We're going to talk about again some new concepts.
And that's the concept of electrostatic potential
electrostatic potential energy.
For which we will use the symbol U
and independently, electric potential
which is very different, for which we will
use the symbol V.
Imagine that I have a charge q one here and
that's plus, plus charge
and here I have a charge plus q two
and they have a distant...
They're a distance R apart.
And that is point P.
It's very clear that in order to bring these
charges at this distance from each other,
I had to do work to bring them there
because they repel each other.
It's like pushing in a spring.
If you release the spring you get the energy
back.
If they were -- they were connected with a
little string, the string would be stretched,
take scissors, cut the string fweeew they fly
apart again.
So I have put work in there and that's what
we call the electrostatic potential energy.
So let's work this out in some detail how
much work I have to do.
Well, we first put q one here,
if space is empty,
this doesn't take any work to place q one here.
But now I come from very far away,
we always think of it as infinitely far away,
of course that's a little bit of exaggeration,
and we bring this charge q two
from infinity to that point P.
And I, Walter Lewin, have to do work,
I have to push and push and push
and the closer I get the harder I have to push
and finally I reach that point P.
Suppose I am here and this separation
is little r.
I've reached that point.
Then the force on me, the electric force,
is outwards.
And so I have to overcome that force and so
my force F Walter Lewin is in this direction.
And so you can see I do positive work,
the force and the direction in which I'm moving
are in the same direction, I do positive work.
Now, the work that I do could be calculated.
The work that Walter Lewin is doing
in going all the way from infinity
to that location P is the integral
going from infinity to radius R
of the force of Walter Lewin dot dr.
But of course that work is exactly the same,
either one is fine,
to take the electric force
in going from R to infinity dot dr.
Because the force, the electric force
and Walter Lewin's force
are the same in magnitude
but opposite direction
and so by flipping over,
going from infinity to R, to R to infinity,
this is the same.
This is one and the same thing.
Let's calculate this integral
because that's a little easy.
We know what the electric force is, 
Coulomb's law, it's repelling
so the force and dr are now in the same direction,
so the angle theta between them is zero,
so the cosine of theta is one,
so we can forget about all the vectors,
and so we would get then that this equals q one,
q two, divided by four pi epsilon zero.
And now I have downstairs here an R squared.
And so I have the integral now dr divided
by r squared.
From capital R to infinity.
And this integral is minus one over r.
Which I have to evaluate between R and infinity.
And when I do that that becomes plus one over
capital R.
Right, the integral of dr over r squared I'm
sure you can all do that is minus one over r.
I evaluate it between R and infinity
and so you get plus one over R.
And so U, which is the energy that...
the work that I have to do to bring this charge
at that position, that U is now q one times q two
divided by four pi epsilon zero.
Divided by that capital R.
And this of course this is scalar,
that is work, it's a number of joules.
If q one and q two are both positive
or both negative, I do positive work,
you can see that, minus times minus is plus.
Because then they repel each other.
If one is positive and the other is negative,
then I do negative work,
and you see that that comes out as a sign sensitive, minus times plus is minus,
so I can do negative work.
If the two don't have the same polarity.
I want you to convince yourself
that if I didn't come along a straight line
from all the way from infinity,
but I came in a very crooked way,
finally ended up at point P, at that point,
that the amount of work
that I had to do is exactly the same.
You see the parallel with 801
where we dealt with gravity.
Gravity is a conservative force--
and when you deal with conservative forces,
the work that has to be done
in going from one point to
the other is independent of the path.
That is the definition of conservative force.
Electrostatic forces are also conservative.
And so it doesn't make any difference
whether I come along a straight line--
to this point or whether I do that
in an extremely crooked way
and finally end up here.
That's the same amount of work.
Now if we do have a collection of charges,
so we have pluses and minus charges,
some pluses, some minus, some pluses,
minus, pluses, pluses,
then you now can calculate
the amount of work
that I, Walter Lewin, have to do
in assembling that.
You bring one from infinity to here,
another one, another one
and you add up all that work,
some work may be positive,
some work may be negative.
