[NewCandle] Cold Electricty

[Keith Nagel]

>Keith mentions it's probably better to look at the
>LED's as lossy capacitors under the assumption that
>there is no anomaly here (and that radio broadcast is
>somehow powering the circuit?). Maybe.

I thought at first that the LED's could be fast enough
rectifiers to be good detectors, but after Nick's comments
and closer examination of Ron's circuit I see he's using a pair of fast signal
diodes for that purpose. Without the signal diodes to
rectify the RF, it doesn't work, correct?

BTW, when I say RF, I mean just that, the energy is in the form of alternating current
in the radio band, so it's called RF. The actual source remains to
be discovered. Could be any number of things, maybe even
a real anomaly? Only way to find out is to eliminate the
other possibilities. But when I write RF I'm not implying
it's a radio station, or induction furnace, or anything
else, just the form of the energy as it's known to the
world at large.

What makes the circuit so "mysterious" is that stray
capacities are playing such a key role in the functioning.
For example, a mere 1pF of capacity at that frequency
has a capacitive reactance of ~9Kohms. I know Ron understands
this himself; but judging from the comments I see elsewhere
I doubt many others do.

The one part of the circuit that I have a hard time getting
my head around is the diode loop. It's a clever little trick,
one I have never seen before. I sort of understand why he's
doing that, but I'm having a hard time putting it into words.

Thanks for sharing the circuit. I do love to play with this
stuff and I'd put something together if I wasn't so busy
with my own work right now. Fortunately, George lives only
a few miles from me, and I owe him a visit. He's got the
cores now and I'm sure in a few days he'll have some time
to do more with them.

Finally, any spark or arc will act as a negative resistance
element. I've built my share of oscillators using that
property. I've never messed with LED's of the sort you ( Jones )
mentioned, so I can't say much about that. It is worth noting
that he's able to light a neon on the free end of the secondary.
Why not parallel a bunch of neons, rather than series a bunch
of LED's? Other than that you can get a lot more light out of
a LED than a neon for a given power input.

K.