I was wondering how difficult it would be to attract lightening and how often lightening would strike a specific area were something like that was built. Also wouldn't that be dangerious?
Capacitor to store lightning?
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I was wondering how difficult it would be to attract lightening and how often lightening would strike a specific area were something like that was built. Also wouldn't that be dangerious?
I was thinking about what you said on patents and from history they don't always protect a persons invention as Tesla has proven.
Give the patent number you speak of.I was thinking about what you said on patents and from history they don't always protect a persons invention as Tesla has proven.
If not that, tell what invention, patented by Tesla failed to protect him from others using it without license payments to him?
Perhaps you are confused by fact that his economically impractical, technically possible, plan to distribute electrical energy without wires failed to be used?
Good! Good luck getting it to work. If nothing else you'll learn a lot in the attempt.
Benny, you can't catch lightning in a box. Doesn't matter what's in the box, electronic components, coils, wires, capacitors, the lightning will not want to be trapped, it wants to find a path to Earth, end of story.
You claim that, but have offered zero provenance, unlike Mac and myself, sho have shown you our qualifications, and who both disagree with you. I also know the resumes of the others that disagree with you, and all are very well educated and experienced in science.
As for the rest of you 'points', ... well, none of them change the fact you cannot catch lightning in a box.
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Not bad. For a board whose purpose is intended to be focused on a humorless scientific subject, your guess brought a smile to my face, which is a welcome experience after yesterday's anniversary.
As a general outline of the testing I'll do on my "breadboard", I'll charge up my 1 KV capacitor using the power supply I mentioned earlier. For those of you who missed it, I have a standard AC-to-12v-DC power supply and something that was once used in a laser power supply. It can convert 12v DC to a pulsed "wave" with a recurring voltage level many times higher.
After the cap has been charged up to a few hundred volts, the interesting part of the experiment will begin. The cap will be discharged, and this electricity will be sent to a scale model of the cap-charging equipment that will ultimately be in my patent application. I will have voltmeters in place across various components to measure the voltage and ammeters in place to measure the amperage.
Some of the voltage will be used to charge up one or more caps with voltage ratings much lower than the 1 KV cap that was just discharged. The rest of the voltage will be diverted away from the low-voltage caps (no, I won't tell you how) and grounded.
When I use the term "low-voltage caps", I could be referring to one or more of the 50v caps I have. 50v is, of course, a much lower voltage rating than 1 KV, and it will be interesting to see whether I can send only 50v or less to one of those caps and ground all the other hundreds of volts. That will be one of the primary experiments. I also have smaller caps to experiment with, but once the basic circuitry works, I should be able to tweak it enough to adjust it for a cap of any voltage rating. I should even be able to charge up a 10v cap from a 1 KV source.
Note: Charging a 10v cap from a 1 KV DC source is easy if you connect the 10v cap in parallel with a resistor with an ohmic value that is a hundredth of the total resistance of other resistors wired in series (a simple resistor divider). All you have to do is to apply the 1 KV DC across the whole series and (wow!) the small-ohmic-value resistor will only have 10 volts across it, and that's what will charge up the 10v cap, wired in parallel.
As I've said before, I don't believe that a resistor divider could be patented, so that's why I didn't mind mentioning it here on this board. The circuitry I will send to the US Patent Office is not a simple resistor divider. This other circuitry will need to be tested to make sure it performs the same way with physical components as I think it will do when I look at the schematic.
A progress report will be posted after I've done the testing.
Benny
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I was wondering how difficult it would be to attract lightening and how often lightening would strike a specific area were something like that was built. Also wouldn't that be dangerious?
You really should read the whole thread. One my first posts said that "lightening" was what happened to a cup of coffee when you poured milk into it.
The danger factor when working with lightning is always a reason to have safety procedures in place when you're constructing the equipment, but if those procedures are well-designed and followed by all personnel, there shouldn't be a problem.
That's one problem. The other problem is that you will dissipate over 99% of your energy in resistors, with less than 1% going to the capacitor.
I predict a loud "pop"....followed by copious amounts of smoke.
I wouldn't call that a problem. I would call it the desired result of using one resistor in a resistor series to charge up a capacitor.
If you haven't read the whole thread, I stated last year that I might even try to deal with multiples of the voltage in a lightning bolt. This is possible if you respect Ohm's Law and have the circuitry that can take advantage of it, like a current divider, for instance. My reason for attempting such a feat was to decimate the amount of amperage that my wires would have to deal with.
To make a very, very long story short, every branch of a current divider with identical components in them receives the same voltage, so if you apply 100 volts across a current divider with ten branches, each one having an identical resistor in them, then every resistor will have 100 volts. If you replace those ten resistors (one in each of ten branches) with ten 500v caps, one in each of ten branches, then each of the ten 500v caps would be charged up to 100 volts. If you (theoretically, of course) rewired those ten charged caps into a single series, you would have ten times as much voltage potential across the whole series, thus producing a 10x multiple of the original voltage. All I did was to add a lot of zeros to these voltage figures to make them comparable to the voltage stats for a typical lightning bolt, which is hundreds of millions of volts (see the link below).