Finally you arrive at the total amount
of work
that you have to do to assemble these charges.
And that is the meaning of capital U.
Now I turn to electric potential.
And for that I start off here with a charge
which I now call plus capital Q.
It's located here.
And at a position P at a distance R away,
I place a test charge plus q.
Make it positive for now, you can change it
later to become a negative.
And so the electrostatic potential energy we...
we know already we just calculated it,
that would be q times Q
divided by four pi epsilon zero R.
That's exactly the same that we have.
So the electric potential,
electrostatic potential energy,
is the work that I have to do
to bring this charge here.
Now I'm going to introduce
electric potential.
Electric potential.
And that is the work per unit charge that
I have to do to go from infinity to that position.
So q doesn't enter into it anymore.
It is the work per unit charge to go from
infinity to that location P.
And so if it is the work per unit charge,
that means little q [pfew] disappears.
And so now we write down that V,
at that location P, the potential,
the electric potential at that location P,
is now only Q divided by four pi epsilon zero R.
Little q has disappeared.
It is also a scalar.
This has unit joules.
The units here is joules per coulombs.
I have divided out one charge.
It's work per unit charge.
No one would ever call this joules per coulombs,
we call this volts,
called after the great Volta,
who did a lot of research on this.
So we call this volts.
But it's the same as joules per coulombs.
If we have a very simple situation like we
have here, that we only have one charge,
then this is the potential anywhere,
at any distance you want, from this charge.
If R goes up, if you're further away,
the potential will become lower.
If this Q is positive, the potential is everywhere
in space positive for a single charge.
If this Q is negative, everywhere in space
the potential is negative.
Electro- electric static potential can be
negative.
The work that I do per unit charge
coming from infinity--
would be negative,
if that's a negative charge.
And the potential
when I'm infinitely far away,
when this R becomes infinitely large,
is zero.
So that's the way we define our zero.
So you can have positive potentials,
near positive charge,
negative potentials,
near negative charge,
and if you're very very far away,
then potential is zero.
Let's now turn to our Vandegraaff.
It's a hollow sphere, has a radius R.
About thirty centimeters.
And I'm going to put on here
plus ten microcoulombs.
It will distribute itself uniformly.
We will discuss that next time in detail.
Because it's a conductor.
We already discussed last lecture that the
electric field inside the sphere is zero.
And that the electric field outside
is not zero
but that we can think of all the charge
being at this point here,
the plus ten microcoulombs
is all here,
as long as we want to know
what the electric field outside is.
So you can forget the fact that it is a,
a sphere.
And so now I want to know what the electric
potential is at any point in space.
I want to know what it is here and I want
to know what it is here
at point P which is now a distance R
from the center.
And I want to know what it is here.
At a distance little R from the center.
So let's first do the potential here.
The potential at point P is an integral
going from R to infinity
if I take the electric force
divided by my test charge q dot dr,
but this is the electric field, see,
this force times distance is work,
but it is work per unit charge,
so I take my test charge out.
And so this is the integral in R to infinity
of E dot dl -- dr, sorry.
And that's a very easy integral.
Because we know what E is.
The electric field we have done several times.
Follows immediately from Coulomb's law
and so when you calculate this integral
you get Q divided by four pi epsilon zero R
which is no surprise
because we already had that for a point charge.
So this is the situation if r, little r,
is larger than capital R.
Precisely what we had before.
We can put in some numbers.
If you put in r equals R,
which is eh... oh point three meters
and you put in here the ten microcoulombs, 
and here the... the thirty centimeters
then you'll find three hundred thousand volts.
So you get three times ten to the fifth volts.
If you um take R equals sixty centimeters,
you double it, if you double the distance,
the potential goes down by a factor of two,
it's one over R,
so it would be a hundred and fifty kilovolts.
And if you go to three meters,
then it is ten times smaller,
then it is thirty kilovolts.
And if you go to infinity which for all practical
purposes would be Lobby seven,
if you go to Lobby seven, then the potential
 for all practical purposes is about zero.
