Nuking lit carbon yields plasmoids
Happened upon the page of
microwave experiment suggestions a couple of days ago.
I had to add this comment:
Nuke a LIT cigarette
I — er, um, an acquaintance — tried this in college many many years ago (around 1970). You get a free-floating plasmoid. It was the late 1990's before I finally found this explanation of the phonomenon
(see http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/oa_plasmoid.htm for safer ways to do this experiment)
but the details were unmistakable.
The buzzing, the ball-lightning-like effect. Very cool.
I — um, my acquantance — just used a plastic spoon,
burned a hole in it (with the cigarette, of course) and then jammed the filter in so that the spoon helped the cigarette stand up vertically. You may want to be sure to use a microwave that doesn't spin the "food" around.
Hmm, I don't have a "science" category so I'll just have to call it "humor" :-)
12:26:24 AM
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