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| One of these bad mamma jammas, some boys don't like science like this - but some boys do. |
About this time in ninth grade they announced the science fair. Okay
everyone calm down, I know you are excited as I was to hear the news.
I started planning while the amateurs didn't even read the entry
rules and deadlines. Hold up, did you all get the same handout I got
here? Science fair? Put on by the electric company? Prizes and
possibly, but not really likely, glory? Why is no one but me putting
down preliminary sketches? Lucky for me I had a friend who was on board for a little hardcore unsupervised power tool action and my girlfriend liked to be with me so we all worked on some really
cool projects. My friend, Cole, decided to build a Van De Graaff
generator which is a static electricity generating shocking machine
for you lay-yokels. We decided to make a rather big one and started
out by sawing a Freon bottle in half for the collector dome. We took
a few hours to saw it in half with a saws-all because it was such an
odd shape and size to try and hold down. After we had liberated the
mostly round hemisphere we popped it in into the vise to hold it steady
while we sanded the powder coated finish off of it. It was some
really good paint and our belt sander was barely touching it. It was flopping all over the place and jumping up and down like a chicken on a hot griddle but by
taking turns and sticking to it we relived the half-cylinder from its
covering. With a dome in hand we built a motor into a wooden base box
and put a pulley and extractor at the top and then tried to find the
best belt material to generate static and stay on the pulleys after hours and hours of trial
error and trial again we found that underwear elastic band did the
best job of staying on and generating sparks. We tricked it out
really pretty and then went on to build my girlfriends project.
