10 ms·
“Invisible Electrostatic Wall” at 3M adhesive tape plant (1996)
- baxtr 9y agoThis has been discussed a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5387052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5387052
- okket 9y agoEven further ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3274335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3274335
- ioquatix 9y agoAny videos of it?
- wbeaty 9y agoAugust 1980, they coulda used a Betamax camera! Of course megavolt-scale voltages would tend to fry any device not protected by a screen cage. "Why didn't they take pictures" is a minor question, compared to "WHY DIDN'T THEY THROW STUFF AT IT?!!" Did the invisible wall block flying objects? Or was it really just caused by shocks, by tazed human muscles locking up?
- i_am_nomad 9y agoThere are all kinds of crazy energies released by adhesive tape: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/411085/x-rays-made-with-scotch-tape/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/411085/x-rays-made-with-s...
- Topgamer7 9y ago"didn't know whether to fix it or sell tickets." Pretty sure that any fan of Star Trek would pay a pretty penny to touch a real force field ;)
- tsomctl 9y agoDoes anyone know how dangerous this actually is? Could an esd be big enough (basically lightning) to hurt or kill you?
- IntronExon 9y agoI don’t know about this case, but in general, yes, since as you said the concept covers everything from static shocks to a bolt of lightning. As always with electricity though, you can get profoundly lucky, or unlucky depending on a large number of factors. A large VDG such as those in some science museums for example, could cook your noodle.
- peter_d_sherman 9y agoOn the one hand, this is theoretically true, but, on the other hand, as a person's electrical potential increases (or voltage, for lack of a better term), so does the range of space that the voltage will jump and ultimately dissipate to. The jumping is not the problem -- it's what it's jumping to. Metal or Grounded metal (especially if there's a lot of it) would be the worst thing, but what if instead of grounded metal you had a material with enough resistance to safely dissipate the energy, like some kind of carbon/plastic thingy? Also, you might ask why regular static electricity doesn't kill anyone. You'll get a static shock if you're charged high enough and touch metal, but other items -- you won't get any shock. But what's really happening there? Aren't they acting as resistors but with some dissipation value? Anyway, we need a greater understanding of this phenomena...
- fest 9y agoPeople doing electronics cover their tables with medium-high resistivity material mats (high enough so it doesn't interfere with bare electronics, but not completely dielectric). The mats are grounded to Earth ground via 1 megaohm resistor. From personal experience, static discharge against such material is a lot less painful than touching grounded metal objects.
- viraptor 9y ago
- matte_black 9y agoI would not play with this until I knew exactly why it was happening. You could easily be killed by an electrostatic phenomenon that is poorly understood. Remember in the old days when ball lightning would just straight up kill people by passing into them? Still does, but I think most people know better now than to touch such a ball.
- Avshalom 9y agoWhen were these old days?
- matte_black 9y ago1800s.
- thatswrong0 9y agoI don’t think most people know better now.. most people probably haven’t even heard of ball lightning
- matte_black 9y agoYou really think people would see a ball of lightning floating toward them and think “Wow I should touch that!”
- ams6110 9y ago"Hold my beer and watch this!"
- mrexroad 9y agoNo, of course not, because people likely think, “wow I gotta get this on YouTube and see what happens when I touch it.”
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoUm, wasn't that your theory? You claimed more people were killed by ball lightning in the old days before people knew what it was.
- superkuh 9y agoBill Beaty's site was and still is amazing. It sparked my interest (and lifelong hobby) in high voltage back in the late 90s. Some of his essays (and ascii) art explaining concepts like coherence (http://amasci.com/miscon/coherenc.html http://amasci.com/miscon/coherenc.html) still stick with me today. As for the electrostatic wall story... it's fun but I don't believe it.
- colanderman 9y agoI was just wondering about those stupid wiggly snakes yesterday, passing by laser labs in MIT's basement, and wondering how little sense that model made. Thank you for sharing this explanation. TLDR for others: coherent = as if from point source.
- ggm 9y agoIt sparked my interest Snurk Snurk Snurk I read what you did there...
- TaylorAlexander 9y agoI ate that site up when I was young. I was 12 in 1996, and by that time had already decided on a career in robotics. All the little tech projects there kept me engaged. I built a Tesla Coil after the site inspired me, and today I work in robotics in Silicon Valley. I’m struck now with how much power one site has to engage and help so many people. I hope that I can share enough of my own goofy hobbies [1] to help a new generation learn what inspires them. [1] http://reboot.love http://reboot.love
- ohiovr 9y agoCould this be used to trap a net neutral plasma?
