High-Voltage Laboratory

Today was the day when we started on the hands-on projects and it has been quite a fun day. The lecture about the ion drives (which can be used to create thrust for space rockets) was really comprehensible despite the fact that the real ion drives are very complicated. Then we went to the high voltage lab.Sounds very Chim? it IS chim...now i still don't get how they can generate voltage as high as 1 megavolt! It's amazing! Back to our business---The High-voltage phenomena we saw today were really cool and the ladder thingy really allowed us to actually see the ionized air heated up while conducting electricity. Also we witnessed the 10,000 volts plus voltage passing through the poor little pickle, causing it to burn with a yellow flame due to the presence of sodium ions. It was really cool, seriously.

Next we made our own ion drives. It was not a very complicated one, just a single layer triangular lifter. By the way, the wood we used today was really soft and tender. I was very glad that the lifter our group made did float in the air (the up-thrust is provided by the ions propelling air particles downwards)! That was really fulfilling experience.

Tomorrow the 20 of us will be making a giant (not so huge but much bigger than the one we made today) lifter together. It must be fun and I am looking forward to it. Just hope that I won’t get too much super glue on my fingers.