Eli Bartlit

It’s 2019. What was going to be an extended spring break has now become an indefinite lockdown. Your girlfriend works with epidemiologists called you a week prior saying that they’re expecting surges of the virus to take at least 2 years (you’re in it for the long haul). What do you do? Begin your journey into the arcane arts of high voltage.

I didn’t do a great job taking pictures of what I had done. As I never had this blog in mind at the time.

The materials used for this Van de Graaff:

• Motor from discarded message chair – came with speed controller and DC power supply
• Rubber belt from my college art supply kit
• PVC Pipe (For mechanical support/housing)

The effect of Van De Graaf Generator topper  geometry :

I learned a new key feature that makes the Van De Graaf generator generate HV. The geometry of the top bowl itself. Given the charge within a sphere will be zero (Gauss’s Law – Still need to refresh how that works) when a charge is transferred via the inside of the metal sphere the potential difference is always going to be much greater than if you were trying to transfer the charge via the outside of the sphere. By trying to transfer a charge by contact with the outside of the sphere the charge “vehicle” and the outside of the sphere will eventually become the same potential. I don’t know how this could translate to a personal project yet but I will investigate.