Because r is so large
that there is no potential left.
So if I, if I, Walter Lewin, march from infinity
to this surface of the Vandegraaff
and I put a charge q in my pocket
and I march to the Vandegraaff,
by the time I reach that point,
I have done work,
I multiply the charge
now back to the potential,
that gives it the work again,
because potential was work per unit charge,
and so the work that I have done then
is the charge that I have in my pocket
times the potential, in this case
the potential of the Vandegraaff.
If I go all the way to this surface,
which is three hundred thousand volts.
If I were a strong man then I would put one
coulomb in my pocket.
That's a lot of charge.
Then I would have done three hundred thousand
joules of work.
By just carrying the one coulomb from Lobby
seven to the Vandegraaff.
That's about the same work I have to do to
climb up the Empire State Building.
The famous mgh, my mass times g times the
height that I have to climb.
So I know how the electric potential goes
with distance.
It's a one over R relationship.
Now I have arrived at the Vandegraaff,
I am at the surface, with my test charge,
and now I go inside.
And I slosh around inside,
I feel no force anymore.
There is no electric field inside.
So as I move around inside,
I experience no force.
That means I do no work.
So that means that the potential
must remain constant.
So the absence of an electric field here
implies
that the electric potential everywhere
is exactly the same.
Inside is the same as on
the sphere.
Because no further work is needed in marching
around with a test charge.
And so for this special case I could make
a graph of the electric potential versus R
and this is then the radius of the Vandegraaff
and that would be a constant all the way up
to this point and then it would fall off
as one over R here.
And in, for the numbers that we have chosen,
the potential at the maximum here
would be three hundred thousand volts.
Just as when you look at maps where you see
contours of equal height of mountains,
which we call equal altitudes,
here we have surfaces of equipotential.
And if you had a point charge
or if you had the Vandegraaff,
these surfaces would be concentric spheres.
The further out you go, if the charge is positive,
the lower the potential would be.
They would be nicely spherical surfaces.
Suppose now we had more than one charge,
we had a plus Q one charge,
and we had a minus Q two charge,
for instance.
And you're being asked now
what is the potential at point P.
Well, now the electric potential
at point P, VP, is the potential
that you would have measured
if Q one had been there alone.
And you have to add the potential
that you would have seen
if Q two had been there alone.
Just adding work per unit charge for one with
work per unit charge of the other.
And if this is negative, then this quantity
is negative, and this is positive.
So when you have configurations
of positive and negative charges
then of course depending upon
where you are in space,
if you're close to the plus charge,
the potential is almost certainly positive,
because the one over R
is huge.
If you're very close to the negative charge
again the one over R
of this little charge will dominate
and so you get a negative potential.
And so you have surfaces
of positive potential
and you have equipotential surfaces
of negative potentials
and so there are surfaces which
have zero potential.
And they're not always very easy to envision.
But what I want to show you is some work
that Maxwell himself did
in figuring out these equipotentials.
And so I have here a transparency
of a publication by Maxwell.
You see a charge,
let's assume it is plus four and plus one,
it could be minus four and minus one,
but let's assume they're plus.
And you see the green lines,
which we have seen before,
which are the field lines.
Don't pay any attention to the green field
lines now.
The red lines are equipotentials.
And you have to rotate them about the vertical,
because they're of course surfaces,
this is three-dimensional.
I have not drawn all the equipotential surfaces
in red because they become too cluttered here.
But I've tried to put most of them in red.
Since this charge is positive and that charge
is positive, everywhere in space,
no matter where you are,
the potential has to be positive.
There is not a single point where it could
be negative.
If you are very far away from the plus four
and the plus one,
then you expect that the equipotential
surfaces are spheres,
because it's almost as if you were looking
at a plus five charge.
So it doesn't surprise you
that when you go far out
that you ultimately get
spherical shapes.
When you're very close to the plus four
they are perfect spheres,
when you're very close
to the plus one,
they are perfect spheres.
