03-14-2012, 03:56 AM
space-time wrote:
Do you have a multimeter to connect to it, I would set it up to measure current, and turn it on, there should not be much charge accumulated but you might measure a few microamps. If that does not work, use it as a voltmeter, although depending on how large the impedance of the DMM is, the voltage can get high and I am not sure if it will damage it or not. I would stick with Ammeter first
do you have some capacitors? some diodes?
We never managed to measure anything on my little digital multimeter. I could get some diodes at Radio Shack for under a buck, I'm sure, but to what purpose? We tried some LEDs but some didn't work and the others were damaged. It is generating 30,000 - 40,000 volts. What would we do with capacitors?
A CRT television has an electron gun, right? We drove the ion motor by simply sticking some foil to a television screen and running a wire to the motor. So we tried hooking the ion motor to the top lead of the VDG, then seeing if the tv lead would attract or repel the charged motor arm. It attracted it. Then we hooked the ion motor to the opposite end of the VDG. The tv lead still attracted it! I'm assuming the tv lead is strong enough to induce polarity in the wire of the ion motor arm, regardless of what the VDG is feeding it.