- fermienrico 9y agoDid people try to go through an imaginary plane and felt a force? Or did people try to go through an actual cling film? >> When he attempted to walk through the corridor formed by the moving film, he was stopped about half way through by an "invisible wall." A corridor formed by the moving film? I have a hard time understanding the situation.
- theoh 9y agoFilm running along both "walls" of a space which then became a "corridor".
- IncRnd 9y agoAccording to the next few sentences in the article: > The film was taken off the main roll at high speed, flowed upwards 20ft to overhead rollers, passed horizontally 20ft and then downwards to the slitting device, where it was spooled onto shorter rolls. The whole operation formed a cubical shaped tent, with two walls and a ceiling approximately 20ft square.
- jlebrech 9y agocould this have application for VR?
- ateesdalejr 9y agoInvisible walls? Yes, if it were controllable. The only problem I see would be the prohibitive costs.
- bastawhiz 9y agoAnd size, and noise, and power consumption
- tinus_hn 9y agoAnd some minor irradiation
- logicallee 9y agoAnd sudden electrocution. Seriously we've all been zapped after walking across the wrong type of carpet and touching something/someone, why does no one in these stories think "Oh I hope this doesn't have the potential (hehe) to suddenly discharge through me." They're all like - COOL!!
- zbjornson 9y agoHeh, I read this 20 years ago when I wanted to try to make as much tech from Star Trek a reality as possible. Being 10 years old the closest thing I could get my hands on was a megaroll of plastic wrap from Costco that I basically pulled around some rollers as fast as I could. Suffice it to say it didn't quite cut it. I had also tried to make a dermal regenerator after reading an article in PopSci about infrared radiation speeding up ulcer healing in cancer patients. Didn't have a good way to test it but I liked to think it worked. :)
- dmead 9y agoThis guy treks.
- dghughes 9y agoInfrared is the new health craze for the super-wealthy. Companies sell beds with IR lights that shine on you to "heal" you. The funny thing is the beds glow red I guess the word literally meaning beyond red (i.e. can't see it) won't sell if there isn't any red to be see.
- themodelplumber 9y agoI wonder if that's related to an experience I had recently. A chiropractor friend pulled out some kind of red-LED device and waved it over me during a chance meeting. He was checking on a joint injury from some time ago. I remember looking at the product he was using and thinking, "we could hit up some online suppliers and make you a device that looks at _least_ two decades more advanced than that." But I wouldn't want to improve upon a practice that is giving people the wrong idea about red LEDs. :-)
- v_lisivka 9y agoI have massage bed with infra-red lights for more than 10 years, full set. I use it a lot when I sick. AFAIK, it doesn't work against bacterial infections, but it helps to fight viruses and to recover after sickness, _if used properly_. YMMV.
- 9y ago
- Animats 9y agoThey built a Van de Graaff generator[1] by accident. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_de_Graaff_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_de_Graaff_generator
- ateesdalejr 9y agoA very big one at that.
- ada1981 9y agoCould we put this on the blockchain?
- arcaster 9y agoThe real question is... Will there be an ICO??
- ada1981 9y agoWAL Coin is a token that represents fractional ownership of a static generated wall.
- tzahola 9y agoSure. Using deep learning!
- ada1981 9y agoExactly. Like 3-4 ft deep learning at least.
- ada1981 9y agoI took a 4 point hit for this comment, but I still stand behind it.
- mrfusion 9y agoThere’s a lot we don’t understand about electro statics.
- peter_d_sherman 9y agoCompletely agreed.
- tzahola 9y agoSo you’re saying that Maxwell’s equations are not enough?
- msds 9y agoWell, since it's electrostatics, dE/dt is tiny, and strictly, Maxwell's equations are overkill...
- xelxebar 9y agoNot really, especially for nonlinear systems. It's like how just knowing the rules of chess doesn't mean you're a good player.
- mrfusion 9y agoWe understand it well on that side but as far as applications for it go we’ve barely scratched the surface.
- mapt 9y agoWe've called bullshit on this before, and little satisfactory response resulted. "But he's a professional, with published work!" is not sufficient; The effect claimed is extraordinarily unlike our understanding of electrostatics, and no proof has been furnished.
- bpicolo 9y agoWithout any validity claims there, we don't really seem to have that tremendous an understanding of these sorts of things. Isn't the exact mechanics of lightning formation still an unsolved problem? And then there's all sorts of other mysterious electrical phenomena like ball lightning > It is well understood that during a thunderstorm there is charge separation and aggregation in certain regions of the cloud; however the exact processes by which this occurs are not fully understood [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning#Necessary_conditions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning#Necessary_conditions
- ianai 9y agoBut there is hope. The Langmuir guys seem to think it’ll get there https://www.abqjournal.com/814666/lab-sparks-advances-in-lightning-research.html https://www.abqjournal.com/814666/lab-sparks-advances-in-lig...
