Van Der Graaf Machine - Preparation and Safety

Van Der Graaf machines are awesome - impressive as all hell, and allow you to investigate and demonstrate a large varieties of electrical physics concepts.

Typically I'm very much against the inductive-learning-good, deductive-learning-bad philosophy that has seemed to invade modern scientific theory. It takes too much time if done every lesson, it does little to correct pervasive alternative conceptions and it ignores half of how science works.

But a mixture of inductive and deductive learning works for Van Der Graaf machines. At the bottom of this post are some investigations that can be done. With good timing and a dollop (5 minutes) of deductive-style learning, you can complete most of them in a single one hour lesson.

Van Der Graaf - Miniature Lightning Bolts.

This earlier post outlines what you need to consider before doing any Van Der Graaf experiments.

This current post is the second in a series that describes some demonstrations that can be done with Van Der Graaf machines, including theoretical explanations.

The first demonstration is the simplest, throwing miniature lightning bolts.