This is a repeat of a link I posted a long time ago. The source is Georgia State University. Note the voltage and current stats, and also note that these stats are for a "typical" lightning bolt. Some lightning bolts have voltages and amperages that are even higher, and anyone who wants to work with lightning must know these higher limits.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/lightning2.html
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Well, it's a problem if the stated goal is capture of energy. If the goal is just to get a tiny amount of charge into a capacitor, and waste the rest, then it might well be a good approach.
Agreed.
Also agreed.
Yes. This is how voltage doublers/quadruplers etc work. Your PC probably has a handful of these inside it.
Well, I assume you mean "do the opposite" i.e. put them in series then rearrange them in parallel to reduce the voltage to a more useful one. This is also a pretty common circuit, one that is often used as an efficient step-down regulator. The ICL7660 is an example of an IC designed to do this.
My goodness - yet another forum has been sucked into the Land of Cain!
BennyF is a lunatic. He's posting from a public library in Watertown, MA because he is literally impoverished, and he'll tell you so himself over on some of the Yahoo Finance boards. I'm surprised he hasn't mentioned what an awesome investor is he is over here because he's been sharing his lightning catching dreams with us:
"I've searched it for some evidence that someone else has already discovered how to get electricity from lightning. So far, there's nothing in the public record. Nothing. Gasser, please read these words very carefully. I KNOW HOW TO COLLECT THE VOLTAGE FROM A LIGHTNING BOLT. I am now preparing an application for a US patent. I know the process, I know the timetable, I know the costs, and I know the benefits of having a patent." 12/19/09
He posted the above using his corvettelover login over at Yahoo Finance forums. Benny/Vette has about 15 logins for Yahoo and he spams the boards regularly with nonsense.
What's interesting is that you fine people have run into the same issues we have with Benny - he has no will to learn AT ALL. He'll keep spouting the same nonsense post after post after post, even after being proven wrong.
He followed a stock from $100 a share to .55 a share over the last couple of years...and to this day he is still pumping it as a winner.
Given his easy access to books, perhaps a recommended reading list should be compiled for Benny?
BennyF is a lunatic. He's posting from a public library in Watertown, MA because he is literally impoverished, and he'll tell you so himself over on some of the Yahoo Finance boards. I'm surprised he hasn't mentioned what an awesome investor is he is over here because he's been sharing his lightning catching dreams with us:
"I've searched it for some evidence that someone else has already discovered how to get electricity from lightning. So far, there's nothing in the public record. Nothing. Gasser, please read these words very carefully. I KNOW HOW TO COLLECT THE VOLTAGE FROM A LIGHTNING BOLT. I am now preparing an application for a US patent. I know the process, I know the timetable, I know the costs, and I know the benefits of having a patent." 12/19/09
He posted the above using his corvettelover login over at Yahoo Finance forums. Benny/Vette has about 15 logins for Yahoo and he spams the boards regularly with nonsense.
What's interesting is that you fine people have run into the same issues we have with Benny - he has no will to learn AT ALL. He'll keep spouting the same nonsense post after post after post, even after being proven wrong.
He followed a stock from $100 a share to .55 a share over the last couple of years...and to this day he is still pumping it as a winner.
Given his easy access to books, perhaps a recommended reading list should be compiled for Benny?
Yes, it might be a good approach, but it's not the circuitry that I intend to send someday to the US Patent Office as a formal application for a US Patent, and yes, I'm serious about it.
1. The circuitry in my application, written by me without any help and about 90% complete, won't be using a current divider. In fact, any circuitry I discuss here has already been deemed (by me) to be unpatentable, and that's the only reason why I would discuss it here or anywhere else. The patent office requires that the technical part of an application be unpublished.
2. Integrated Circuits cannot handle the high voltages and amperages that are found in lightning, and so chip-based circuitry isn't appropriate.
3. A custom-designed and custom-built transistor might be a useful addition to some circuitry.
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No, it doesn't. Again, we're not a first-to-file country.
They also can't handle the voltages in most off-line supplies (400 volts or so) but they are used nonetheless as controllers for higher voltage switches.
The laws that govern patent applications may change soon. I published the news late last week with a Yahoo link. Here's another link:
http://www.finnegan.com/PatentLawReform2011/
lol!
No rewiring is necessary for this circuit. All you have to do is to find a way to discharge those caps one at a time.
Again, the circuitry that is in my 90% complete patent application does not use current dividers or voltage dividers. The reason is simple. I don't believe that either arrangement could receive a patent because both types of circuitry are already well-known and in wide use. I haven't discussed my circuitry here or anywhere else, and I won't discuss it here or anywhere else.
i predict a loud "pop"....followed by copious amounts of smoke.
lol
TO ALL WHO READ THIS THREAD:
Please do not respond to people who use this forum to harass others. I have been discussing my ideas, concepts, and as much as I can without jeopardizing a potential patent application, my circuitry. I've been doing this respectfully and regularly for a year and a half now. Please honor my commitment to you by refusing to give in to immature rantings, incoherent writings, and unscientific ramblings.
Benny, an admirer of Mr. Franklin, who was an Ambassador to France
(among many other achievements)
Please do not respond to people who use this forum to harass others. I have been discussing my ideas, concepts, and as much as I can without jeopardizing a potential patent application, my circuitry. I've been doing this respectfully and regularly for a year and a half now. Please honor my commitment to you by refusing to give in to immature rantings, incoherent writings, and unscientific ramblings.
Benny, an admirer of Mr. Franklin, who was an Ambassador to France
(among many other achievements)
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