Thanks! I'm glad you liked it. It was a lot of work so your feedback is appreciated. -Steve

Excellent video! You are the only person on KZread who actually explains this. Thanks a bunch!!

@6123ish

4 жыл бұрын

Absolutely agree with you. I have watched many videos about this topic, no one can explain how the positive charges accumulate on the outer surface of the belt, but he did.

I'm glad my presentation helps! Thanks for letting me know.

Finally, a person who explains this in detail! I don't get why other youtubers explain the Van de Graaff generator as a machine that simply collects electrons and they leave at that explanation, which is vague and does not really makes sense.

You're welcome. And thanks for you generous feedback. I'm kind of fond of this one myself but it's reassuring to hear it from others.

To understand Van de Graff Generator, I watched a lot of videos and this one was the most informative and useful one for me. Thank you for your effort! :)👏

Thanks! And thanks for the feedback. It's good to know the explanation works.

This is the best video I have seen for some one who wants to understand the Van De Graaff generator. Thanks Rimstar.

Das ist eine gute "How to"-Anleitung. Interessant war die Verwendung von Isolierband für den Antriebsriemen und wie man es auf die Rollen legt. Danke für die Zeit und Mühe, diese Videos zu machen. Es hilft vielen Menschen und inspiriert sie, etwas aufzubauen.

I gotta say you really did well on explaining this device, and even the effects that happen on the machine

Just discovered you channel. I'm a fourth semester electric engineering student from Venezuela and this is just breathtaking for me. Thank you for the videos!

Great Great Great. Thanks. First time in my life to understand clear easy I try many channels at you youtube but you are the best

Wow, this was so much more informative than I expected from a KZread video. Excellent video!

@RimstarOrg

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks. It's a lot of fun (but also a huge amount of work) making these detailed ones. Two others which I'm proud of are How a Crystal Radio Works kzread.info/dash/bejne/YmGEssOrg9DdpKg.html and How a Wimshurst Machine Works kzread.info/dash/bejne/oHVow6WdZdSsh9Y.html

@learnerrahat5320

2 жыл бұрын

@@RimstarOrg you didnt leave a single little question. every small details was explained. nce work. thanks.

If you're not an educator by trade, you have certainly earned this educator's respect. Very well done.

@RimstarOrg

10 жыл бұрын

Thanks. That's a big complement indeed. I spent 13 years traveling around the world teaching for a software company, I currently teach a few times a year for an adult education program, and have done other teaching and course development over the years. I can't seem to stop myself. :)

@mrbhave

10 жыл бұрын

It's an insidious passion of mine, too, friend. Learn something new everyday, I say. It keeps Alzheimer's and boredom at bay.

I have to agree with everyone - your explanation of how the charges move and where they're coming form and going to is perfect. This video needs to be made into a section in a physics or an electrical engineering text book, seriously. Thank you for laying it out. Your video is in my play list. I'm going to make a Van De Graaff generator too.

Wow! You're welcome! I'm delighted you liked it so much. And thanks for saying so.

This is just simply an excellent description. A comprehensive class unto itself. The best on the internet. Thanks for your efforts.

Thank you for the video, it's the best explanation I found on Van Der Graaf generator, now I can build my own knowing how it works and why.

Best explanation and the questions give better insight, thanks

Super great explain. I was not knowing earlier, I am not knowing now how it works. There are thousands of conflicts in my mind.

I'm glad you liked it, thanks. And welcome to interacting on KZread.

Going to have to watch this many times. Very detailed. Thanks!

The triboelectric effect's video really helped.. Thanks a lot for helping and clearing my doubts :)

You explain it much better than Plasma Channel

Best video to clarify all doubts about Faraday cage etc.

its the best video on van de graaff generator..thanks for uploading it

even though I do not know English, the video is so didactic that I understood, thank you very much!!! from Brazil, translated by google translate hehehe

Thanks. I tried to make it as complete as I could for the popular types of Van de Graaffs at least.

Thank you very much for all the information! Helped me understand how to build my future Van de Graaff generator! (Already ordered the parts)

Thanks! During the last days I have been trying to make my own generator without success. Your video helps me a lot to see why my attempt didn't work. Now I *finally* understand why there is some charge accumulation at all (ie, which is the origin of the first charge gradient).

