The Evolutionary and the Revolutionary: Are All the Good Ideas Taken?
When meeting a new acquaintance for the first time, the question invariably arises, “So, what do you do?” My reply that I work with “static electricity” (for the science challenged) or in “applied electrostatics” (for professional colleagues) usually brings a quizzical look. “You mean there’s a whole field about that?” My standard sequel is to explain that electrostatics affects each of us every day, whether we know it or not. I cite the electrostatic machines that apply finish to our cars, the electrophotographic processes that allow us to read documents such as the one you now have in your hands, the electrostatic precipitators that help keep our air clean, the electrostatic sensors that trigger safety airbags, or the problem of electrostatic hazards. The typical layperson will reply, “Oh, I never thought about that. ” The technically savvy colleague will ask what the hot new areas are in electrostatics. In answering this latter question, I cite, among others, numerous up-and-coming technologies, including flexible electrostatic display devices (e.g., “electric paper”), nanofield-emission plasma displays, micro-mechanical systems, electrostatic drug delivery, and electrostatic textiles. The response is usually the same: “Oh, I never thought about that.”
Admittedly the question, “Where are the hot new areas?” sometimes leaves me wondering myself. This reflex was piqued recently while reading an online article which asked, “Are all the good ideas taken? Is innovation…running out?” [J. Campbell, “Profit By Association”, www.internetday.com]. Although the article was speaking about the Internet, one could easily ask the same question about electrostatics: Are there any good ideas left? One need only open a weekly news magazine to learn about major breakthroughs in other fields such as the human genome project, the total artificial heart, or the Segway transport device.
In an effort to find out which electrostatic-related developments over the past year might be deemed newsworthy, I typed several keywords into the article database of The New York Times for the most recent one-year period. Here are the number of hits for each keyword:
Genome (160)
Artificial Heart (67)
Solar Power (49)
Wind Power (29)
Nanotechnology/MEMS (31)
Electrostatic/s (11)
Cold Fusion (4)
Napster (167)
It might seem that electrostatics is deemed at least more newsworthy than cold fusion by the Times, but if one examines the topics covered by the eleven articles related to electrostatics, one finds the following:
Antrax (6)
Electrostatic Hazards (1)
Electrostatics in Space (1)
Laser Printers (1)
Business in the Far East (1)
Does this low yield suggest that electrostatics is an uninteresting field? Like the flurry of articles following TWA 800, are people only interested in electrostatics when it relates to disasters? Read on.
The first IBM PC, a distant cousin of today’s machines, appeared around 1984. With its 8 MHz processor, two 5-inch floppy drives, black-and-white screen, 16k of RAM (what would you do with more, anyway), and MS-DOS, this machine would be unrecognizable to the average computer user today. The first machines to have hard disks, with their whopping 10 Megs of storage space, came on the market in 1986 at a price of about $3000 (in 1986 dollars). The first “portable” computers made by Compaq, clunky 15-pound devices about the size of a sewing machine, became available around the same time.
Today the typical new laptop PC weighs 4 pound, operates at 1 GHz, has 16 gigabytes of hard disk storage, 256k of RAM (20 times the hard disk space of the 1986 machine) , a DVD drive (inconceivable in 1986), a self-configuring operating system, and the ability to support a plethora of peripheral devices. This machine might have no floppy disks at all. Similarly, the Internet has become as acceptable as the telephone was 40 years ago. Today’s user can find information on scores of topics (try entering “jello fly tying” into your favorite search engine; I got 440 hits on this one), purchase just about anything (try looking for Web sites that sell “doggie doors” – there are many), and communicate via e-mail or instant messenger around the world. All these capabilities are made possible by the Internet, an organic entity that has slowly evolved for the past 30 years.
No one can argue that the computer and Internet have changed society as we know it. But what great breakthroughs highlight the continued advance of these technologies? The initial breakthroughs are well known: The integrated circuit, invented in 1958 by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments, paved the way for microprocessors and their PC ancestors. The ARPAnet, first funded by the US Defense Advanced Projects Agency in 1969, led the way to the Internet. The transition from these primitive beginnings to today’s ubiquitous systems, however, has been evolutionary, not revolutionary. Each year, small advances in technology allow PCs to become faster and more powerful, yet no one incremental innovation has claimed newspaper headlines over the past 30 years.