But then when you're sort of in between,
neither close to the plus four
nor to the plus one,
they have this very funny shape.
It reminds me the shape
of this balloon a little bit.
Sort of like this.
You see?
And there is one surface, which is most unusual,
equipotential surface,
which here has a point
where the electric field is zero.
It's sort of like twisting the neck of a goose,
you get something like this
and so you have here a surface
which has a point here
and it is exactly at that point
where the electric field is zero,
that does not mean that the
potential is zero, of course not,
the potential is positive here.
If you come with a positive charge
from the Lobby seven
and you have to march up to that point,
you have to do positive work.
You have to overcome both the repelling force
from the plus four
and the repelling force from the plus one.
But finally when you reach that point
you can rest
because there is no force on you at that point.
That's what it means that the electric field
is zero.
It does not mean that you haven't done
any work.
So never confuse electric fields
with potentials.
I want to draw your attention to the fact
that the green lines, the field lines,
are everywhere perpendicular
to the equipotentials.
I will get back to that
during my next lecture.
That is not an accident.
That is always the case.
Now, Maxwell shows you something that is a
little bit more complicated.
Here, he calculated for us the equipotential
surfaces, the red ones are the surfaces,
again you have to rotate them about the vertical
to make it three-dimensional,
and now we have a minus one charge
and a plus four.
And so whenever it is red, the surface,
the potential is positive
and whenever I have drawn it blue
the potential is negative.
First, if we were very far away from both
the plus four and the minus one,
you expect to be looking at a charge
which is effectively plus three.
And so if you go very far away for sure the
potential is everywhere positive
and you expect them to be spherical again.
If you look here you're very far away from
the plus four and the minus one,
indeed this has already
the shape of a sphere.
So that's clear that the plus four and the
minus one far away behave like a plus three.
If you're very close to the plus four,
you get nice spheres around the plus four.
Positive potential.
If you're very close
to the minus one,
notice that the blue surfaces
are almost nice spheres
but now they're all negative
because you're very close to the minus one.
So a negative potential.
There is here one surface
which now has zero potential.
It has to be because if you have negative potential
close to the minus one
and you have positive potential
very far out,
you got to go through
a surface where it's zero.
And so there is here a surface,
I still have put it in blue,
which is actually everywhere
on this surface the potential is zero.
Is the electric field zero there?
Absolutely not.
Electric field should not be confused
with potential.
What it means is that if you take a test charge
in your pocket
and you come from infinity
and you walk to that surface
that by the time you have reached that surface,
you've done zero work.
That's what it means.
That the potential is zero.
There is here one point
which we discussed earlier in my lectures
where the electric field is zero.
The potential is not zero there.
The potential is definitely positive here.
Because here was the zero surface.
Here is already positive surface
and this is a positive surface.
So the potential is positive.
However, if you reach that point
there's no force on your charge.
So that means electric field is zero.
And it's not so easy of course to calculate
these surfaces.
Maxwell was capable of doing that
a hundred ten years ago.
And nowadays we can do that
very easily with computers.
Equipotential surfaces which have different
values can never intersect.
Plus five volt surface can never intersect
with a plus three or a minus one.
And you think about why that is.
Why that is, that would be a total violation
of the conservation of energy.
So equipotential surfaces, different values,
can never intersect.
All right.
So you've seen that for the various charge
configurations,
the equipotential surfaces
have very complicated shapes
and cannot always
be calculated in a very easy way.
Now comes the question:
Why do we introduce electric potentials?
who needs them?
And who needs equipotential surfaces?
Isn't it true that if we know
the electric field vectors everywhere in space
that that determines uniquely
how charges will move,
what acceleration they will obtain,
that means how their kinetic energy will change,
and the answer is yeah,
if you know the electric field
everywhere in space, sure.
Then you can predict everything that happens
with a charge in that field.
But there are examples where the electric
fields are so incredibly complicated
that it is easier to work with equipotentials
because the change in kinetic energy,
as I will discuss now, really depends only
on the change in the potential
when you go from one point to another.