@RimstarOrg

10 жыл бұрын

Glad to hear it helps! Know how it works makes all the difference between engineering and guesswork. Let us know how it goes.

Yes, by sharper surface I mean smaller in diameter. Assuming 79kv between two domes, the smallest diameter dome has the stronger electric field around it. The air molecules will be repelled from the smaller diameter one, and be attracted to the larger diameter one. And you're welcome. Glad I can help.

Thanks so much! This has helped my physics revision improve SO WELL x

You're welcome. I'm glad you like the videos. Thanks for watching them!

Very informative. I wondered how they worked. I just wanted to see how the dome was constructed and attached to the circuit. Thanks.

your video is amazing it really helped to understand what a van de graaf genarator is

Comprehensive video! Thank you for making it

Thanks. The section explaining how the Faraday cage works is a little contentious since I wasn't using the standard approach to explaining it with just fields. But I really wanted to do it at the electron and proton level; more tangible, and also consistent with the rest of it. Have fun making your Van de Graaff generator. Be sure and check out my videos on that topic and ask questions if you run into problems.

my bad at english and your good at presentation make my mind blow :)) ho ho ho thank you. Such a good guy. Spend a lot of his time to help people :D

Thanks. I'm glad to hear it helped.

Great stuff, I always enjoy your videos.

Yes, you can use the same materials with a small homemade van de graaff. In fact the small one I show at 2:12 in this video has a Teflon roller at the bottom and a metal roller at the top and uses a rubber band for the belt. Using metal for the top roller is less effective than using something that's triboelectrically positive with respect to the belt material but the teflon and rubber band combination works so well that the results are still very good.

You're welcome. Thanks for the feedback.

That's a perfectly reasonable question. A big use for them in the past was for generating high voltages, in the millions of volts, for particle accelerators for doing science experiments. I don't know if any particle accelerators still use them. These days they're mostly used in classrooms for teaching about electrostatics or by hobbyists who just like to play around with high voltages. Science museums also use them for demonstrating electrostatic phenomenon.

Awesome awesome video, thank you so much! Answered a lot of my questions I couldn't gets my heads around!

You're welcome. I hope my answers helped. Cheers.

Wow this is an amazing video. I love learning things like this thank you so much for helping me understand better

AMAZING!!!!! BEST EXPLANATION I HAVE SEEN!!!! THANKS SO MUCH!!

I'm glad to hear it. I try to leave nothing to the imagination so maybe that's why my explanation works for you. Thanks for the feedback.

Excellent explanation

It's my first time to log-in my account to KZread. To like and comment to your video. Very informative, thank you very much! :)

Yes, the effect only charges the inner side of the belt. But the main reason is that the charge on the inner side of the belt is spread out over the larger inner area of the belt. The roller, however, has a smaller surface area and so the charge is more compact, the voltage is higher. So we use that higher voltage to pull more charge onto the outer surface of the belt. As a result, the outer surface of the belt has more charge than the inner surface. It's that larger charge that we're after.

Very clear, nice and informative. Helps allot!

Such a nice video to study for Physics Exam!! Thank you!

I searched hours for this explanation.. THANK YOU

Nice job , good explanation , a lot going on there

So informative and visual. Thank you so much.

Wonderful explanation

It's great explanation 👍

Great an complete explanation! Thanks a lot.

Excellent explanation, thank you.

The charge is deposited using the triboelectric effect. When two particular materials make contact and then break contact, their molecules interact such that charge is exchanged while they are touching but doesn't get restore when the separate. The belt and rollers are constantly making and breaking contact. And yes, we are transporting the protons and electrons exactly like transporting materials on a simple conveyor belt. See my video Triboelectric video, see link in this video's description.

Oh good, glad to hear it helped. Thanks.

that's amazing thank you so much for the video, it is a good explanation going into details. god bless you man

Wonderfull explanation... Thankz a lot..

the list of materials is nice, this way you don't need to find a very specific material.

Thanks a lot for the video and the detail

Great explanation 👍

Thank you for good clear information.

Superbly done.

Oh good. I wasn't sure I'd understood your question correctly. Thanks for letting me know.

K, thx allot dude, this vid is great as well as the others on your channel. Keep up the good work :)

That was so informative thanks for sharing.

