Home Made Fulgurites!

i now have 20 pounds of fulgurite

thanks twitchy...

your technique really helped...

what gauge wire at what legth? how far away were you? man i'm just itching to try this.

Originally posted by drogo
what gauge wire at what legth? how far away were you? man i'm just itching to try this.

Supposedly the thicker guage the better, but unless you have a really good rocket you will be limited as to the guage of the wiring. As to distance, don't stop running long enough to count you fool!

Also a charged up thunder head is better than a discharged one, in other words it is better to fire at a cloud which hasn't discharged lightning in a minute or two. Or so I would reckon. If you want to get really technical, go to your local weather outlet and see if you can find a little thing called cloud celing, that would be a good estimate I think.

Originally posted by they see ALL
i now have 20 pounds of fulgurite

thanks twitchy...

your technique really helped...

Did you pull it off sure enough? How did they to turn out?!?!

I thought about getting some layers of colored sand in the bucket (if I can ever get my wife to let me get my stuff set up again, she's chicken).
Would the the first banded multi color fulgurite in the world, I bet they'd go on ebay like hotcakes LOL.
Be careful taking it out of the bucket, length of the fulgurite DRASTICLY effects its value, and they are like thin hollow tubes of glass.

I can't help but wondering if there's an industrial use for this technique...

Surely we can put the energy of lightning to some use, right?

I've always figured I should harnass lightning and store its energy..but there are always problems with capacity and controlling the distribution...

What if you just used raw lightning as the fabrication energy, and constructed 'molds' to transform various materials into various shapes? Not just limited to pieces of wire..but other things...

Gems? Raw gems perhaps? Hmmm? Fun, fun, fun...

I bet you could make all sorts of interesting things with that sort of arc welder...



Too bad I live in the rain shadow at the base of a hill...

I have tried this experiment with some of my collage buddies 2 years back. We ended up making quite cool fulgurites but we also wasted couple of palm trees and one caught fire . So any one who is trying this I advise be very very careful

Originally posted by twitchy
Did you pull it off sure enough?

How did they to turn out?!?!

I thought about getting some layers of colored sand in the bucket (if I can ever get my wife to let me get my stuff set up again, she's chicken).
Would the the first banded multi color fulgurite in the world, I bet they'd go on ebay like hotcakes LOL.
Be careful taking it out of the bucket, length of the fulgurite DRASTICLY effects its value, and they are like thin hollow tubes of glass.

sry...

i was kidding

Originally posted by WyrdeOne
I can't help but wondering if there's an industrial use for this technique...

Surely we can put the energy of lightning to some use, right?

I've always figured I should harnass lightning and store its energy..but there are always problems with capacity and controlling the distribution...

Quick info on why this isn't possible:

Lightning strikes are usually over 50,000 volts. This is far too much to be able to control. In the experiments that scientists have tried, all their electrical equipment was blown out.
Lightning strikes heat the air around them to hundreds of degrees. The hot air wouldn't be so great for ground equipment.
Also, there is the fact that the wire and the rocket are not renewable. Not much can survive a lightning strike.

But who knows? Maybe someone can figure a way to get around those obstacles.

ON the bit about Shelly, her story was based on the fact that at the time, electricity wasn't really understood. People were experimenting with bringing people back to life with electricity. Some of these methods later developed into CPR and defibrillator techniques, as well as to a better understanding of the human body.
I don't recall the specifics of Franklin's experiments, but it seems he was looking for an electrical charge. As I recall he had the charge running to Leiden Jars. Keep in mind this was before Shelly, and this was really were electricity kicked off. He invented the lightning rod to draw lightning away from houses.

reply to post by WyrdeOne

What if you just used raw lightning as the fabrication energy, and constructed 'molds' to transform various materials into various shapes? Not just limited to pieces of wire..but other things...

This reminds me of Evelyn Rosenberg's work, called detonography.

She invented it in 1986 using metal plate, a mold and a sheet of plastic explosive.

A little off topic of fulgurites, but very similar in function, in that the energy produced functions as a 'stamping press'.

A buddy of mine came up with a stroke of genius recently, using the lightning strike indicator from NOAA to locate and excavate fulgurites. I don't know how accurate the lightning stroke locations are though, but if they are accurate to within a couple of feet it would be worth persuing, those things are worth a small fortune. Anybody know the accuracy level of lightning strike indicators? Certainly safer then making them, but hardly as exciting and I would think a naturally occuring one would be worth more than a bucket job.

Another friend of mine, who is a retired jeweler suggested electroplating the wire with silver or gold, he seemed to think it wouldn't be as expensive as it sounded. There's apparently about a ten to one odds of the lightning following the wire then arcing off to something else, wonder if plating the wire would increase those odds as rocket engines aren't cheap.