So you will see very shortly
that sometimes
if you're only interested
in change of kinetic energy
and not necessarily interested
in the details of the trajectory,
then equipotentials come in very handy.
Never confuse U which is electrostatic potential
energy with V which is electric potential.
This has unit joules.
And this has unit joules per coulombs,
which we call volts.
If I have a collection of charges,
pluses and minuses, U has only one value.
It is the work that I have to do to put all
these crazy charges exactly where they are.
But the electric potential is different
here from there from there to there
to there to there.
If you're very close to a plus charge,
you can be sure that the potential is positive.
If you're very close to a negative charge,
you can be sure that the potential is negative.
But U has only one number.
It's only one value.
They're both scalars.
Don't confuse one with the other.
In a gravitational field, matter,
like a piece of chalk,
wants to go from high potential
to low potential.
If I just release it with zero speed,
there it goes, high potential to low potential.
In analogy, positive charges will also go
from a high electric potential
to a low electric potential
And of course,
this is unique for electricity,
negative charges will go from a low potential
to a high electric potential.
Suppose I had a position A in space
and I had another position B
and I specify the potentials.
So here we have A, potential is VA
and here we have point B
where the potential is VB.
By definition, the potential of VA,
as we discussed before,
is the integral -- by the way
if these are separated
by some random distance R,
whatever you want.
So the potential of A is defined as the integral
going from A to infinity of E dot dr.
That is the definition
of the potential of A.
There is an E here
which is force per unit charge.
So it is not work.
If there were force dr,
it would be work
but it is force per unit charge
that makes it E.
So the potential of B for definition is the
integral from B to infinity of E dot dr.
And so therefore the potential difference
between point A and B, VA minus VB,
equals the integral from A to B of E dot dr
and for reasons that I still don't understand
after having been in this business
for a long time,
books will always tell you
they reverse VA and B
so they give you VB,
VB minus VA.
And then they say well we have to put a minus
sign in front of the uh integral.
It's the same thing.
So books always give it to you in this form.
But it is exactly the same.
Hope you realize that.
This is the two equations that I have here
are the same.
VA minus VB is the integral from A to B of
E dot dr.
If I flip this over
then all I have to do
is put a minus sign here
and the two are identical.
Notice that if there is no electric field
between A and B
they have the same potential, of course.
Because when you march from A to B
with a charge in your pocket,
no work is done.
So the potential remains the same.
I will change this dr to a different symbol,
which I call dl,
dr would mean that we go from A to infinity
along this straight line
and then we go from B to infinity
along the straight line
but it makes no difference
how you go.
If you go from A to B this potential difference
and you go in this way--
then VA minus VB
is not going to change.
And so if now I introduce here a element dl,
which is a small vector
and if the local E vector here is like so,
at this point here,
then VA minus VB is then the integral of E dot dl.
In other words I can replace the r by an l
and you may choose any path that you prefer.
And that's the way that we will show you this
equation most of the time.
So it makes no difference
how you march
because we are dealing here
with conservative fields.
So let's now make the assumption
that VA is a hundred fifty volts.
And that VB for instance is fifty volts.
So it's a very specific example.
What does it mean now?
It means that if I put plus Q charge
in my pocket
and I come all the way from Lobby seven
and I walk up to point B.
So Walter Lewin plus Q charge in his pocket
goes from Lobby seven to point B,
I have to do work
and the work I have to do
is the product of my charge Q
with the potential.
So that is Q...
the work I have to do is Q times VB.
So in this case it's fifty times Q,
whatever that charge is
that I have in my pocket.
This is in joules.
Now, I go from Lobby seven to point A.
I have to do more work.
I have to do a hundred fifty q joules of work.
You can think of it I first come to B,
I'm already exhausted,
I have to put in another work
to get all the way to point A.
So you can imagine if I have this
plus q charge at point A,
where there it's a higher potential,
it wants to go back,
all by itself, to B.
It wants to go from a higher potential
to a lower potential.
Look, the E vector is in this direction.
Positive charge will go to a
lower potential.