Great video. keep up the good work.

Thanks. I'm glad it helped. Yeah. as long as the connection is to the inside of the dome then you're okay. Connecting to the outside makes it much less efficient.

Thank you very much! Well explained

Very well done. Thank You

Not usually. The electric field and resulting current flow are usually too weak. However, you can sometimes replace the regular multimeter probes with a high voltage probe to measure weak electric fields - by contact with the affected surfaces. You can see one of these probes in action in yet another of my videos :) "High Voltage Probe How-to with Fluke 80K-40".

Thank you ... The Video is much informative and helpful..

@lx0199 I purchased the generator years ago as a whole from Information Unlimited (I'll put the link to their website in the video description.) The unit itself is made by Science First (again, link in the description or just search for their name) and was a slightly different positive charge version of their # 615-3145. I don't see any spare rollers for sale on either of their websites, though Science First does sell the belts. Contact them to find out what the belt is made of.

You're welcome. I'm glad I could help.

Yes. Air contains a number of different atoms. One I know for sure gets ionized negatively is oxygen, which can then attach to an O2 molecule to produce ozone (O3). I'm don't know offhand which ones get positively charged. I talked about atoms becoming ionized in the video but molecules (which are made up of multiple atoms) can also become charged.

The motor has a power chord which is plugged into the wall socket to power the motor. That power chord has three wires: a black wire, a white wire, and a green wire called GROUND. That green ground wire goes through the wall socket and eventually to a metal rod in the ground in the backyard. That green ground wire is the one you see in the video at 2:04. The brush and the green ground wire are both connected to the metal case so they are connected together. Let me know if that doesn't help.

Awesome work! Now I understand it! Too bad this was not around when I was a college student.

Thanks! That's high praise; that's a good school.

Sorry, I don't know of a good website off-hand. I used my old high school physics textbook to double-check my knowledge of this. My approach was to first make sure my understanding of the relationship between electric fields and voltages was right. They're proportional to each other, denser e-field = higher voltage. Then I reminded myself that a charged VDG dome is a capacitor, with the room being the other plate. Since voltages are the same, e-field is the same, affect on ions is the same.

You gave a great explanation thanks for putting this up! Was horrified at some of the comments below the primary grades K-12 sure aren't what they used to be. Having fun printing conductive PLA and making little induction machines and also just finished a VDG using a printed sphere. Awesome retirement fun as I can now make conductors in most any shape within reason. Did a 200mm. sphere with the bottom curving gently up to the top end of the tube, looks a little like a torus from the bottom. Or a sphere that somebody sat on. Results v. good. Sounds like you're having fun with this me too it's interesting stuff.

I love this channel

Man's replaying to comments 10 years later

@h7opolo

Жыл бұрын

12 years later, too.

Great video!!

A very useful video

hey bro u cleared tons of my doubts!!!!!!

You're welcome! I'm sure the little ones will be delighted. Have fun!

I'd love to do a video explaining how a tesla coils works. I looked around and saw the same thing you did. However, I don't have the same level of background with tesla coils as I do with Van de Graaff generators. For a tesla coil that would mean building a few different tesla coils, which I'd like to do but haven't had time yet. It's on my todo list but it'll take a while.

amazing. your better than my physics teacher who went to oxford!!!

Great video.. Bro...

A really great video :)

@JeanAlex23 Glad to hear it, thanks.

Voltage is measured between 2 things. Example, my big VDG is rated at 500kV with respect to Earth ground since the lower brush is wired to Earth ground. To measure the voltage, use a HV probe. Connect the HV end of the probe to the dome and the other end to ground. The probe will feel the effect of the electric field between the dome and ground. The electric field strength is determined by the amount of charge. Picture one field line between each dome charge and a ground charge. (continued...)

I don't have a video on that. Though if you look at my "How to make an electroscope" video it's the same thing that makes the leafs inside the jar spread apart. If the VDG dome is positively charged then the hair is also positively charged and since like charges repel each other, the hairs all repel, getting as far apart as they can. Similarly if the VDG is negative then the hair is negative and repels.

The upper brush is connected to the inside of the dome. Is that what you thought, or did the video somehow lead you to think it was connected to the inside? If so, which part of the video made you think that?