thru the insulator that way.
I wonder if the radiator was a good ground with all that paint on there.
My thougts about the sparks while insulated, its an high voltage high frequency ac source. if the body is large enough like an bottle of water hanging insulated from an wire, it wil most likely also spark. first its get loaded with electrons on the positive cycle, then the electrons are taken away on the negative cycle creating a continuous voltage differential and thus a spark. Some sort of capacitive coupling. Can you try this with Franklins Bells (Lightning Bells)? Nice video as always, informative and entertaining. Thanks
The probably appear different after you touch them because you set up a higher current arc and it will take some time for the ions to diffuse in the whole globe volume.
4:20 doesn't electricity follow *all* paths, albeit with variable intensity?
0:54 steel Industries take advantage of this phenomenon with electric arc furnaces, used to melt hundreds of tonnes of steel scrap in less than an hour.
Indeed. A strong spark can be surprisingly hot. I'm glad I don't have to pay their electricity bill though ;)
Capacitive coupling, at play, visualised!
1st I'd like to know if its possible to increase the spark gap by insulating the ground wire in a glass tube so that only the ends are exposed, with the opposite end being in the lowest potential possible 🤷♂️
2nd, I do hope you are planning on introducing the plasma ball to the magnets.
Hello good sir, i have a question about lasers. I do have a 532nm green diode laser pointer and it lights most of the stuff i shine it on in a bright green, as one would expect. But when it hits certain objects, it does not look green any more. This occurs when the object is of a neon colour, for example Red and orange Highlighters/ Textmarkers. Same goes for orange plastic clamps from the home improvement store. I also have a coffee mug which is neon orange. Pointing the green Laser at it makes it flouress bright orange only, no more green light can be seen. Several other random things made of colored plastic do the same thing, the laserlight returned is not green any more but different shades of red and orange. Do you have ovserved this effect already yourself? Do you have any idea what is going on there? Would this be a topic for a video? Best Regards 😊
Interesting. 532 nm can make some fluorescent materials fluoresce - though 405 nm violet lasers are much better for most fluorophores. I doubt all the green light is converted by the fluorescent materials. I think you experience a mixed color where your eyes combine the color of the green laser and the fluorescent color into a third 'apparent' color that is actually just a mixture of the two. I have noted it as a potential video idea :) Thanks for the early watch!
@@brainiac75 glad if i could spark your interest! 😊
More power - modern car ignition coils or the high voltage cascades for CRTs.
Do you notice a toroidal energy flow in the filaments? What direction is the flow?
and you can make a 1-2 cm spark between the wire and the negative side of the hv transformer, 4x bigger than with metal on the glass
High voltage + (relatively) high frequency AC is a strange beast.
the ,,magical hands,, might be due to how electricity and plasma work. as we know, we need a ground to attract those filaments. the underpowered one might think the hi powered one was some sort of ground. or maybe the plasma just attracts itself due to an electromagnetic field idk
I thought the only thing that matters is the capacitance which in a long wire is already much higher than a coin.. would be interesting to see how a ceramic capacitor with one leg bent up would behave.
static electricity gets an exponential increase in the presence of high voltage therefore the weird observable before and after effects
I know I could search but just curious if it’s possible to have a different colour plasma ball? I’ve only ever seen this type.
Would wearing thick rubber boots have a similar effect to jumping? With that in mind, if connected to something ungrounded for a long enough time, would it eventually stabilize, or would it serve as an "energy dump" indefinitely? The fact that, when you jumped, a few stray strands of filament wandered off makes me wonder.
I heard , from a very reliable source, that the discharge inside the ball forms a twisted pair !!! Can you confirm this by getting a closeup photo of the filament (twisted pair of plasma) thanks !
mabe its not the ground and it just using you as an antenna .
maybe a receiver in the same frequency that the transformer works could capture some clues
I wonder what would happen if you put various passive components in the conductive path. A resistor, capacitor, and an inductor. Also what if the 2 globes touch. My theory on the mutual attraction is that when you touch it, it dissipates some surface static charge from the glass. I wonder if wiping it with a dryer sheet would do anything.
The electricity from the coins is high-voltage, very low-current AC so the components should be rated for that. Letting two globes touch each other can give some very interesting interactions. Will have to make a video about it! You might be right that I remove some build- up static electricity even though it is an AC signal. Still lots of experiments to try with plasma balls as mentioned at the end of the video :D Thanks for the inputs.
i love this channel
Ok question what happens if you hug a plasma ball not literally hug it but get most of your body mass right next to that electric field does it not want to flow to you in that instance 🤔
I think the plasma globes seem to attract each other because they affect the charge of the air around them by attracting air particles of the opposite charge, so the air in between the plasma globes has a stronger charge than the air next to only one of them and therefore attracts more tendrils. Not sure why touching the globe has a strengthening effect though.
Will radiation from strong sources affect the tendrils