Lightenburg side panel mod help?

Vendetta · February 15, 2014

Hey so I think it would be sooooo badass to do a Lichtenburg side panel mod. Every Lichtenburg figure is unique so your side panel would always be special even if some one else did the mod also. I'm no chemist so I need some help. I know they are caused by high voltage discharges but not much more than that.

The only thing I've come up with is either using a painted metal side panel and raw opposite corners and run some high voltage current through it so that it burns the pain in a Lichtenburg pattern or a plastic side panel with little metal things attached at opposite corners and spray it down with some salt water to make it conductive and allow the current to burn a Lichtenburg figure into the plastic. Also what are some good ways of causing a high voltage discharge through these materials. Am I going to have to get sketchy with a car battery or something? LOL

Anyone help would be greatly appreciated!

This is an example of a Lichtenburg figure:

slasher0161 · February 17, 2014

Hey so I think it would be sooooo badass to do a Lichtenburg side panel mod. Every Lichtenburg figure is unique so your side panel would always be special even if some one else did the mod also. I'm no chemist so I need some help. I know they are caused by high voltage discharges but not much more than that.

The only thing I've come up with is either using a painted metal side panel and raw opposite corners and run some high voltage current through it so that it burns the pain in a Lichtenburg pattern or a plastic side panel with little metal things attached at opposite corners and spray it down with some salt water to make it conductive and allow the current to burn a Lichtenburg figure into the plastic. Also what are some good ways of causing a high voltage discharge through these materials. Am I going to have to get sketchy with a car battery or something? LOL

Anyone help would be greatly appreciated!

This is an example of a Lichtenburg figure:

Car battery is 12 volts so that won't work if you need high voltage. I will look into it a bit as it is fairly neat but high voltage discharges aren't easy to produce without some very dodgy work (having said that high voltage at extremely low amps is safe*).

*I take no responsibility for any harm anyone causes themselves playing with electricity.

Edit:

Just looked into it and best case scenario you are looking at an impossible level of volts to achieve in a backyard under controlled conditions without spending a stupid amount of money.

How do we make our Captured Lightning® sculptures?Over many years, we have refined irradiation and fabrication techniques to create a wide variety of beautiful 2D and 3D sculptures. We start with carefully cut and polished specimens made from a clear, glass-like polymer called polymethyl methacrylate (or PMMA). This material, commonly known as "acrylic", is sold under various trade names such as Lucite, Plexiglas, or Perspex. PMMA has a unique combination of high optical clarity and superior electrical and mechanical properties. Besides being an excellent electrical insulator, it's actually clearer than glass! A number of other clear polymers, such as polycarbonate (PC), polystyrene (PS) , polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) can also be used to make Lichtenberg figures with varying degrees of success. However, most of these other materials tend to form dark gray or black discharge patterns instead of the sparkling, mirror-like figures seen within PMMA. Lichtenberg figures can also be created within glass. However, since glass Lichtenberg figures often shatter upon discharge, or unpredictably some time later, we no longer make them.
We inject electrons into our specimens using a 150 kW particle accelerator called a Dynamitron. The heart of this device is the accelerator tube - a huge three-story high evacuated "vacuum tube" that operates at voltages between one and five million volts. At the top of the tube, electrons are emitted by a small, white-hot tungsten filament. The filament is also connected to the negative output terminal of a multimillion volt power supply, while the bottom of the tube is connected to ground and the positive terminal of the high voltage supply. This configuration creates a very strong electrical field that accelerates electrons emitted from the filament to a very high velocity as they "fall" though the large potential difference towards ground. The bottom of the vacuum tube has very thin (only 2.3 thousandths of an inch thick!) titanium window that separates the high vacuum on the inside from air, at atmospheric pressure, on the outside. The high velocity electrons pass right through the titanium window, almost as though it wasn't even there! The electrons then emerge from the outside surface of the window, and then travel through another 24 inches of air before crashing into our acrylic specimens on the movable carts below. Although the average lifetime of free electrons in air is only 11 billionths of a second, that's more than enough time for them to work their magic.

