CapitolTV's DISTRICT VOICES - District 5: Electric Sparks From Falling Water

[Music] This is Capital TV. Greetings, citizens!

Welcome to the Corilanus 99 Solar Thermal Power Plant in the heart of District 5. This facility generates over 7% of our proud capital's energy needs. But did you know that you can generate electricity from mere drops of water?

I'm going to show you an experiment that does just that. As we turn on the water, it falls through these rings and onto this mesh below. But look here! After a moment, there it is! It generates a spark of roughly 20,000 volts of electricity, and there is no power source here—no turbine, as in traditional hydro generation. In fact, there are no moving parts at all. We are creating electricity using only the intrinsic properties of falling water.

So how does it work? Well, water contains charged particles called ions. It has equal numbers of positive and negative ions, so overall, it's neutral. However, as the water falls, there will sometimes be a slight charge imbalance, with a little bit more negative charge over here and a bit more positive charge there. Under ordinary circumstances, these variations would even out over time, but not in this case.

Here's the ingenious part: the mesh on the left is connected to the ring on the right. So if this mesh becomes negatively charged, then so does this ring. And now that ring will attract the positively charged ions in the falling water. So the mesh on the right will now be more positively charged, meaning so is this ring.

So what we have is a clear separation of charge. There's a positively charged stream on the right and a negatively charged stream on the left. The more the charge builds up on the meshes, the faster that charge increases. Finally, when we have reached our designed operating voltage of 20,000 volts, electrons jump from the negative rings to the positive ones through this spark gap, ionizing the air as they do so.

We have created an electric generator with little more than a stream of water droplets. No field of mirrors or enormous coal burning plant is required. In fact, with access to the right materials, you could even build this apparatus at home.

Thank you for your attention! We citizens of District 5 expand our knowledge to better serve our great nation. Love your labor, take pride in your task. Our future is in your hands! And don't forget to register for updates from Capital TV—it's mandatory.