Callipygous

i normally try not to spread this around too much incase john ashcroft is listening in, but i think you guys can help me better if you understand the application. i want to heat 2 nails and push them into a water bottle, poor some distilled water in the bottle, cap it off by tying a balloon over the mouth, and hook the nails up to a large amount of voltage. note: electrolosis does not take large amounts of voltage, thats for later. as my battery sits there turning H2O into H + O the water level will be dropping and the balloon will be filling, hopefully lifting the whole thing off the ground. when the water level gets low enough the nails will be exposed and will spark now that they dont have an insulator between them, thus igniting my contraption in a fiery blaze in the night sky. problem: get voltage up while keeping weight (and cost) down.

i have never heard of anyone doing it that way, are you sure its even possible with that method? the only battery-free flashlight i have seen is one that has a handle similar to a brake on a bicycle that you squeeze over and over to turrn a gear. inside it gears it up and uses a generator that powers the bulb.

yes... i wasnt planning on sparking a flamable gas inside my house. : P we are talking about the volume held by your average party balloon(unless i can find something bigger for not a lot of money ). colorful? colorful in the same way all flames are colorful, or are we talking more than just your standard orange/yellow/red?

good stuff...i tried to understand what on earth it was talking about but the best i could come up with is that H2 takes less voltage than air, while O2 takes more. is that right? from the equations they are giving me it seems like higher pressure requires more voltage. any flaws in what i got out of that?

so... much ...info... you guys rock, thanks. ill go through the links and write longer replies later, but i gotta work now, just checking in really quick.

relay?

so its not the crystal that does the conversion, its just a part of the process, i need to have the rest of that circuitry you used for it to work, right? do they come closer to like 60hz instead of 4mhz? : P thanks for the info.

i thought those were the crystals that generate large voltages when compressed, found in bbq lighters. am i mistaken? are you saying that if i run a dc current through this crystal it will come out as crappy ac? whats your definition of cheap? my budget is close to 0.

interesting. but if your shoving tons of energy into whatever you want to move at the speed of light, wont it get destroyed in the process anyway?

i want to increase the voltage in my 9v battery to closer to 5000 volts so that the distance it will spark is visable to the human eye. i have been told there is no easy way to increase the voltage of dc, so i need to be able to run it through a transformer. transformers dont work with dc, the field has to expand and contract, i dont know how to turn dc on and off fast enough to do that but i know there are ways. i also want to know if it will spark farther with less voltage (or vice versa) in an environment consisting of mostly hydrogen and oxygen.

yeah, i know it will turn to water (although im curious if that process will involve flame or just steam) . i just dont know how much i need to get the voltage to. also, if anyone knows how to make the absolute simplest inverter(dc to ac) possible, id like to know that too. or even just burst dc so it will work in a transformer. (will a very small capacitor be enough for a transformer to work, or is that not fast enough?)

i would say time does exist. if i say this event happened at location x,y,z you can go to x,y,z and not see the event taking place. thats because your at the wrong spot in the dimension "time", you got the other three locators right, but your still at the wrong coordinates.

Updated at post 42. I don't know what science this belongs in so forgive me if its misplaced : P I'm trying to generate a spark with a 9v battery and some basic electronics. I know that in normal air it takes 50K volts per inch of spark, but I dont want to do it in normal air. I want to do it in a mixture of 2 hydrogens 1 oxygen (gas form. yes, i know thats water) plus a minor amount of regular air. I am curious if it takes more or less voltage to spark in that kind of atmosphere and if someone a lot smarter than me can tell me about how much different it is.

yeah, you can do every number from 1-40. what answer did you give? what did the teacher say it was?