- CamperBob2 9y agoNote that Bill Beaty is not saying he witnessed the effect in person, or otherwise staking any claim to its validity. Multiple people at 3M claim they observed it in the 1980s, and Bill is just speculating on possible explanations. It's true that we understand electrostatics qua electrostatics very well. But it's not all that crazy or controversial to suggest that the intersection of electrostatics with other fields from material science to meteorology still holds some surprises. Apropos of oddities surrounding products from the 3M company, we thought we understood X-rays pretty well, too, and then someone discovered that they're emitted when you peel off some Scotch tape.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dghughes 9y agoElectrostatic force is incredibly powerful. I read a great bit of info that said just two Coulombs concentrated in the equivalent area of two electrons repel with the force of one million tons. All matter has a charge too so I could see with the right conditions a large electrostatic force being formidable.
- agjacobson 9y agoOptical physicists and chemists need a laser with a knob on it to tune the laser to an exact desired color. In the 70s and 80s, the preferred method was the use of liquid dyes as the laser medium, typically dissolved in alcohol. The dye was pumped at high speed through quartz cells, and was gotten to lase by striking it with a fixed wavelength green or ultraviolet laser. Now the best practice was to use Teflon tubing. It cleans up better, and that’s important because when changing colors, the new dye’s wavelength might be absorbed by the previous dye residue, if any. Man, the triboelectric shock you can get from high speed flow of alcohol through Teflon! The Livermore Lab was worried about this during the laser isotope separation program, as a fire hazard. The problem is solved by installing stainless steel ground wires in the Teflon tubes.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoAs pointed out, this has been discussed before. The effect is explainable with electrostatics. As in "If you assume a net charge on a human of X and a equal polarity charge of Y being generated by the motion of the tape, a force F would be felt by a person approaching that went up with the inverse square of the distance." Simon Field has a great demo where he throws around pie plates using this effect. The challenge arises with explaining how the charge is contained such that the opposing charge that is being attracted does not break down the insulator between it and this charge. One thought experiment that I heard at the Boston Science museum was to imagine you are inside the ball of a very large Van De Graff type generator. If you were charged to the same polarity of the outer sphere, you would be repelled by the sphere toward the center. The harder you tried to go to the edge, the more you would be repelled. And, assuming you were insulated from the sphere. By clothing or some other apparatus, there would be a point where the electrostatic repulsion would keep you from being able to touch the sphere and effectively discharge your charge into the sphere. This only works as an explanation if the manufacturing facility was acting as the sphere, and on entering it you found your self inside that sphere and with a net charge of the same polarity. What is most remarkable about the story, and causes many (myself included) to doubt it, is that 3M is/was a company that was famous for its core competency of taking unexpected effects and turning them into products (the post-it note story is a great example of that). Because of that competence, it is challenging to imagine that they had accidentally created something, which if understood better could potentially be the foundation of a multi-billion dollar product industry (force fields are widely sought out by people wishing to exclude access). And yet they left it as a "wow, that's funny" sort of moment? A more expected outcome would be for 3M to build an identical plant to see if they could replicate the effect and if they did, begin to instrument and remove components until they understood (and probably patented) all of the ways the field could be generated. And then decided if it was possible to make as a product or not.
- Retric 9y agoWhen you are in a sphere you feel zero net forces from the sphere. Here is an example using gravity but electrostatic forces should operate the same way. https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/grvtysp.htm https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_... You can only feel forces if it's some other shape.
- greggarious 9y agoInteresting to see this on HN. I've seen this link being passed around in the paranormal/conspiracy circles as a possible Earthly explanation for those UFOs the NYT reported a while back: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-prog... One theory is these "tic tacs" are yet another example of test aircraft being mistaken for extraterrestrial aircraft and this paper's findings were noted and expanded on, in secret, to create some novel form of propulsion by either the US or China. There's precedent for human test craft being mistaken for "alien" technology. The best example being a rash of "triangle shaped UFOs" in the early/mid 80s was eventually revealed in 1988 to have been the F117.
- exabrial 9y agoGiving the amount x-rays released, surprised they don't have cancer!
- sklivvz1971 9y agoDupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5387052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5387052
- Sharlin 9y agoIt's not a dupe if the last submission was five years ago.
- YTGRK 9y agohttps://youtu.be/wxU3yWAURE8 https://youtu.be/wxU3yWAURE8