How to Make Leyden Jar Easily

Intro: How to Make Leyden Jar Easily

Before the capacitor there was something called layden jar.It could store electrical charge and later discharge it.In this instructable i'll show you how to make leyden jar very easily.

STEP 1:

Firs we'll need a couple of materials and tools presented in the picture:

STEP 2:

Firstly we need to take the little plastic jar (you can use one from old films or a pill bottle) and tape the aluminum foil on the sides (you can use normal tape) .Then take the first wire and tape it on the aluminum foil on the bottle.

STEP 3:

Then make a small hole on the top of the bottles tap with a sharp object (it will later be used for the wire).Then put the other piece of foil on the inside of the bottle like in the second picture.Tape it so it won't come off like in the third picture.Then take the other wire and tape it on the inside of the bottle.

STEP 4:

You're finished.Just put the wire from the inside in the bottle's tap like in the first picture and you have a leyden jar.

Comments

[Physics Pro]

Could this leyden jar be lethal to us?

[parth.d.darade]

charge it with 69420 volts and it will kill you

[kasap]

can I make it from glass jar .I cannot find plastic?

[ThatCatMan]

I love mine. The first one used a foil sheet on the end of a thick wire in a Shed's Spread mini butter tub. I charged it using the static from the screen on our old TV, and got a large shock :D

I lost that jar and the TV, but I am making a new one from a JIF Peanut butter jar

[amandaghassaei]

I got the crap shocked out of me by one of these thing in high school. Do you know how much charge they can store? It probably depends on the size of the jar right?

[ancienthart]

And type of glass, size of electrodes, what they're filled with (water/mineral oil/paraffin wax) and the voltage you put across one.

[ancienthart]

The hazard with Leyden jars, is the fact that they're durable enough to be fed with very high voltages.
Their actual capacitance according to Wikipedia is quoted as 1nF for a pint glass.

As C = Q/V (C = capacitance, V = voltage, Q = charge in coulombs), even for a small capacitance, pump with a high enough voltage and you can get a decent charge stored on one.