Hi, I was looking over this thread from a while back:
crystal sets And was very interested in posts 26 and 27 by Ungrounded Lightning Rod which talked about lighting fluorescent tubes with radio waves. As a newbie this sounds like a pretty simple experiment, but I'm curious how it actually is done. I just tried it with about 4 ft of wire on each end and it didn't work, but 1) I'm almost certain I don't live close enough to a radio tower to try this at home with short wires, and 2) I'm not sure if I'm doing it right.
Do you have to somehow "tune" your tube to the frequency of a nearby station, or will it just pick up the enegy indiscriminately. I would imagine the latter, but you never know...
Also, It says that copper wires are attached to the ends of the tube, but don't they have two prongs on each end? Do the wires touch (short?) both prongs on each end? How are the wires attached?
Also, should the wires be insulated, or does it matter?
Also, does one of them need to be grounded or something, or do they just dangle? And, is there any danger of shock with this?
I was just going to message Mr. Lightning Rod with this, but I figured others might be interested, or might have interesting things to say about it.
Thanks!
-Matt
P.S. -- While researching a bit on this I found this article I thought you guys might be interested in about this artist who used "wasted" (I gather it should read "stolen") electricity from power lines to light up 1,300 fluorescent tubes. http://www.pureenergysystems.com/news/exclusive/2004/pylon_ambience/index.html