Ion Thruster

One of the cool projects I've worked on this summer was this Ionic Thruster. After seeing the original idea on Make Magazine by Alexander Reifsnyder, I was amazed to see it work so I decided to build my own version!

To make use of the tools I had available I decided to build the entire structure using 3D printing. This way not only would be a more simple build but it would also be easily replicable. I already did a full article about this project on eLab Hackerspace's blog, but I'm going to summarize it here anyway.

NST Spark Gap Tesla Coil

I remember being attracted by lightning ever since I was a little kid. It always fascinated me staring through a dark and rainy window, during a thunderstorm, watching lightning strike down, lighting up the entire sky while listening to the deafening and imposing sound of thunder. It was quite a show directly from nature, but for me it was more than entertainment, it brought along questions with it, waking up that curious side of me, leading me through my first steps into science: What exactly is it? How does it work? Why does it happen?

How great would it be if you could control that and make it happen anytime you want? So, a few years ago, I learned about Tesla Coils, an air core electrical resonant transformer, invented by Nikola Tesla at the end of the XIX century, able to generate high voltages at high frequencies, resulting in electrical discharges just like small lightning. From that moment I knew I had to build my own Tesla Coil.

Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) in High Voltage Power Lines

Have you ever wondered about the electromagnetic field around a high voltage power line? Well I have, quite often actually, but I never really found much information about it, at least online. Fortunately, I had to do a work about it, during my academic studies in 2012, it just asked for the EMF values for a constant height but I thought I should make it more interesting by varying the height and making the results a bit more dimensional.

The problem basically gave me the parameters of a specific transmission line and asked for the electromagnetic values at a constant height of 1.8 meters from ground (approximately the height of a person's head), considering that the person could move on the X axis of a transverse section of the power line.