Fluorscent lights glowing under power lines?!

While going through some old articles I have saved from the web, I found one about fluorscent tubes lighting up under power lines. I've been wanting to try this for a while. There are a lot of High Voltage wires about a mile from my school.

Has anyone here tried this yet?

iput a incadecent bulb in microwave asnd it ligyted up. but i dont recomend it .

I have done it with 8 foot and 4 foot tubes, as well as 12 inch ultra violet tubes. Not as bright as in usual use, but a good trick.
Be safe, please?

Just do not touch the ends of the tubes where it plugs in, even though they should not be livened up with electricity!!

The gas inside is energised by the high power of the line, but it is not worth the experience, to touch the ends and
"see what happens?"

Like I said, be safe!!

RF energy from a Ham transmitter works too.

A fellow ham changed the lamps in his garage and put the old ones in the trash. His slope wire antenna terminated at the garage near the trash. When he keyed his transmitter the lamps flickered. Neighbor noticed the flickering, thought aliens had landed and called the police..

Officer gingerly approached blinking trash can and heroicly smashed the offending tubes with his Mag 3D...

I used my cb radio to light up a 6 watt tube with a little 75 watt *booster* on it a long time ago, I think some radio or tv stations stick tubes on their towers without hooking up any power to them and light them up by the leakage from the line going up to the antennas on the high power transmitting towers.

violet ray generators (small tesla coils)
work great for lighting up lots of things

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raggie33 said:
iput a incadecent bulb in microwave asnd it ligyted up. but i dont recomend it .

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Hey, I did that with an old Circle-Lite by Lights of America CFL (Removed the lamp from the ballast) It lit up so bright that it almost blinded my camcorder.

I wonder how I can digitalize that video though.

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whiskypapa3 said:
Officer gingerly approached blinking trash can and heroicly smashed the offending tubes with his Mag 3D...

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Figgers, another superior lighting source brutishly destroyed by M@G

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Theres a load of them in a field...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/3509651.stm

I just bought one of those Lava Lamps that has lightning flashes in it. It's like one of those plasma balls where you touch the glass and the lightning inside is drawn to that spot, only shaped exactly like a Lava Lamp. Anyway, I thought of this thread, so I took out an old Energizer flashlight that has a small fluorescent bulb in it, removed the bulb, and placed it near the glass, and what do you know, it lit up! That was kind of cool.

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glenthemole said:
Theres a load of them in a field...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/3509651.stm

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I'd love to see that in person, however....

The thing that worries me about this display is all that mercury encased in those bulbs. If they wind up being damaged by severe weather or other factors, that mercury leeches right into the ground...
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BTW, I usually use a bare neon bulb to detect the presence of high voltage whenever I'm working near a CRT that might be energized. All I have to do is get close to the anode lead with the bulb to get it to light up. Same principle.

From an Interesting Article

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Based on a 1999 NEMA survey, the average four-foot fluorescent lamp contains about 11.6 milligrams (mg) of mercury. This number has been steadily declining as lamp manufacturers work to reduce mercury content to the minimum amount technically feasible without reducing lamp life. The average four-foot lamp today contains over 75% less mercury than the same lamp would have contained in 1985. According to the U.S. EPA, total global natural and manmade emissions to the environment are 5,500 tons... For comparison, all of the lamps sold in the United States in 1999 contain only an estimated 13 tons of mercury, of which only a fraction will be released as an air emission.

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does this need to be one of those high tension lines that sing and hum at you or will the milder lines on a wooden pole be sufficient.

A high-voltage line from the power plant is likely a requisite - those are often >=38KV while residential feeders are usually <16KV.

I knew of a guy that was a radar operator at an airbase. When he was bored at night, he'd point one of the AAA dishes at a hangar while the night guard was passing by and send a few minimum-power pulses out that would make the florescent lights in the hangar flicker, often startling the guard. After a guard got wise to that trick, he'd make the dish follow the guard - also creeping them out because they thought it would start cooking them...

If I was that guard I would not have put up with the dish
following me. I would have gotten even or complained to some one.

Tesla in his prime had a way to light neon bulbs 20-30 miles away from the source.

Sounds like something I need to try....