Cut the rod so it's about 1 in. longer than the middle
bottle. Sharpen the rod using a file. Drill a hole in the center of the
plank using a drill bit slightly smaller than the sharpened rod.
Carefully force the rod into the plank, unsharpened end first. (Note:
coathanger wire will work as the center rod, sort of. But it's very
wobbly. 1/8" welding rod works much better.)(Note: instead of filing a
sharp point, try attaching a piece of a sharpened pencil to the top of the
rod. The sharp graphite point makes a good bearing.)
"Rotor" Bottle
Find the exact center of the bottom of the middle bottle, and drill a
hole there that's slightly larger than the rod diameter.
When slid onto the
sharpened rod, the bottle should spin very freely. If the hole is too
big, the bottle will rattle around and make the brushes drag on its
surface
If you can find a bottle with a metal cap, make a dimple in the center of
the cap. The dimple is there so the point on the rod will have something
to ride in to stay centered. Take care not
to poke through the metal bottlecap with the sharp rod! If you can't
find a metal cap, glue a hard
object such as a small glass test tube into the bottle cap.
If you use the pencil point mentioned above, a plastic bottle cap might
work (I haven't tried this.) You'll still have to make a dimple in the
plastic somehow.
Precisely cut three broad strips of aluminum foil so they are just
wide enough to give a 1/2" spaces when attached to the
center bottle. You want the middle bottle to have three regions of foil,
with half-inch gaps between the regions. Trim the corners of the foil so
they are round, and test-fit them on the bottle
and trim as needed.
Glue the foil to the center bottle as shown in the drawing. (It doesn't
matter
if the shiney side of the foil faces out or in.) I used rubber cement to
glue the foil strips. I coated the whole bottle with cement, coated one
side of each pre-cut foil strip, allowed the glue to dry a couple of
minutes, then CAREFULLY layed on the strips and burnished them down with a
spoon as I went. The end result should look like an aluminum coating on
the bottle, with three broad foil sections separated by 1/2in gaps running
vertically. No part of each foil section should touch any other foil
section. Bubbles in the foil don't hurt anything, and can be punctured
with a pin and flattened with a spoon. Instead of glue and foil, you might
instead try using a roll of adhesive aluminum foil tape available at some
hardware stores.
Two "Stator" Bottles
Glue large sheets of foil around the entire center areas of both of
the two 'stator' bottles, leaving a 2 in. foil-free space at the bottoms.
The bottom must remain clear of foil, and no foil on these bottles should
come close to touching the wooden base or close to any duct tape you might
use to connect the stator bottles to the base.
Commutator "brush" wires
The commutators (or "brushes") are pieces of heavy wire or coathanger
8in long, each attached to a stator bottle, and each extending sideways so
their ends are very near (but not touching) the rotor bottle surface.
After attaching them to the bottles, bend the tips so they point towards
the surface of the rotor bottle. See the diagram and photos.
I attached them to the stator bottles by bending the wire ends into an
S-shape and embedding the S-shaped part in silicone caulk on the foil
bottles. After the glue sets, the remaining short ends of each S-shape
should be bent so they make solid contact with the bottle's foil. Don't
let the silicone insulate the wire from the foil, because the stator foil
and the commutator wire must both be electrically connected to one of the
power supply terminals.
Attaching the Stator Bottles
Attach the two stator bottles to the plank so they are spaced about
1/2" from the rotor bottle. I used nuts and bolts through the bottoms,
which allowed me to rotate the bottles a bit for easy adjustment of the
spacing between the commutator wire tips and the center bottle. (Yes, it
was really hard to position the bolts inside the bottles!)
If you use tape to attach the stator bottles, make sure it DOES NOT reach
up to contact the foil. Duct tape, masking tape and wood are slightly
conductive, and when the humidity is high, they can provide an unwanted
leakage path to ground, preventing motor operation.
The Bearing
The metal-cap-with-dimple bearing is pretty crude. I improved it
by obtaining a 1/4" diameter test tube, cutting the bottom 1/2" off it
(by nicking with a file and snapping by hand with gloves.) This I glued
into the exact center of the bottlecap. The sharpened rod spun nicely
against the glass. Avoid dropping the center bottle suddenly down onto
the metal rod, or the sharp point will shatter the glass bearing.
Mark Kinsler has a better
suggestion: use a bottle with a plastic cap, and screw a short sheet-rock
screw through it so the point of the screw extends downwards into the
bottle. Now use a wooden rod instead of a metal one, and screw a small
phillips-head screw into the end of the rod. Place the bottle on the
wooden rod so that the point of the sheet-rock screw rides in the head of
the screw at the top of the wooden rod. He mentions that the slightest
air current will make this bottle turn.
