Will have a look at the vids
Been sat here with this post on the screen for hours now...the first video kept messing up at YouTube's end and, with this 1MB connection it's a slow wait.
Here's where i'm up to, originally written about 10pm.
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At the moment, neither the main HDD platter disc or front disc are physically in contact with the rotor shaft, because of having to match the large difference in diameters.
The motor is being run through a LM317T for speed control.
My converted PC power supply throws out too many amps for the LM317T at the spike 'on' (it shuts down with an over-amperage condition), so 3.7V Li-Ion's are being used.
First results.
There is indeed a charge, with 1 lead to the shaft and 1 lead to the rotating disc. It's in the mV range. Starting at zero, every 50 or so RPM results in 0.1mV. By 1000RPM, there is a constant 2.2mV. Seems like nothing much, until we consider the lack of conventional electrical anything to gain a reading.
Capacitor and diode.
100uF 50V cap. 1N4148 connected to Positive leg.
The motor shaft broke on a spin up
It's largely because of the amount of weight on the front, something that needs to be considered if other folks build something similar.
HOWEVER - there is high strangeness at play here and it may be quirkily advantageous that the shaft did break.
I was shooting a short video and the rotor shaft to extension piece broke clean off. But, not before I thought the meter had something wrong with it. It was flashing numbers which hadn't tallied with the non capacitor running earlier. Up to 0.2V was showing, but negative values.
Replacing it with another meter, I started the video again, thinking there would be nothing odd now.
In fact, it confirms the readings of the first meter
http://youtu.be/pdbYwKRTVmM(YouTube have messed up the video, there are all sorts of lines etc at the bottom, not present on the actual recording)
Thinking this over, I let the test lead stick to the disk face and then simply touched the front disc. Lo and behold a negative reading came up on this second meter of -0.114V.
So, I left the lead connected and touched the HDD platter larger disk and, again the same reading. Neither disk is electrically connected to the shaft and only 1 of my fingers touches the plates. The motor has no connection of any type now. Fair enough if I had touched both polarities somewhere in the circuit, I might expect something then...but just 1 and no electrical connection to the motor shaft ?
It's not like the meter jumps around or throws spurious different readings - the readings are uniform and constant and always minus numbers.
Also, with the cap having a diode on it, such that Positive only charge can be collected, how does it get to be a negative reading on 2 different meters ?
Here's the second video, which is of much better quality. I show those tests and, at the end, a 'control' of all removed from the magnets area:
Afterward, I swapped the leads, Positive to the heatsink, negative numbers were again seen.
http://youtu.be/q1kngsWeOMkSo, just to recap.
The motor is not physically connected to the output shaft.
There is no power to anything. All there is, is the heatsink, the remaining shaft, the magnets and the 2 discs.
When touching the leads away from the magnets nothing happens.
But, when connecting the negative lead to the shaft side and the positive to the front plate, we get possibly odd happenings when a finger touches the electrically isolated plates.
An environment condition is all I can think of, beside the magnets having an effect...something like body capacitance.
At the moment, it's 'Sliders Paradox'.
feature is available which provides a place all members can chat, either publicly or privately.
Author
Topic: Faraday's Paradox -- the Homopolar Generator Puzzle (Read 299 times)
