[NewCandle] Measuring Half-Cell Charge

[Nick Reiter]

Hi Fred and Keith,

Well, I ran some trials yesterday and today using the
brass cup arrangement suspended between my parallel
aluminum foil field plates.

The distance between plates is 17cm or .17m.  I am
able to apply a potential from 0 to 15kV to them,
which I guess would equate to a maximum of about 88kV
per meter field strength.  Should be plenty.

The brass cup bob is about 3 inches across, and holds
about 200ml of liquid.  It is suspended by 1 meter
worth of ceramic thread. It is suspended as
equidistant as I could get (perhaps within 2mm)
between the plates, and centerd more or less with
plate geometry.

Location in my back lab, no air moving, 26C ambient
temp. low humidity.  A glass rod pointer on the foil
plate box back panel allowed me to gauge any movement
within a millimeter or so of the cup.

I had to allow the cup to stabilize overnight, and for
all tensions in the thread to relax.

With potential applied to the plates, from zero up to
about 10kV, and the cup filled with deionized water, I
see no net deflection toward either plate over 30
seconds of time.

I then added 5 grams of NaCl to the brass cup of water
to introduce an ionic species.

Again, no net movement or deflection detected from 0
to 10kV field.

I'll keep on it.  Any new ideas or thoughts?

N


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