And as it moves from A to B,
energy is released.
How much energy?
Well, this is the amount of work
I have done to get to A,
this is the amount of work
I did to get to B
and so if now the charge goes back
from A to B,
it's the difference that becomes available 
in terms of kinetic energy.
It's a change in potential energy.
And that change in potential energy,
so the change in potential energy,
when the plus q charge goes from A to B,
that change is q times VA minus VB.
qVB at point B and qVA at point A.
So this is the potential energy
that is in principle available
if the charge moves from A to B.
And you remember from 801
the work energy theorem.
If we deal with conservative forces,
then the sum of potential energy
and kinetic energy of an object is the same.
That's also true for gravitational forces.
In other words,
this difference in potential energy
that becomes available,
like potential energy
becomes available when I drop my chalk
from a high potential to a low potential,
that's converted to kinetic energy.
So this difference now is also converted into
kinetic energy of that moving charge.
And so that would be the kinetic energy at
point B minus the kinetic energy at point A.
Which is really the work energy theorem.
It's the conservation of energy.
Now any piece of metal, no matter how crumby
or dented it is, is an equipotential.
As long as there is no charge moving inside
the metal.
And that's obvious that it's an equipotential.
Because these charges inside the metal,
these electrons,
when they experience an electric field,
they begin to move immediately
in the electric field.
And they will move until
there is no force on them anymore,
and that means they have effectively
made the electric field zero.
So charges inside the conductor always move
automatically in such a way
that they kill the electric field inside.
If the electric field hadn't been zero yet,
they would still be moving.
And so each metal that you have,
no matter where you bring it,
as long as there are no
electric currents inside,
will always be an equipotential.
So I can take a trash can
and bring it into an external field
and then very shortly after I've brought it in
when things have calmed down,
the trash can will be an equipotential
and the electric field inside
the metal will everywhere...
will everywhere be zero.
So I could for instance attach point A
to a trash can, metal trash can,
so the whole trash can
would be at a hundred fifty volts,
and I could put point B,
make it part of my-- of my soda,
which is also made of metal.
And so the whole soda
would be at fifty volts
and the entire trash can would be
at a hundred fifty volts.
I place the whole thing in vacuum and now
I release an electron at point B.
An electron,
an electron wants to go to higher potential.
A proton would go from A to B,
electron wants to go from B to A.
And so now energy is available.
The electric potential energy is available
and the electron will start to pick up speed
and finally end up at A.
Now how it will travel I don't know.
The electric field configuration is enormously
complicated.
Between the can and this trash can.
Amazingly complicated.
If you were to see the field lines
it would be weird.
But if we all we want to know is what the
kinetic energy is, what the speed is,
with which this electron reaches the can,
so what?
Then we can use the work energy theorem
and find out immediately
what that kinetic energy is.
Because the available potential energy
is the charge of the electron
times the potential difference
between these two objects.
Well the charge of the electron is one point
six times ten to the minus nineteen coulombs.
The potential difference is a hundred volts.
And that is the difference in kinetic energy.
If I assume that I release the electron at
zero speed,
then I have immediately the kinetic energy 
that it has at point A
which is one-half m of the electron
times the speed at A squared.
So now you see that accepting the fact
that we know the equipotentials,
we can very quickly calculate the kinetic energy and therefore the speed of the electron,
as they arrive at A, without any knowledge of the complicated electric field.
If you put in the numbers for the mass of
the electron, then,
which is nine times ten to the minus thirty-one kilograms,
then you'll find that this speed is about
two percent of the speed of light.
A substantial speed.
All our potentials, electric potentials,
are defined relative to infinity.
That means at infinity
they are zero.
That is because of the
one over R relationship.
That's very nice and dandy
and it works.
However, there are situations whereby it really
doesn't matter where you think of your zero.
Remember with gravity
we had a similar situation.
With gravity we always worried about
difference in potential energy
but sometimes we call this zero
and this plus.
Sometimes you call this plus
and this minus.
It doesn't really matter
because the change in kinetic energy
is dictated only
by the difference in potentials.
