Nexus - 0223 - New Times Magazine-pages

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open on three sides. Full free-flow air contact. The sun set about 7.00 pm. About 8.00 pm, volts and amps From Dick Smith's I bought a digital multimeter, model number _ began to rise. By 9.00 pm they had reached about 5 volts and 10 Q-1420. You can pick it out on the shelf easily. It's bright yellow. _milliamps. They stayed there until about an hour before dawn. It will be helpful for you to get one of that model yourself. It's | Then they dropped back to 3 volts and 5 milliamps. very cheap—only AUD$29. More importantly it is dual purpose, My family and I were stunned. Far better than I had dreamed! unlike all other multimeters I have seen. You only have to twiddle Many nights of monitoring and analysing since have revealed the dial to switch from volts to amps or amps to volts. You don't various times of increase. Sometimes before sunset, sometimes have to unplug, replug, disconnect, reconnect or worry about hours after. My house is near the ocean. Sometimes the wind series or parallel. Give analog meters a miss. A needle is would be offshore, sometime onshore. You can form your own nowhere near as Clear as LCD numbers. conclusions. I have formed mine. I placed the naked panel, the multimeter and a 12-volt battery On rare occasions a strange thing happened. During crystal- on a table and connected them in simple series. Note: your bat- clear weather, day or night but much more noticeably at night, the tery must be in good condition but never full or you will have —_ volts and amps would swiftly fall, stay down for varying periods nowhere for the electricity to go, and therefore amps won't register from a few minutes up to an hour or so, then swiftly rise again. on the meter. It's exactly the same as when you tum on a hot There was no tangible variable in the environment. My family water tap in your house. Water runs and I were most perplexed. One mid- out of the tank. Water runs into the night the volts and amps were-at the tank, registering on your frontyard lowest reading we had seen at any meter, and water runs out of the dam time of day or night. That was when miles away. The only difference in I noticed the Moon was full and this case is that the dam is not miles directly overhead. I have formed my away. We are surrounded by it—a own conclusions. You can form When a nearby lightning flash occurred, volts and amps went so high and fluctuated so wildly that vast ocean of electricity in which the it was and still is difficult to Pate eign a continually loats. . ut the party yet w: Being aware that any light, natural comprehend the enormity of what up. The summer electrical storm sea- son was due to begin. That's what I or artificial, produces the photovoltaic effect, I decided to use a fluorescent tube light source. It is well-docu- wanted to sce. During the ensuing mented that fluorescence is better than two years of monitoring and incandescence—your everyday light bulb—for the former is adif- analysing we had many electrical storms. This is briefly what fuse light source while the latter is focal. For about AUD$201 happened. When rain fell, day or night, volts and amps immedi- bought one of those standard 12-volt ear trouble-lights available in —_ ately leapt, sometimes trebling from whatever they were reading, auto accessories shops, service stations and variety stores cvery- and stayed up until at least ten minutes after the rain stopped. where. I removed the plastic lid (it just clips off), rumed the light © When a nearby lighming flash occurred, volts and amps went so upside down and positioned it over the panel, setting it permanent- _ high and fluctuated so wildly that it was and still is difficult to ly in position simply by resting it on a cigarette packet-sized bit of | comprehend the enormity of what we were seeing. we were seeing. wood each end. The light would now bathe the naked panel. I But the party had still not yet got hot. So far the hardware was connected the light to the battery in a different, separate circuit. only stationary. What would happen if it were moving? Would it harvest more free electrons like a baleen whale harvests plankton Tapping the Earth's Free Electricity while cruising through the ocean with its mouth open? Let's find Dawe tha Dacthla manna ald Dene Tandelea Thad hannah a nee Tapping the Earth's Free Electricity Now, the Earth's magnetic field. From Tandy's I had bought a roll of aluminium conducting ribbon as used in window burglar alarms. It cost about AUD$?7. Around the cardboard packet the solar panel came in, I wound some of the ribbon, securing it here and there with sticky tape, to make a flat coil. To cach end of the ribbon I connected about three metres of plastic-covered wire flex. We will come back to that shortly. I connected the flat coil between the naked panel and the multimeter. Is it all clear to you? A simple series. Battery to naked panel to flat coil to multimeter to battery. Fluorescent light source in a separate circuit. Diagrams are not necessary. Once you have the hardware in front of you, it will become stunningly simple. All systems go. At about 3.00 pm one afternoon three years ago I set up the rig. My wife, our four kids and I, feeling pretty silly, sat to wait and see what, if anything, would happen. The volts read about 2 volis. The amps read about 2 milliamps. Nothing by 4.00 p.m. Still the same. I put on a pair of insulat- ing washing-up gloves to make sure the electricity in my body would not be a factor. I picked up the flat coil. I moved it all about in all planes. Up. Down. Sideways. Twist. WOW! Volts and amps rose and dived all over the place. I satisfied myself that I had found the highest orientation reading—about 3.5 volts and about 5 milliamps—then propped the coil permanently in that position on the table simply by jamming it between books. out. I rang an energy management consultancy in Perth which I selected from the Yellow Pages on the basis that it was in the CBD, thus accessible to me by public transport. I am a virtually penniless invalid pensioner so I have to do everything in the cheapest possible way. I gave them a verbal rundown. They arranged an appointment at their office for two days later. I bought another new GM684-SP60-12v and took it to the office. I did nothing. I touched nothing. I just talked. They stripped the panel naked, connected it to a meter on volts and another meter on amps, put a D battery in the circuit (connected to and operating a transistor radio to keep it less than full, I guess, though I must admit I couldn't follow half of what they were doing—they are scientists), placed the lot in the sun and notated the readings: 2.8 volts, and I didn't catch the amps. Them young whippersnappers were going too fast for this old cougar. We all boarded one of their cars and went driving along a freeway. One of the scientists held the naked panel out the passenger window in the sun. The rest of the equipment was inside. As the car accelerated to the speed limit, the volts climbed to 8 volts and the amps likewise tre- bled. I will resist the temptation to tart up this report with their superlatives. You can use your imagination. I thanked them for ntinued on page 84 NEXUS e 51 DECEMBER 1994 - JANUARY 1995