The energy of electrons leaving the accelerator is measured in millions of electron volts (or MeV). Most of our sculptures were created using electrons with energies of 2 to 5 MeV. At these energies electrons are traveling at relativistic velocities - between 98.5% and 99.6% of the speed of light. During irradiation, the energetic electrons are driven deep inside the acrylic before they come to a stop. The penetration depth is a function of the energy of the electron beam, the target material's dielectric properties, and its atomic density. The higher the energy of the electron beam, the deeper the electrons will penetrate. For example, electrons with an energy of five MeV will penetrate about one half of an inch in acrylic, but a sheet of much denser lead only 1/16" thick will completely stop them.

When a thick piece of acrylic is irradiated, huge numbers of electrons accumulate inside the specimen, creating a strongly-charged cloud-like layer called a space charge. Because acrylic is an excellent electrical insulator, the injected electrons become temporarily trapped deep inside. By passing specimens through the electron beam in two or more passes (changing specimen orientation between passes), or by rotating specimens while they're being irradiated, complex 3-dimensional regions of space charge can be created. As the electrical charges accumulate during irradiation, the electrical stress (called the electrical field or "E-field") inside the acrylic also dramatically increases to several million volts per centimeter. We normally charge our specimens to just below the point where they'll break down. We then force each specimen to electrically discharge at the desired location by poking it with a heavily-insulated, pointed metal tool. This creates a small divot or fracture thatconcentrates the electrical stress at that point, overcoming the dielectric strength of the acrylic. As breakdown begins, chemical bonds that hold the acrylic molecules together rapidly break, stripping away free electrons in a process called ionization. The newly-freed electrons are then accelerated by the extreme electric field, and these collide with, and ionize, more acrylic molecules. In an instant, portions of the acrylic abruptly become electrically conductive in a runaway process calledavalanche breakdown.

Within billionths of a second, a network of branching conductive channels form within the acrylic and, with a bright flash and a loud BANG, the material suddenly undergoes dielectric breakdown. The previously-trapped electrical charges rush out in a river-like torrent as thousands of smaller tributaries dump their share of charge into larger channels, eventually merging into a single, brilliant discharge path that exits the acrylic. Although images and videos appear as though we're injecting high voltage into each specimen, we're actually removing the excess charges that were previously trapped inside. Dielectric breakdown occurs with incredible speed - the main electrical discharge within a 4 inch square specimen lasts less than 120 billionths of a second (120 ns)! Some solid state physicists now think that dielectric breakdown within a charge-injected solid may be the most energetic (explosive) chemical reaction known, vastly exceeding that of high explosives.

From http://www.capturedlightning.com/frames/lichtenbergs.html

Basically find somewhere to buy a pane or get a company to manufacture them because you aren't doing a DIY mod on this without some serious monetary investment and a complete disregard for safety.

Vendetta · February 17, 2014

Car battery is 12 volts so that won't work if you need high voltage. I will look into it a bit as it is fairly neat but high voltage discharges aren't easy to produce without some very dodgy work (having said that high voltage at extremely low amps is safe*).

*I take no responsibility for any harm anyone causes themselves playing with electricity.

Edit:

Just looked into it and best case scenario you are looking at an impossible level of volts to achieve in a backyard under controlled conditions without spending a stupid amount of money.

Basically find somewhere to buy a pane or get a company to manufacture them because you aren't doing a DIY mod on this without some serious monetary investment and a complete disregard for safety.

Yea I seen that website and honestly I've read some of the writings of the guys who run that site and they are just elitist idiots. They are the kind of people who think you need a fucking dual cpu i7 extreme setup with quad titans to play games. I've seen videos of people doing it on wood planks with a neon light power converter and plugging it into a house plug then sending that through two nails in wood so I know it is possible but I'm going to need to find a very low resistance way of getting the current through whatever mateial I'm using.

Karumu · February 18, 2014

http://chemistry.about.com/od/demonstrationsexperiments/a/lichtenberg.htm

TL;DR get an acrylic window, get a van de graaff generator (or a particle accelerator) discharge it on the surface of the window then blow toner over it van de graaff generators are fun and have basically no current whilst generating upwards of 2000 volts, i've been zapped by a 20kv generator kinda hurt but meh