Static vs. Ultraviolet Light

I was teaching my daughter about phosphorescence and chemiluminescence the other day when it occurred to me to apply a blacklight to the static exercises I have been doing. Initially I sought to use a liquid that would react and thus render the effect of a glowing droplet in motion. After experimenting with a few materials, I settled on an industrial strength cleaner with chemiluminescent properties. Unfortunately this wouldn't work though for just as soon as I approached the setup, the droplet would fall on its own due to my charge imbalance drawing electrons from surrounding sources. After numerous attempts without success, I determined that the light reaction was also generating an opposite charge within the fluid that was enough to attract the invisible charge that was ascending from the doorknob into the needle and thus pull the droplet off the needle. I never had to make contact with the needle but simply come near for the action to occur like magic.



After giving up, I resorted to the simple flint particle technique.


Introducing the water droplet technique (which is also more cooperative than other fluids since it doesn't react to the light), another observation of note was that the static filament lost it's blue coloration and took on more of a pinkish white. Bouncing between 800 and 1600 ISO is why some are darker and lighter.


The droplet beat the filament (probably due to opposite charge prematurely drawing it off the needle) thus rendering a cool effect as it travels horizontally across moisture.


Static and water droplet only this time I funneled particles directly on to the droplet.






and finally, four frame stack of static and flint.

Light Sleet / Weather Safety

Isentropic lift occurring over the region early Monday resulted in a brief period of moderate to heavy sleet so I took a walk.







March 3-9 is Severe Weather Preparedness Week. With more wintery weather on the way at the time of this post, now is a good opportunity to review your emergency plan for when Spring skies threaten!

New Boots / More

A pair of boots I had been wearing for the past 13 years finally blew out last week. You might be wondering "Who wears boots for over a decade?" When you figure they are only worn for about five months out of the year and not necessarily consistent during that period, it's easy to see why they survived so long. I tend to make things last such as the vintage jacket I am currently wearing that was picked up from a thrift shop in 1996. It too is nearing the end of it's life finally but that's another story. Anyways, the fresh rubber on the new boots was highly effective in generating a static charge and I was getting shocked like crazy the other night. Not wanting to let the good juice go to waste, I set off on a few new ideas. The basic process should need no explanation if you've been following my boredom. Wanting to step it up a bit, I mashed up the phosphorous head of a match and mixed in flint particles to serve as catalyst for ignition. Initially I thought a static charge would ignite the phosphorous powder but it wasn't enough heat hence the later addition of flint particles. After numerous tries without success, a brilliant miniature explosion occurred. My camera settings were clearly too fast for the situation so I knocked it back significantly yet still encountered blow out. The entire scene width is about 3/8th's of an inch.



BOOM!!!


800 ISO, F 10 (High ISO to show control, less powder too!)


100 ISO, F 10 (Still hot but you get the idea)


The way I went about generating flint particles with ease was to do something I wish I would have been all along. Carefully removing the small flint pellet from a lighter, I scraped it with a razor blade into a creased piece of paper and then funneled the contents into a pile under the needle. In the future I will include an illustration of this technique. With a concentration of particle ammunition directly within the contact region, I was guaranteed a 100% success rate of getting sparks to fly. Taking 14 stills shot in sequence, I assembled both an image stack as well as stop motion animated gif that is probably the best demonstration of what this looks like in action.





Slowly but surely, winter is losing it's grip as evident with the detailed snowflakes that fell this morning but did not stick around very long. At this time last year I was chasing severe thunderstorms in Southern Illinois.