Thanks to Bill Beaty pointing out I should pull the plates apart
sideways rather than perpendicularly, his corona discharge mechanism
is starting to sound more plausible. It leaves me with two more
questions:
(1) Since we are sliding surfaces across each other, is there a
triboelectric effect as well?
(2) Supposing we do spray the charges off the plates onto the glass
(entirely?), what happens when we reassemble the capacitor? How does
the charge move back onto the plates? (Since V=Q/C, nonzero V
requires net Q on each plate, right?)
I look forward to further reports from Leigh's experiments. Carl
--
Dr. Carl E. Mungan, Assistant Prof. of Physics http://uwf.edu/cmungan/
Univ. of West Florida, Pensacola, FL 32514 850-474-2645 cmungan@uwf.edu
moving this fall to: US Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD 21402 410-293-6650