Invisible Electrostatic Wall at 3M plant (1996)

Reminds me of the time I turned myself into a Van de Graff generator at work. I was a theater projectionist, back when you had 20 minute reels you had to constantly change, while babysitting two high-voltage, water-cooled, carbon arc projectors. Sometimes the film would break and you’d have to splice it. So when the theater got a print in, you had to count and log the number of splices for each reel, then the next theater would do the…

We did this experiment in physics back in college. If you get sufficient charge you repelled by charge of the same polarity. I would speculate that the charge on people was the same as the charge being created in the spooling area (it is a giant Van DeGraff generator type apparatus after all). That would also correlate with the humidity component as the humid air would have a lower dielectric effect and you would get a lower max charge due…

Here is a more detailed article and a nice drawing to help you imagine how the rollers were arranged. http://aha.miraclegreat.com/2/post/2012/05/invisible-electro... Can someone post this in the Mythbusters forums and try to get them to attempt to replicate this?

Previous, huge discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3274335