How to make a macro particle accelerator

Step 4

Grab a bowl, and tape it up.  Put a thin cross down, then put 4 smaller strips in the spaces between the bars.  Be careful not to get the strips too close, or an arc will short it out.  Another thing about charging these strips of tape, the charges seem to gather the most at points, like sharp corners.  They are more likely to launch arcs there.  If you round the corners, you can get the strips a little closer together

I had to swing the bowls to get them started.  The strait one in the following video was easier to start out with.  I recommend trying it first.

Comments

[mjw56]

I have a feeling that if you kept 1 set of tapes(+ or -) on the outer surface of the bowl, and the other set on the inside, arcing would be completely stopped and the fields would still interact with the particle the same way. with little or no reduction in effectiveness. Its just a slightly educated guess though.

[Reggiostar]

That's basically a good idea. It could be possible that the electric field of the tape on the outer surface of the bowl reaches through the glass easily, I'm not sure if the glass would weaken the field, but there is a bigger problem about your idea: Everytime the ball touches the tape, the polarity of the electrical charge on it changes to the one of the tape, so that it is repelled by it and attracted by the surrounding tapes. As soon as the ball touches the next tapes the polarity changes again and so on. I am quite sure that this periodical change of type of charge is very important for the accelerator to work well, and this only works when contact between ball and every tape is given.