Rest

One day my supervisor discussed features of the trap with another person, who also helped me very much, Pavel Konecny. Afterwards he turned to me and said: “Jarda, you don’t have a chance to understand this entirerly at this level.” And he was right. Already in the previous section you might have noticed, that I didn’t explain few things and I just guessed … sometimes not even that. In this final section I will show you a couple of other interesting phenomena, some of them I will explain and some at least try to, and the rest … well … I’ll just mention them.

Whole time I used a glass aquarium, but I never really said why. See how it looks without it on the following video. Sometimes I slightly wave my hand above the trap. Similar effect has a close talking or breathing or any rapid movement in the area or rising air from the heating near the window or any other movement of air. So the aquarium is very important for experimenting.

Have you ever heard that opposites attracts? In electricity this is true! Opposite charges attract and the same repel each other. But when you look at the trap, individual grains remain in the group close to each other. And they have the same charge! This is strange, isn’t it?

Grains or whole groups are somehow reflected from the sides of the trap. Until I force them to move, they refuse to go through a hole in the support and fall down! Why? Well, I sincerely don’t know.

From your own experience you can know, that way down the hill is pretty easy to go. In the following video grains refuse to go down of the inclined plane! What does make them hold still? This also I don’t know.

I found several close friends! They hold together no matter what!

The last video shows my finger! And a few grains, which goes after it. Help me!

Grab some piece of plastic and try to rub someone’s hair for long enough time. This will charge it by the electric charge, just like I charged the grains of the flour. Then try to bring your neutral hand to the charged hair. Are they attracting? They should be. Similarly, it works with grains and my hand. Electrically charged object and neutral ones attract each other.

This is the end.

You got to the end of this ride. Thank you for your attention and I hope you enjoyed this journey with Paul trap and charged grains of the flour!