First of all, no, this is not for help on science in school if that's what you thought. I have recently constructed a leyden jar. A leyden jar is a capacitor that stores static electricity. The one that I constructed has salt water on the inside to hold the spare electrons. Unfortunately, I don't get much of a spark from it. I was wondering what the best salt to water ratio would be for conducting/holding a charge.
A question for fellow science nerds
- Thread starter xeneficus
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It's about now that I scrap the idea of working out relative capacitance and just go for the more is better option. More salt!
EDIT: Fine, sensible. As a best guess without actually using any numbers you'll want to keep it below room temperature, probably fridge-cold, and saturate the water at that temperature. That seems like the most sensible answer.
EDIT: Fine, sensible. As a best guess without actually using any numbers you'll want to keep it below room temperature, probably fridge-cold, and saturate the water at that temperature. That seems like the most sensible answer.
*snrk* The way forward!mad825 said:
Having a high salt content isn't exactly the best way to go, largely because it isn't the water/salt ions that hold the electrons, it's the glass... try using thin soda glass and place foil at the base of the inside of the bottle (unless you've already done this). Otherwise, lightly salted water should be sufficient.
... and you call yourself a physicist! =PZantos said:
Well I can't read your post because escapist is reallyyyy fucking up today but I'm guessing your trying to increase capacitance. If thats the case you can add more of the capacitors you want in parallel with the one you already have.
This would make for a good experiment because it can easily be tested, you test the amount of capacitance you have with one capacitor and then add the other capacitors of the same building parallel increasing the capacitance by the amount of capacitors there are. If you have three capacitors in parallel that have the same capacitance your capacitance is tripled. You can also plot dissipation over time to get an accurate graph and find a function for that type of capacitor. If you have the right software of course, this software is pretty common if you have an electronics or physics lab.
This would make for a good experiment because it can easily be tested, you test the amount of capacitance you have with one capacitor and then add the other capacitors of the same building parallel increasing the capacitance by the amount of capacitors there are. If you have three capacitors in parallel that have the same capacitance your capacitance is tripled. You can also plot dissipation over time to get an accurate graph and find a function for that type of capacitor. If you have the right software of course, this software is pretty common if you have an electronics or physics lab.