Van de graaffs are no longer shown in UK schools for health and safety fears apparently, shame really – no wonder kids dont find science as interesting any more – they’re taking fun things like this out of the scene!

You sick son of a bitch, you stole my letter.

Here in the U.S. we play it like real men and chain the whole auditorium together, walk out into the hall like a giant people-tentacle, and laugh each the time last person slaps passers-by with a huge shock randomly.

The van de graaff generator at the museum of science in boston is very impressive – one of the biggest in the world. I went there when I was 13 and I still remember it. My high school teachers and 1st year physics prof had small ones like this and it was a really good teaching tool.

@radon222 – yeah, I saw the one in Boston this summer. it is incredibly loud! awesome.

and yeah we had one at our uk school back when i was doing physics gcse 6-7 years ago, i’d be surprised if they got rid of it! school science is all about doing dangerous unauthorised experiments. my favourite was the biology lesson involving ether…

I built one of these with my father back around 1995 – we used a washing machine motor and a big rubber belt made from rubber-band stock tube cut length-wise. Two aluminium lamp-shades for the dome. A major factor is actually the materials used for the rollers – polycarbonate and polythene I think IIRC. Also, mill the rollers to be slightly convex (no, not concave, yes it’s counter-intuitive!) to keep the belt centred on the rollers. Use finer steel wool for your brushes for more effective electron transfer. We got arcs of up to 1 metre in length and blew up several electronic devices in the vicinity, including the home computer motherboard.

We tried a high-tension electron ‘injector’ at the base but it didn’t really make much difference. The original design was plenty good enough.

“Here in the U.S. we play it like real men…”

‘mercans are such assholes.