So it is very nice and dandy
to call that a hundred fifty
and to call that fifty
but you wouldn't have found
any different answer
for the electron
if you called this potential one hundred volts
and you called this one zero
or you called this one zero
and this one minus one hundred
or you called this one fifty
and this one minus fifty.
So the behavior of the electrons of the charges
would of course not change.
And of course electrical engineers
would always per definition
call the potential of the earth zero,
when they built their circuits.
So now I would like to demonstrate to you,
with the Vandegraaff,
that if you get a strong electric field from the radially outwards from the Vandegraaff
that you get a huge potential difference
between this point here and this point there.
Uh if I have my numbers still there,
I hope I do, there they are.
At the surface of the Vandegraaff
which takes about ten microcoulombs,
it will be three hundred thousand volts,
right here,
here it would be
a hundred fifty thousand volts
and here, three meters from the center,
it's about thirty kilovolts.
So that means that if I place this fluorescent
tube into that electric field
that there would be a gigantic potential difference between here and there
provided that I hold it radially.
If I hold it like this then the potential
difference between here and there
would be zero of course,
if I hold it tangentially,
they would be both at the same
electric potential.
But when I hold them radially
you will see perhaps
that this fluorescent tube will show
a little bit of light.
Once you see light it means that electrons
are moving through that gas.
It means charge is moving.
We haven't discussed current yet,
but that's what it means.
A current is flowing.
And this current has to be delivered
by the Vandegraaff
and the Vandegraaff is only capable
of providing very modest currents.
So you're not going to see
a lot of light.
But I want to show you
that you will see some light.
No wires attached.
Just here.
And then I will rotate it tangentially
and you will see no light at all.
So if we can make it a little darker,
as a start and I'll start the Vandegraaff
and then if Marcos comes to make it
completely dark when necessary,
because the light is so little
that we really have to make it--
completely dark.
I will put on a glove
for safety reasons
although I don't think
it will do me much good.
Notice I have here a piece of glass to well,
to be well-insulated from the glass
so that I don't mess up
the demonstration by...
if I hold my fingers here
it will be very different
than holding my hands here.
So let's go first close without--
with the lights still on and then...
OK why don't you turn the lights off now
all the way off.
OK I -- I think you can see a glow.
It's radially outwards now.
And Marcos can you give
a little light?
OK I will now go tangential,
can you turn uh the lights off?
And now you see nothing,
very little.
And now I go radial again.
And there you go.
Now if I -- if I'm crazy, if I were crazy,
then I would touch the end of this tube
with my finger thereby allowing this current to
go straight through my body to the earth
which may increase the light.
[laughter]
Let me try that.
So-- so I'm going to touch the-- the-- the--
this-- this fluorescent tube
on your right side.
Ah!
[laughter]
Ah, ah!
Every time I -- I touch it... AH!
[laughter]
But that's not ah!
But you see every time I touch it
I make it easier for the current to flow
and you see very clearly
that it lights up.
Now I want to do the same demonstration
with a neon flash tube
and the neon flash tube,
I will place at the end of a fishing rod.
This neon flash tube we used
during the first lecture
when I was beating up students
[laughter]
but I've learned
not to do that anymore.
Um this takes um several kilovolts
to get a little bit of light out of it
from one side to the other,
oh, that's duck soup for the Vandegraaff,
and so here I will actually start spinning it
and then when it is radially inwards
maybe you will see light
and when it is tangential
you won't see much light.
And then, if I feel very good,
I will do that again.
[laughter]
OK uh so Marcos if you make it uh dark
I'll give it a twist.
OK, radial, radial, radial, radial, radial,
radial, radial, radial, radial, OK.
Now I...
Ah!
OK I touched it now
I touch it again.
And I touch it again.
And again.
And again.
Ah!
You see every time I touch it,
it lights me.
And it gives a nice flash of light.
So you see here in front of your eyes
without any wires attached
that the potential difference
created by the electric field
that those potential differences
make these lights work.
All right, see you Friday.