One can argue that electrostatics has also changed the world as we know it. The blue “sprit masters” used in my elementary school (and even at my university as late as 1982) are impossible to find today. Photocopying is so cheap that it has replaced traditional offset printing in many applications. For the price of that 1986 IBM PC, one can buy an electrostatic laser color printer that produce large, photographic-quality posters at high speed (tens of seconds.) Preparing the same used to require trips to a specialized, expensive printing center. Electrostatic filters have become commodity items available at the hardware store. Electrostatic coating is the universally accepted process of choice in manufacturing. It can be said that an understanding of ESD has enabled the latest advances in integrated circuits. Each of these electrostatic-based technologies began with a significant breakthrough (e.g., Carlson 1938, Ransburg 1940’s, Cottrell 1930’s etc.). But since that time, the incremental advances that have driven a large sector of the economy have failed to make the history books. Like the well known Moore’s Law of electronics which has silently supported the development of ever-more-powerful computers, progress in electrostatics has been evolutionary. Small, almost unnoticed accomplishments build upon one another until, voila!, we have technology that seemed like science fiction a generation ago. Yet these small advances occur because a large body of highly-qualified professionals in academia and industry make them happen. Effecting technological change requires creative people with sound backgrounds in the fundamentals. Understanding the subtleties that lie behind the layperson’s comprehension of electrostatics (“unlike charges attract, like charged repel”) requires a lifetime of dedicated study and exploration. While electrostatics may bring fewer search engine hits than Napster, I never cease to be intrigued by what has been, and will be, made possible by electrostatics.
For the Friendly Society,
Mark N. Horenstein
ESA President
Derbyshire is a county more or less in the centre of England and Wirksworth town is near the centre of Derbyshire. In the 18th century it was the lead mining capital and Barmote Court met, and still meets, to administer the Saxon laws of The King's Field. Here fortunes were made or lost and the population was a mix of labourers, landed gentry and a few clerical gentlemen. One of whom, the curate of the local church, by name Abraham Bennet, would, on occasions, be seen to emerge from his house carrying a glass jar of some kind. Attached to a brass lid on the jar was a wire from a metal cone with a candle underneath. He would hold the candle aloft on a stick and peer into the jar at two gold leaves hanging inside. When these slowly opened like the pages of a book he set the whole apparatus down and jotted notes into a book.
Someone had glimpsed in at his window and seen the man, who was to be Curate for 23 years, blowing a heap of dust, or flour, off the brass top of the jar, with a pair of bellows normally used to encourage the fire. Later in great agitation and excitement he placed brass discs with handles on top of the mysterious jar and went through a ritual of touching one, picking it up, placing another on top and touching that before lowering it to touch the jar before going through the whole business over and over again - all the time the two gold leaves opened further and further, indeed they sometimes spun aside and touched the glass sides of the jar. Into this ritual he introduced touching the brass lid of the jar with an assortment of metals which also moved the gold leaves apart.
Those who read the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London learned of Bennet's invention of the Gold Leaf Electrometer, of his Doubler and the experiments with atmospheric electricity and electrification of dusts. Later they read of his Magnetometers using spider web to suspend tiny pointers, in one case the single down seed from the head of a dandelion, which indicated on tiny ivory scales. In 1789 he published his book, New Experiments in Electricity, wherein the causes of thunder and lightning as well as the constant state of positive or negative electricity in the air or clouds, are explained; with experiments on clouds of powders and vapours artificially diffused in the air. Also a description of a doubler of electricity, and of the most sensible electrometer yet constructed. With other new experiments and discoveries in the science, illustrated by explanatory notes, by A. Bennet, 1789. The illustrations include Lichtenberg figures. The contact electrification precedes that of Volta.
Abraham Bennet (1749-1799) a schoolmaster's son, did not work in isolation. His friends include members of the Derby Philosophical Society and The Lunar Society, whose 'giants' launched the Industrial Revolution; such men as Watt and Boulton, Wedgewood and Erasmus Darwin. John Michell the first to suggest, 'Black Holes' and divisor of an apparatus to determine the density of the Earth, later used by his friend Henry Cavendish, and Joseph Priestly were all in communication with each other.
The name Priestly should give a hint as to the thoughts other than scientific which moved through the group. Republican, Unitarian and scientist he was viewed with great suspicion as the end of the century stirred into revolution other than industrial. In due course his house and laboratory were burned to the ground and he escaped to America. Erasmus Darwin a scientific genius published evolution and was condemned for attacking God. Add to that his ideas of abolition of slavery and that America should be independent and condemnation, born of fear, ranged far and wide. I have reserved until last, but by no means least, the most feared of all the friends of Bennet, Darwin, Priestly et al: Benjamin Franklin.
To the memory of The Rev. ABRAHAM BENNET F. R. S. who was XXIII years Curate of Wirksworth Rector of Fenny Bentley Domestic Chaplain to His Grace the Duke of Devonshire Perpetual Curate of Woburn and librarian to His Grace the Duke of Bedford. He was the author of a work entitled 'New Experiments on Electricity' which established his reputation for science amongst the Philosophers of all countries - he died at Wirksworth on the VI day of May MDCCXCIX aged XLIX years.
