Engineer Is Safe in Steel Wire Cage Charged With 300,000 Volts (Feb, 1954)
Filed under: Just Weird — @ 12:00 am
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Feb, 1954
| Buy on Ebay
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Feb, 1954
| Buy on Ebay
Engineer Is Safe in Steel Wire Cage Charged With 300,000 Volts
Even though a 300,000-volt electric current surges through the steel-wire ball which encloses him, an engineer in a Munich museum demonstration remains unperturbed. The so-called “Faraday’s cage” protects its passenger even though he’s in the midst of a powerful electrostatic field. The electricity spreads harmlessly around the ball and is then grounded via a cable.
Quite true. Boston’s Museum Of Science has a huge Van De Graff generator once used for research at MIT in Middleton, MA. It has the same setup, except the cage is considerably larger and more sophisticated as befits a research instrument.
If anyone ever gets the chance, the high-voltage show there is quite a sight and worth the price of admission to the museum itself.
Alan
Comment by mrchurchill109 — July 3, 2007 @ 4:17 am
I wonder if this guy ever got together with the girl in the glass bulb- looks like a perfect match.
Comment by Stannous — July 3, 2007 @ 11:12 am
On a similar note, this video is pretty incredible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tzga6qAaBA
Comment by fluffy — July 3, 2007 @ 5:42 pm
Fluffy: I thought that video was awesome. I actually liked it so much I downloaded the entire Modern Marvels episode it was from. Very cool stuff.
Comment by Charlie — July 3, 2007 @ 6:21 pm
This experiment is still be shown every day in that munich museum. The Deutsches Museum:
http://www.deutsches-museum.de/
Comment by Stefan Drechsler — November 23, 2007 @ 12:17 pm