Lichtenberg Figures

I recently read an article about the production of Lichtenberg Figures and was wondering if anyone knows of a way that one might charge a block of acrylic without the use of a particle accelerator to produce these beautiful sculptures. As I am just fresh out of large scale particle accelerators at the moment

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I was thinking perhaps a high voltage power supply or small scale tesla coil. However, I am not very good with electronics and the like, and would be more likely than not to electrocute myself if I simply up and tried it on my own. It is for this reason that I have sought you who may well have more knowhow and experience than I in this matter I find so devilishly interesting.

Seriously though,
If anyone has any ideas, or has played with creating Lichtenberg Figures on their own and had even a modicum of success, I would like to know how you have done it, or where I can search to find out for myself.

Thank you
-Ketralis

 

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So according to the wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichtenberg_figure

You can use leyden jars:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyden_jar

Which is something you could make an array of out of one-gallon pickle jars, there, sparky.
I guess charge them off your car if you can't use A/C current-run jumper cables to the leyden jars?

Does anybody else here think that Rube Goldberg-y crap would work?

I wonder why you can't just use an arc welder?

 

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Unfortunately, to make a Lichtenberg figure inside a piece of acrylic, you need to have access to a multi-million volt electron beam. I wish there was an easier way, such as using a high voltage source (such as a Van de Graaff generator, Marx generator, Cockroft-Walton multiplier or Tesla Coil), but you actually have to inject charge deep inside the acrylic. The only way that I know how to do this (and I make them!) is with an electron beam accelerator. The trick is to embed enough charge to get a good looking figure without injecting too much (which causes it to self-discharge). If you have the right amount of charge (about 1 uCoulomb/sq-cm), you'll get a nice looking tree-like figure that almost fills the entire piece.

You can make surface Lichtenberg figures on wood and some other insulating materials by means of a high voltage source (such as a neon sign transformer). For example, look up Lichtenberg Figures on Wikipedia and check out the "Making 2D Lichtenberg Figures on wood" article in the External Links section at the end of the article.

 

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Gee, you could always use one of those electron collector/accumulators you mention as input for a simple linear accelerator. You could wind the coils yourself around a piece of pvc or similar, glass if you were to go high dollar. If you stick it all in a partial vacuum you should get a decent whack out of it, given sufficient windings and input power where appropriate.

Leyden jars collect and store static charges (high voltage, low amperage), a car battery wouldn't work for that (low voltage, high amperage), Chimpy. Aluminum foil glued on both sides of a piece of glass makes a more substantial capacitor than a Leyden jar, though. A large bank of those would pack a decent charge. Direct the peak output from the bank into the linear accelerator and go for the gusto!

'Course the figures I have seen were done with a laser. It is commercially available, though pricey.

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