To understand the paradox of charged insulators, one needs to study the molecular matrix at the surface, in comparison to material inside that is surrounded. Insulators have a stable outer electron ring that prevents electrons from traveling, but the material at the surface have electron orbits that are exposed to the outer world, in a sense unbalancing the matrix and permitting free electrons to be attracted to the surface area. So, charge is built up and can travel over the surface, but not through the insulating material, so the situation is not really paradoxical at all. With other non-insulating materials, electrons have more mobility within the structure, so any surface charge is bled off rapidly and equalized throughout the material. The charges on an insulator aren't bonded tightly to the surface, and so are easily dislodged and moved across the surface area, which would not be current flow in the conventional sense. Everything has some capacitance associated with it, but in the case of charged insulators, you would need to form two areas of charge separated by an insulator so thin that the electrostatic field can be expressed across it. It’s tempting to think of anything that charges up as having significant capacitance, but that's not always the case.
Hopefully, this diatribe won't be too......shocking.
Jim Adams 541-766-0358
Engineering Technician Jim.Adams@rfsworld.com
Radio Frequency Systems jimcm0s@earthlink.net
Corvallis, OR
Gerard A. Mourou, the A.D. Moore Distinguished University Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan, has been chosen as the U-M's 2002 Henry Russel Lecturer. The annual lectureship is the highest honor the University gives to a senior faculty member. Mourou's selection was announced by the U-M Regents at their Jan. 17 meeting. He will deliver the Russel Lecture at 4 p.m, March 12 at the Michigan League. The title of his lecture: "Ultra-High Intensity Lasers: A Revolutionary Tool in Engineering, Physics and Medicine."
Professor Mourou created and has directed the U of M's Center for Ultrafast Optical Science since it was established in 1991. Scientists at the center produce and apply extremely short optical impulses, some lasting for only a few quadrillionths of a second. He invented the chirped-pulse laser amplification technique, which increases the power of lasers more than a thousand-fold. Mourou's work has created many companies and more than a thousand scientists around the world are working in this field.
A registration form is included in this issue of the Newsletter. It can be returned by either mail or FAX to Gaffar Kazkaz. If you prefer, you may register online at www.electrostatics.org.
AWARDS
Dear ESA Member,
This is a call for Nominations for ESA Awards for 2002. As you know, we depend on your suggestions and input to guide us in selecting Nominees for awards in many categories, ranging from Student of the Year to the Electrostatics Hall of Fame. No awards were given out last year, but this is an entirely new year, and I hope that you will seriously consider submitting a nomination for a deserving person you know about! Certainly, one of the highlights for me at each Annual Meeting has been acknowledging and celebrating the accomplishments of talented individuals in our field.
Award categories are for: Distinguished Service (ESA), Honorary Life Member (ESA), Lifetime Achievement, Student of the Year, Teacher of the Year, and Hall of Fame. Nomination forms for each of the awards are available through the ESA website at http://www.electrostatics.org/, or you can go
directly to: http://www.electrostatics.org/Forms/esaform.htm for a list of general instructions and links to each of the different award categories.
Please take a few minutes to look over the criteria for each of the different awards and the list of past Award recipients. If you know of someone whom you think should be recognized for their accomplishments in Electrostatics, please consider sending in your nomination, or use the forms available in the ESA Web site and send them no later than June 1, 2002 to:
Humphrey Wong
Eastman Kodak Company
Surface Modification and Electrostatics Unit
4-23-KP, Mail code 24325
Rochester, NY, 14652-4325
Email: humphrey.wong@kodak.com
Phone: (585) 722-5555 (note the new area code!)
If you need additional information about the awards or an awards nomination form, and you are unable to access the Internet, please contact me directly. Please take the time to complete the forms fully so that the Committee and I will have as much information as possible for evaluating your nominations in a timely way before this year's meeting. Also, be certain to obtain the necessary endorsements for your nomination. If there is insufficient room on the form, please send supporting documentation as separate attachments.
Thanks,
Humphrey Wong
Chair, ESA Awards Committee
A most hearty WELCOME to the following people who are recent new members.
James D. Adams Wallis A. Harrison Alexei Nefediev
Alexandru Biris Gregory Haynes Dr. Colin Pounder
Angela Antoniu Yao Li Ho Tony Sander
V. C. Astridge Michael D. Hogue Soenke Schmidt
Frank A. Bianchini Jiusheng Huang Rajesh Sharma
Ross D. Brazee Dr. Itoh Kohki Brian Stilwell
Peter Brock Roger LeBlanc Steve Trigwell
John F. Cooper III John Louks Rev. Anthony Dalla Villa
Hassan El-Kishky Xavier C. Mangubat Lynn Woolsey
Peter Gefter Al T. Masri Caner Yurteri
James R. Gray M. K. Mazumder