Knowing of my interest in static electricity generators, by neighbor suggested I Google Lord Kelvin’s Lightning Storm. This lead first to a Wikipedia article calling the device “Lord Kelvin’s Water Dropper”. Make online magazine can tell you how to build one, If that isn’t enough, there are YouTube videos galore on the subject. Some are better than others.In particular the one by Walter Levin is extremely good.

The first thing that caught my eye about this device is the diagram looks a lot like a transistor flip-flop circuit. This is the same feedback mechanism used to amplify the polarity difference making one side go more positive while at the same time making the other more negative

The second thing that was intriguing about this device is that it uses pure water, a non-conductor, to carry the charge. This should not be a surprise to anyone who has used wool and a glass rod to generate a static charge, but water? That is very unusual!

Last but not least, no contact is made between the water and the electrode, so the air is probably being charged by the friction of the water, or the drops pick up charge by some kind of induction, when passing through the region of the electrode.

The very normal part of all of these demonstrations is the generation of a spark, demonstrating high voltage, but I have always thought the might actually be something useful to be done with this power.

My interest in high voltage static electricity, is as a power source for static electricity motors such as Franklin’s Motor and recently I’ve been interested in high voltages for making spinning dipoles as a means of generating low frequency radiation. (more on that in a future article.)