RUNNING IT:
If it doesn't work:
BOTTLE MOTOR DEBUGGING
It takes more than 5,000 volts to operate this motor. This source of
voltage is available from "static electric" sources. Try the
generators linked at the top of this webpage, especially the Van de Graaff
generator. If you don't have access to a Van de Graaff, try the "TV
SCREEN" electrostatic generator.
![[Animation: pos and neg blocks on the sides, spinning 3-lobed rotor turns red or blue as it touches communators]](/graphics/emotanim.gif)
Animation made by Don Bangert
Any power supply will have two output terminals (although one terminal
might be invisibly connected to ground.) The positive lead must connect
to one stator-bottle's foil and commutator wire, while the negative lead
goes to the other. If you use a Van de Graaff machine, use tape and bare
wire to connect the foil on one stator bottle to the upper sphere, and
connect the foil on the other bottle to the generator's metal base.
If your source of high voltage has just one output wire, then its
missing wire is actually connected to ground internally. In this case
connect the output wire to the foil on one bottle, and connect the foil on
other bottle to electrical ground. Electrical ground can be found in many
places, for example, use a metal faucet, metal sink, or the metal screw on
the cover plate of a light switch or electric outlet. In a pinch you can
use a metal tabletop for "ground", or use a few feet of aluminum foil
layed on the floor, or even touch the other bottle with your finger to
provide a crude ground-path out through your feet.
If it doesn't work:
BOTTLE MOTOR DEBUGGING
HOW IT WORKS:
When a high voltage is applied between the two stator bottle foils, one
stator bottle aquires a negative charge imbalance, while the other one
becomes positive. Also, a tiny spark jumps from the tip of each
commutator brush to
one of the foil sectors on the rotor bottle. The sector under the
positive brush becomes positive, the one under the negative brush becomes
negative. The rotor's foil sectors are then repelled from the
alike-charged stator bottle and attracted to the unlike charged stator
bottle. This sideway electrostatic force causes the center bottle to
rotate, which brings new foil sectors under the brushes. Tiny sparks then
jump to the new sectors and charge them, which makes them attract/repel
from the stator bottles, etc. The foil on the rotor bottle that's under
the commutator is always charged the same as the commutator, so it's
always being repelled/attracted sideways.
The force is continuous, therefor the speed of the rotor bottle will
keep rising higher and higher. In practice the rotor speed will not
increase forever, but will stabilize because of air turbulence, bearing
resistance and bearing chatter, etc. If the entire motor could be put
inside a vacuum chamber, it would REALLY run fast. But then the sparks
couldn't jump from the commutator wires, and you'd have to arrange some
kind of sliding contact brushes instead. (Sparks cannot exist in vacuum,
since a spark is made of air which has turned into plasma.)
Here's another way to visualize the motor: if you turn it sideways,
you'll see that the motor is sort of like a waterwheel. On one side the
excess negative charge is pouring into the side of the rotor bottle and
"falling" towards the positive bottle. On the other side the positive
excess is "falling" upwards and dragging the rotor bottle surface up. The
moving charge gets temporarily stuck in the foil surfaces of the rotor,
and it drags the rotor along with it as it moves from one stator bottle to
the other. The motor rotates because it blocks the flow of moving
electric charge, just as a waterwheel rotates because it blocks the flow
of moving water.
Yet another way to imagine it: Normal coil-and-magnet motors often are
built like this: three electromagnet coils in the rotor, two permanent
magnets as the stator, a commutator, and they operate by magnetic
attraction/repulsion. In the pop-bottle motor all the coils are replaced
with capacitor plates. The rotor has three capacitor plates instead of
three electromagnetic coils. The stator permanent magnets are replaced by
(+) and (-) charged stator plates. All the electric currents have become
voltages, and all the magnetic fields are replaced by electric fields. In
electronics, the swapping of coils with capacitors and
voltage with
current is called the "electromagnetic dual." Capacitors are the "dual"
of inductors. The popbottle motor is the "electromagnetic dual" of the
common coil/magnet motor. Small slot-car PM (permanent magnet) motors
represent one side of the electric/magnetic duality found in light, radio,
electric energy, and all EM phenomena. The popbottle electrostatic motor
is the other half of the duality. Light waves, radio waves, and
electrical energy are where the voltage/current and electric/magnetic
duality blends into a single thing called... Electromagnetism.
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![[Drawing of motor]](/emotor/emotr2.gif)
