Static electricity/Howard Community College/Fall 2011/501 Lifters

Problem Statement

We will build a functional static electricity "lifter."

Team Members

Summary

We decided to base our model heavily on the one in this website. The lifter was constructed using aluminum foil, balsa wood, superglue, and copper wire. While the two parts of the lifter designed to conduct electricity (the foil sides and the wire top) were confirmed to be fully conductive, we were not able to charge the lifter enough to levitate.

Poster

Story

Our initial design for the lifter was very similar to the one in the above link, though we decided to use three longer pieces of wood for the corner posts stretching both above and below the foil, rather than have three separate pieces of wood as the lower support posts. Realizing that it would be more difficult to assemble in that manner, we cut them into 8cm and 3cm poles instead of three 11cm poles, making our final design identical to the one on the model website. We cut three 20 cm x 4 cm pieces of foil and glued them to the sides of the lifter. Finally, copper wire was threaded through the top of the corner posts.

Several pieces of wood snapped during the course of threading the wire, so they were repaired with more super glue. We checked the conductivity between the three sides, and it appeared that only two of them were conductive with each other. The wire, being an unbroken strip, was conductive throughout. We determined that the foil conductivity issue was due to having cut the pieces at a length of 20 cm, which, aside from one corner, was insufficient to touch each other around the two remaining corners. No more foil was available at the time, but tape was discovered in the classroom that was foil on one side and adhesive on the other side, so we attempted to repair the corners with that. Unfortunately, the adhesive side was not conducive to conductivity. We later glued more foil to the non-conductive corners, and the conductivity problem was resolved.

The next step was to get a high voltage generator. We were unsure if equipment found in class was what we needed, so we attempted to design a generator of our own. These attempts did not produce any realistic results, so we requested a demonstration from our instructor as to how to use the in-class equipment. The classroom's generator had the ability to generator up to 30 kV, so using an HP 34111A High Voltage Divider Probe, we attached the ground clamp to the lifter's wire and the probe to the foil and vice versa. Neither method caused the lifter to levitate.

After these failed attempts we attached two short pieces of copper wire to one of the sides of the lifter with scotch tape and to the wire on top of the lifter, in order to make holding the probe's parts to the lifter easier. We then confirmed the conductivity of each of the wires to their respective parts of the lifter. In the end, the lifter appeared to be built correctly, but we were unable to figure out how to charge it properly.

Material List

Balsa wood
Aluminum foil
Super glue
Aluminum foil tape
Copper wire
HP 34111A High Voltage Divider Probe
E&L Instruments PS-01
Scotch tape

Time

We spent 25 hours on this project.

Next Steps

The primary problem preventing the project from moving forward is determining how to use the probe and generator. Once that is done, it should be a simple matter to charge the lifter. Aside from that, the wire on top of the lifter is a bit "saggy," and could stand to be shorter and straighter. This would help make the lifter both lighter and easier to transport.