The Foldes Effect - 04/14/00
courtesy of discoverer Attila Foldes in Hungary
KeelyNet received this remarkable email from Mr. Attila Foldes describing an apparently new phenomenon which he has discovered and so rightly named 'the Foldes Effect'.
Here is the text of the email, cleaned up a bit for clarity
Attila Földes wrote:
Dear Friend,
I am a Hungarian electrical engineer. My English is rather weak.
In 1992 in my town was a very complex UFO sighting. Two or more UFOs communicated, disappeared, reappeared and issued very bright balls of light.
I suspected the energy from these balls was due to them being composed of silicon. Tracing this suspicion, I was able to duplicate the effect which I discovered and have called the "Foldes effect" (Foldes is my family name).
This effect was examined by the University in London.
In my mind, the effect only moves the balls inside the circle shaped silicon-glass cylinder. You can try it. It is required to do it in open air because of the high voltage and the ozone (O3).
As it runs and you inhale the ozone, you could produce a headache but in my opinion, there isn't enough ozone to cause a headache.
I found also, that there is a heart arytm (arrhythmia) that lasts for awhile. (so be very careful if you choose to experiment with this)
Now for the effect.
I attached the drawing made by Coreldraw. The UFO engine works similar to your idea, I think.
(Attila refers to the comments about Thom Pawlickis observation at a Canadian science fair, where two aluminum disks, horizontal and spaced about 6" or so, are powered with roughly 30,000 volts, not sure if it is AC or DC. A steel ball placed on the top of the bottom plate, will begin to roll in a circle, spiralling out until it rides around the edge of the bottom disk, apparently driven by the charging/discharging dielectric. None of us have ever been able to duplicate this observation though it has been oft written up at KeelyNet.)
I discovered a message to us too. The message is complex but understandable to us. The combinations shows an absolutely other logical thinking, but we can understand it all.
Now I make the CD for NETSCAPE or any other internet browser. It is the wonder of the next century. All the bests, and I hope I will get friends in the word.
Attila Foldes from HUNGARY
As far as I can tell, it is a glass cylinder supported by three non-conducting legs on a glass plate on top of a metal plate with a GLASS BALL ball inside the cylinder, free to move or rotate. Apparently, the glass ball serves as some kind of electrostatically driven ball rotor since it would contact the glass cylinder and the glass plate.
What is puzzling is that glass is not generally conductive without some kind of doping, like the phosphor or salt coated paths now popular for 2 dimensional high voltage displays.
Though the drawing is rough, it looks the equator of the ball would be touching the lower rim of the glass cylinder, much like the outside edge of Pawlickis plate capacitor, but here in a different geometry. If it moves as he suggests, bet is sparks all over the place.
Don't build it yet until we get some more details. I will ask him for dimensions and append to this file as new information arises.
(See notes after the drawing)
Simple Tesla coil
Salt water capacitors,
These use salt water as the "plates" and glass as the dielectric. They are very cheap, but have two significant disadvantages. Firstly, they give a relatively low capacitance for their size. Secondly, the glass dielectric exhibits a significant dielectric loss at the high frequencies seen in Tesla Coils. Original experiments done by Tesla used this type of construction, although today we have synthetic plastics which make far more efficient dielectrics.
1947 doped glass & ceramics
Definition of dielectric
DIELECTRIC, or insulator, substance that is a poor conductor of electricity and that will sustain the force of an electric field passing through it. This property is not exhibited by conducting substances. Two oppositely charged bodies placed on either side of a piece of glass (a dielectric) will attract each other, but if a sheet of copper is instead interposed between the two bodies, the charge will be conducted by the copper.
Glass, mica, porcelain, and mineral oils, often used as dielectrics, have constants ranging from about 2 to 9. The ability of a dielectric to withstand electric fields without losing insulating properties is known as its dielectric strength. A good dielectric must return a large percentage of the energy stores in it when the field is reversed.
Film Capacitors
In some ways, a capacitor has not changed much in over 200 years, since the first capacitors. . . Leyden jars. Simply, they were glass jars with a wrap of copper inside and outside: 2 conductors separated by a dielectric (non-conducting) material. Some hobbiests - Tesla Coil builders, particularly - still use this technique to build a cheap capacitor from old bottles and household aluminum foil. Now, of course, there are ceramic capacitors, mica caps, tantalum wet slug, aluminum electrolytic, paper and/or plastic film capacitors and even (still!) glass dielectric capacitors.
Leyden jar
This experiment is generally used to demonstrate that the charge is stored in the glass dielectric, not on the surfaces of the inner or outer conductors. In fact, the energy is stored as polarization charge.
CRTs as giant capacitors
The high voltage IS stored between the coating on the inside of the CRT and the aquadag on the outside of the CRT. That is the exceedingly clever part of it. It is very difficult to make capacitors that store tens of kilovolts. In fact, you'll never find such a beast at an electronic store. The CRT is a huge (physical) capacitor with a glass dielectric. If you don't believe me, get a schematic of anything with a picture tube and try to point a capacitor on the CRT side of the HV rectifier and flyback.
Satellite reception through glass
Glass reflects microwaves because of its relatively high dielectric constant but not completely. To get good transmission through the glass the thickness has to be chosen so that the reflection from the second surface cancels that from the first. If you take a single sheet of glass and look straight through it, i.e. not at an angle you should get good signals if it is electrically a half wavelength thick. At 12Ghz the wavelength is 2.5cm, or 1 inch. If the dielectric constant of the glass is 4 then the ideal thickness is 0.625cm or 1/4 inch. However the dielectric constant can be higher than this requiring thinner glass. Most window glass is too thin, at least in the UK, and can be exactly the wrong thickness giving maximum reflection.
It is possible to make a glass window into a microwave lens, or attach a lens to it, to replace the dish altogether. The LNB would then be placed at the focus of this lens.
Encyclopedia Brittanica on Dielectric
insulating material or a very poor conductor of electric current. When dielectrics are placed in an electric field, practically no current flows in them because, unlike metals, they have no loosely bound, or free, electrons that may drift through the material. Instead, electric polarization occurs. The positive charges within the dielectric are displaced minutely in the direction of the electric field, and the negative charges are displaced minutely in the direction opposite to the electric field. This slight separation of charge, or polarization, reduces the electric field within the dielectric.
