Oil burner ignition transformers work very well, and can be had relatively cheaply.
Neon sign transformers can be had pretty cheaply - you just need to know where to hang around. You’re in the Philly area, right? Go find the industrial part of town, where there are sign / lighting / remodeling companies. Ask if they have a use one from an old job, or if they’ll save you one the next time they take down an old sign.
I have this growing fear I’m going to hold moral responsibility for several emergency room visits and maybe a burned down house. :eek:
OTOH, it’s been very interesting. Thanks for all the replies, and good luck with the skin grafts!
By an astounding coincidence, the film Jacob’s Ladder (1990) is about to start on one of the Encore channels.
I wired an outlet and a switch together for just this job. It’s alot easier to flick a switch then fumble around with pulling a plug should something go wrong.
Oh, the other thing you need…something fire/electric proof to mount it all on. When I did it, I took two big rubber stoppers and mounted/taped/glued/something them to a brick and then mounted some plain old stipped 12 or 14 AWG wire to them, then I just used regular neon wires to get the power to them. Hmmm, I’ll have to see if I still have it somewhat in tact in my basement. I’ll take a picture if I do.
Here’s a picture of the result. Mind you this picture is over a sixth of a second which is why it looks the way it does. It really was just one spark moving up at a time (or two at some points). You can see the rubber stoppers I used at the bottom of the pic.
Like I said, if the setup is still in tact, I’ll take a picture of it later.
ETA if you click “return to topic” at the top of that pic and then go to the second page of the thread, you can see where I eventually went with my experiment. While it was fun and impressive to make the ladder, a ‘stationary’ spark was much easier to photograph.
Waddaya know it still mostly works.
ETA 9KV neon sign transformer
Sorry for that crappy quality, it’s my cell phone camera.
I know jack about science, but I’m morbid enough to ask: if I stuck my hand between the prongs on one of those movie-size ones, what would happen? How much of a zap is that?
If you weren’t grounded (say, you were standing on some glass milk bottles), you would just get burned. I have personally been shocked by a neon sign transformer, and while it startled me, it wasn’t much worse than being shocked by 120v. Most of these transformers can only put out a small amount of current, so the low resistance of your body is going to load the initially very high voltage down to something much lower.
Scientists need toys too. Things that let you watch electricity go “bzzzz-zap” and be very bright have already, in letting you do that, fulfilled their purpose.
Also, this. (Screw Einstein. Ether theorists unite!)