Speaker
Mr
Carlo Tognoni
Description
The Volta's Electrophorus is the simplest and most ancient electrostatic machine. It works from very simple materials: a non-conductive base, a conductive disk and some wool tissue. Using this very simple equipment however you can generate static electricity seemingly without limits: it looks like a perpetuum engine. Here I will present a multimedia, available on the Web, that explains in details how to build the Electrophorus: this is aimed to teachers that can reproduce using scrap materials the device. The multimedia is also a communication tool that arises some physical questions: is the electrostatic energy generated from nothing ? why it works if you do the right sequence of apparently useless actions but it doesn't work if you omit some of them ? why it works better if the metallic disc surface is bad shaped ?
The aim of this speech is propose a communication tool that complements the experiment: empowers the teacher to duplicate the experiment, explains the principles and offers some food for thought that is rooted in the complexity of even seemingly simple phenomena.
