Homemade Lightning: Creative Experiments in Electricity | 
 enlarge | Authors: R. A. Ford, Richard A. Ford
Publisher: McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $12.50
You Save: $12.45 (50%)
New (27) Used (13) from $6.90
Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 276306
Media: Paperback
Edition: 3
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 275
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 0071373233
Dewey Decimal Number: 621.313
UPC: 639785328131
EAN: 9780071373234
ASIN: 0071373233
Publication Date: August 8, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
One of the best books on electrostatics for the hobbyists, inventor, or experimenter is updated and expanded to include newly uncovered information on electrostatic generators and complete instructions for building various types, including Wimshurst and Van de Graaff generators. Throughout the book, the author provides hard-to-find information on electrical anomalies, which represent the frontier of electrostatic research. Covering theory and presenting electroscope and other construction projects and experiments, this handbook also includes experiments with electrohorticulture, gravitation and electricity, cold light, and electric tornadoes. Homemade Lightning is both an excellent first book for the building electrical experimenter and a superb book for accomplished experimenters who haven't spent much time with electrostatics.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 Great for the Mad Scientist April 12, 2007
This is a good book for the experimenter in us all. You can build and experiment with electrostatics.
 Nicely done book on electrostatics November 9, 2006
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
There's a lot of material floating around the web and bookstores that deals with Tesla and related topics. However, when it comes to good old fashion electro-statics, there is no where near the same volume of information. In fact, I've found four books pretty much cover the field -- at least for my money. Something to consider when contemplating a purchase of books on niche subjects such as electrostatics, books tend to go out of print rather fast. The print runs are small, and often the author or publisher will not reprint. This means, get the book while you can. It might be oop and only available on the secondary collectors market later.
Homemade Lightning (R.A. Ford) -- If you are interested in putting together an electrostatic device, this is the book for you. Lots of how-to with pictures and explanation. I think as a first book this is your best bet. And as a book for creating running examples, this is your best bet. However, I don't believe I would want to have just one book on the subject. The other three books mentioned below add their own dimension to the subject and are (in my opinion) worth the few dollars needed to create a mini-library on the subject.
Electrostatic Experiments (G.W. Francis) -- The subtitle for this book is "An encyclopedia of early electrostatic experiments, demonstrations, devices, and apparatus." The book lives up to its name. A great book for an overview of the field. I know it sounds a little silly, but the nice bright white paper and crisp illustrations are a real boon to this book. The font is well chosen and the leading is easy to read. In this book you will find reference to odd-ball experiments that other books just don't get around to talking about. For example, Eggs illuminated. (p.200) and Illumination of oranges (p.201). If you are looking for demonstrations or ideas for creating new displays for lecture or theater, this book has plenty of inspiration.
Electrostatics (A.D. Moore) -- A nice home experiments how-to book. The book is a little chatty in parts. I liked this. The author speaks with a direct, sitting across the table, style.
Static Electricity (J.H. Pepper) -- This material is extracted fom Cyclopaedic Science Simplified 1889. I use this for historical reasons and to poke around in. The book since it was written in 1889 assumes a fair degree of background by the reader. Great pictures and some nice explanations of how things work. You just need to be able to penetrate the older text.
Building the Generator... July 14, 2006
I'm well into it now, so I've gotta finish, but damn! This thing is neither cheap nor easy to build.
At a casual glance, the instructions look fairly straight forward, but once you've got your materials (a shopping list at the beginning would be super helpful) you realize that the drawings leave some things to be desired (like, in many cases, dimensions)...if the drawing you're looking for is there at all. With a little head-scratching though you can sort it all out.
I've spent somewhere between $250 and $300 on the materials alone. You can buy a Wimhurst kit from Edmund Scientific for $120 but, y'know... its not as cool as making your own...
Tool-wise, its good to either have, or know somebody who has a drill press, lathe, router and various saws and sanders. I don't mind 'cause I'm a tool junkie- I needed a (good-ish) excuse to buy a lathe- but start factoring that in to your overall cost...
All that said though, the plans for the dirod in A.D. Moore's book don't look any clearer.
If you want to build your own spark machine, its probably good to understand the principle behind the machines and just start going at it. The drawings and diagrams in the book are good for setting you off in the right direction if nothing else... after all: the first people to develop these machines started off with nothing more than an idea- you get to start with some reasonably good drawings and a knowledge that if you stick close to the plans you'll get something that works.
 Many faults but can mostly overcome them June 17, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Homemade lightening is only really valuable for it's in depth explanation of the authors own devices. There is also a lack of explanation of electrical theory in this book which the author probably justifies by saying that it doesn't have a strong basis anyways. Since throughout the later chapters he lividly explains how current theories have huge holes in them. The latter half of the book works outside of everything you've ever learned about physics, which was something of a disappointment. Some solid explanation of electrostatic principles with updated graphics would have been much more satisfying then the chronology of weirdness presented at the end. The total effect of first, not explaining electrostatic principles, and then providing highly technical and unsolved problems to the reader, leaves the reading either, in awe of R.A. Ford, or simply confused. A.D. Moore's Electrostatics is better for understanding electrostatics and for not having odd theories thrown at you. Another thing, Ford keeps saying how you should `visualize' the electric field to understand it, yet he only has one diagram of fields, and that's of gravity.
Home Made Lightning September 5, 2003
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is eye opening in that it awakens you to the fact that many traditional explanations of electricity do not explain all of the properties of electricity. A wonderful reference work. The illustrations are old, perhaps because the research seemed to stop around the 1930's. His chapter 6 on "Theories of generator operation" is excellent. His statement that "It is fair to say that there are as many theories as there are inventors of original generator designs." inspirers you to learn about all of the other designs. The book is packed with extensive references and I have recently acquired many of them. Although his references concerning Nikola Tesla are not pronounced, at least he mentions him in chapter 21 "Some philosophical conclusions and insights". Final answer: If I lose the book, I'll buy another!
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