Shocking Class!

Dear Ladies & Gentlemen,

Walking into class on Tuesday I spotted a man with a large beard and a plaid shirt. Now, I knew we were supposed to have a guess speaker, but I was surprised. This was the man who was supposed to be speaking to us about electricity?

Boy was that a dumb thought.

I seriously should have known much better. I blame the plaid shirt. I find plaid very soothing. It is a pattern typically worn by my grandfather, my father and almost every. Single. One. Of my hometown dude friends. Don’t judge, I’m from a small town.

There, isn’t that nice? Soothing?

It’s okay if you say no, because I don’t care. But I do promise no more plaid swatches. For the rest of this post. Maybe. IF you’re good.

Here’s the reason I should not have been lulled by the Plaid:

In case you can’t read that sign, it says “Watrous Machine Shop.” The owner is a brilliant machinist named Brian. He wears a lot of plaid and is one of the smartest men I have ever met. He even built this thing:

|||==|||==||| Don’t forget to check out the Ice Rescue Machine Video Clip —–.

Seriously, dude can fix anything. Hence all the dinosaur-like machinery lying around outside the shop.

SO, you can see my mistake in feeling lulled by the plaid shirt. This gentleman was about to shock our socks off.

He introduced himself as Tom Vales. He cites a life-long fascination with electricity, and brought with him a self-made Tesla coil. It looked rather like this:

Only appeared to be made with a white plastic bucket. The basic premise of the Tesla Coil (invented by Nikola Tesla around 1891) is a wireless source of electric energy that could be used without having to plug in electronic devices (such as lamps).

I know, right?

Read the Wikipedia article here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_coil

Tom also builds something called a Mendocino Motor and sells both the kits and the finished products online here:

http://stelmos-fire.com/mendocinomotor.html

Weird birthday gift for the person that has everything?

Perhaps not.

In any case, the Mendocino Motor is a little solar motor, suspended by magnets. It runs as long as there is solar energy to power it. To quote Mr. Vales’s website:

“The Mendocino motor is a solar powered magnetically levitated motor.”

Quite an odd little thing, but a great example of solar power effectiveness.

The next motor Tom presented to us was a Stirling Engine:

Basically this engine runs off of a difference in temperature, which causes the pistons to work and thereby runs the motor. It can work with either hot or cold temperatures, but whenever the temperature source reaches room temperature the motor no longer runs.

You can read more here:

http://www.icefoundry.org/how-stirling-engine-works.php

Finally, he presented us with the Peltier generator. Here’s an excellent picture explaining how it works off of temperature difference, similar to the Stirling Engine:

Basically, Tom Vales likes electricity.

The amazing part about all these motors is that they are not recent inventions by any means. This implies that the technology to create sustainable energy has been around far longer than many scientists would like to admit.

Moral of the story: Be curious!

And wear plaid!

http://toolmonger.com/tag/new-yankee-workshop/