Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: questofjourneys on 29/09/2016 07:51:05
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I put 120 volts into a bowl of distilled water, with a floating neutral and ground wired into a GFCI switch plugged into the wall.. I found an ambient voltage floating threw out the water that is able to harness multi voltages of led light at the same time... NEC tells me Distilled Water is not a conductor, it acts more like an transformer
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I'm afraid the video doesn't play for me, so I don't understand the scenario - please clarify:
- "I put 120 volts into a bowl of distilled water": Is this 120V DC or 120V AC (eg US mains voltage?)
- "with a floating neutral and ground": Are you implying that the Active lead of the AC supply was applied to an electrode in the water?
- While the Neutral and Ground wires were not attached to anything (ie insulated)?
- Are you sure you knew which was Active and which was Neutral? Non-polarized plugs are often reversed...
- " bowl": Was it a conductive bowl (eg metal) or insulating bowl (plastic or ceramic)? If metal, was it on an insulating surface?
- "wired into a GFCI switch plugged into the wall": Ground Fault switches detect a current imbalance. If Active was connected, but not Neutral, you might expect a current imbalance which would throw the switch.
- "I found an ambient voltage floating threw out the water ": If there is AC mains present, I don't know how you can measure ambient voltage
- "threw out the water ": Does this mean that the water physically jumped out of the bowl? By how far?
- On the other hand if this means "threw out the switch", that is a normal protective action for this circuit
- "harness multi voltages of led light at the same time": In what way does it "harness" the LED light?
- What voltages of LED light were you using? 120V AC, red 2.7V DC, blue 3.4V DC? How were they connected?
- "NEC tells me Distilled Water is not a conductor": Distilled water is a fairly poor conductor - but after being in contact with random surfaces that may have had salt or metal on the surface, it becomes a far better conductor
- I certainly would not put my finger in a bowl of water with a 120V AC supply!
- " Distilled Water is not a conductor, it acts more like an transformer": A transformer can reduce voltage and increase current. A resistive material reduces both the voltage and the current.
I suspect that what you have is slightly conductive (ie fairly resistive) water which creates a voltage divider (and a current reducer).
- It won't make a transformer unless you have some way for a current to flow in circles or spirals to create a magnetic field.
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Even the purest water is slightly conductive due to self-ionization. Resistivity is used to determine the purity of ultra-pure water, with 18.3 MΩ•cm being the standard to shoot for. My guess is that off-the-shelf distilled water is probably closer to 1 MΩ•cm, which is still not very conductive, but will certainly pass measurable current at 120 V!