Pretty much self explanatory. Some guy made a Tesla Coil and put it in his back yard. It should go without saying "Don't try this at home." You think this guy's neighbors had it rough. Just imagine Nikola Tesla's in Colorado Springs where he produced sparks in excess of 100 feet.

LINKS GOOD ON 2006-12-14

Important, if you do this, make sure that the DVDs/CDs aren't in direct contact with the microwave's metal cage (for safety), and be sure to place the discs data side up (for asthetics). Note, in low light there's a blue "aura" right before the sparks. That's St. Elmo's Fire. It goes without saying, the DVDs/CDs are history. ;)

LINKS GOOD ON 2006-12-14

Building this motor is a great lab activity, and for the past several years I've had my class build a variant on this simple electric motor, and I really had a hard time imagining a simpler design until I saw the homopolar motor below.

LINKS GOOD ON 2006-12-14

No need for a big explanation here. The author has provided a link showing exactly how it was done.

And by the way, the parent site, Evil Mad Scientist, totally excellent. "We're not worthy. We're not worthy."

LINKS GOOD ON 2006-12-14

Yep, that's a live frog floating in mid air. This is a great example of diamagnetic levitation. In super sloppy borderline accurate shorthand, the frog is made of atoms. Atoms contain charged particles moving all about. Charged particles in motion respond to magnetic fields. So under the "right" circumstances, we can levitate frogs. Um... by this reasoning it should work on people too. :\

LINKS GOOD ON 2006-12-14

Here we have a bit of superconducting material and a magnet floating free. What's happening here is quite different from the frog's levitation in the last post. It's know as the Meissner effect and has to do with a property of superconductors, namely the fact that magnetic fields drop to zero within their interiors.

LINKS GOOD ON 2006-12-14