Yeah, well, besides the videos I also have some
text descriptions that came from John himself,
and in those he is very clear about the ingredients
as well as the method.
He said: - melt Rochelle Salt. (Rochelle Salt as dry
crystals will melt at approx 75 degrees C.)
- add crushed ingredients (= Iron Pyrite and Galena
crystals crushed, both are natural semiconductor
compounds used in very early crystal radio detectors
and were the inspiration for the later crystal diodes
that are made of specifically tailored materials, nowadays
mostly silicon and germanium based intrinsic semicon-
ductor crystals with p and n doped zones)
- stirr and mix well
- pour into conductive container (in the texts JH said silver
or silver coated but in the videos he does not use silver)
- apply high voltage DC (JH said "steady, clear" which
implies no pulsed input but real direct current through the cell)
- allow to cool & solidify while DC is applied
- after cooling, remove DC feed
- done
John has never clearly indicated that he used water,
and he has indicated a number of times that he just melts
the salt. Which makes sense. After all, RS is particularly
easy in that respect: it melts easily, it does have solid structure
at normal room temperatures, it is dielectric, it can be polarised
to form an electret-like structure, it is light weight and cheap.
It does however have one characteristic that may cause some
difficulties: it is very absorbant of moisture, including air humidity.
And we all know that water in combination with different metals
will generate galvanic reactions and potentials, even if this is not
abundantly present liquid but rather internal 'crystal water'.
But then again, if produced in a dry environment and sealed from the
air right after production, this potential problem can be minimised.
Those who have mixed metal powders will have noticed that
the liquid Rochelle Salt mixed with even relatively small amounts
of metal powder in it gains a metallic luster, sometimes also
a metallic glitter-like look. This may look somewhat like liquid metal,
especially on low quality video.
I have made a few with Germanium powder, with Gallium, with
Aluminium powder, with Iron powder, with crushed Pyrites, crushed
Galena, all kinds of stuff. And most of them change their appearance
from the white-ish RS colour to metallic almost immediately after
mixing the powders into the RS.
So that probably explains the liquid metal look in the vids.
As for the Moray tube ("valve"), yes, there are elaborate descriptions
of the thing, detailed pictures, quite a bit of info.
But it is a difficult task to attempt replication.
The tube was very complex. It started out as a fairly simple tube
based on the "glowing rock" he found on his trip to Sweden (a.k.a.
his "Swedish Stone"), and which was apparently able to produce
low output. There is some evidence of Moray using the stone
in fairly simple "crystal radio" setups and using it to amplify
energy. Later he studied the stone in detail and after that he came up
with intricate and complicated "valves" with a large number of
different anodes and cathodes, coils, and other parts, all built
into a complex interactive circuit inside his tube. He spent many years
finetuning this setup, adding and altering components, to ensure
ideal interaction and maximum amplification.
The main problem is that we simply don't know exactly what type
of rock his "Swedish Stone" was. We do know that he apparently
used certain radioactive compounds in a few of the tubes components.
This seems to suggest that he was in fact using RF stimulated
radioactive decay in combination with vacuum tube amplification
techniques and possibly also combined with early radio detector
(read: diode) components.
It has for example been suggested that Moray used radioactive
Iron Pyrite, and that his "stone" was of such composition. This is
possible, as pyrites were used as crystal radio detectors, and
it was also not uncommon to use radioactive materials in electronics
to stimulate electron emission.
Another suggested possibility is the presence of tritium in the rock,
which may be plausible since certain Scandinavian mountain ranges
are known to produce relatively high amounts of heavy water. The
reasoning here is that if there's water with deuterium, there may also
be tritium, and such isotopes may form chemical bonds with other
elements, and in this way tritium-compounds may occur in certain rocks.
And we know that tritium produces beta radiation, a.k.a. flying electrons.
We also know that we can cause emissions to increase and decrease
by exposing the material to specific types of EM fields.
It seems a small step to reason that Moray was in fact pulsing some
radioactive compound with the appropriate fields, thus causing
more and less beta radiation effects, and synchronising these output
bursts with oscillations in the electrical system connected to the valve,
to get out significantly amplified oscillations.
Wish I could get some Tritium.
If anyone in Britain is willing to play middle man, I could order some
Tritium glow stick keychains and have them sent to this person,
who could then send them through to me, as the companies that sell
them do not export it to mainland Europe, and it seems there are no
companies on the continent that sell the things.
And if there's anu americans who'd like to play middle man, I have the
same plan for Litroenergy Glowing paint. They also do not ship abroad,
although I am not sure if they actually have the paint for sale yet as they
never reply to my emails. But perhaps they are just assholes and only
reply to Americans? In any case, that paint contains silica microspheres
with phosphorus in the silica and tritium inside the spheres, and each
microsphere glows with the typical tritium half-life of 12 years. Paint
your cellar in that stuff and you'll never need light bulbs for at least 10 years.
Or paint it onto a solar cell and get output, without the cell ever seeing sunlight.
Anyone for the middle man job?
