3 ms·
Heh, I was just about to post about mercury coulometers, I bought a number recently to play with (I had a silly idea of trying to make a watch with them) I con
by deutronium 11y ago
Heh, I was just about to post about mercury coulometers, I bought a number recently to play with (I had a silly idea of trying to make a watch with them)
I connected one to 500V, and you could see lots of bubbles forming in the gap between the mercury.
Krasnow has a nice video of them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxj399LuX1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxj399LuX1M showing a view of them through a microscope
- morcheeba 11y agoAw, that's an awesome idea! Why didn't it work? Some quick math... To get the bubble to go across a 2400 hour meter in 24 hours, you'd have to run at 100x12v = 1200 volts. I guess it wasn't stable at 500v? Also, no idea how the current/voltage scales, but normally this is .72mW ... at 100x it's still 72mW -- not too bad.
- deutronium 11y agoIt may still work, but I managed to break the coulometer with some mercury leaking out, when trying to prise open the casing, to get a better view under my microscope. I'm going to try again with another one soon :) One thing I'm worrying about though, is if the higher voltage causes the mercury to get to a temperature that leads to the glass breaking under heat.