A LOT OF ACTIVITY - ALL FOR YOU
A lot is happening in the ESA, and I would like to take this opportunity to just quickly review some events. Among the main events are the ESA Awards, the ESA elections, the ESA Annual Meeting; and there are also some miscellaneous items of interest.
By now you should have received in a special mailing the new ESA Award Nomination Forms. I hope that you have been thinking of nominating someone for one of these prestigious awards. Remember, any one ESA member can be the nominator; you just have to check with a few other ESA members to get their endorsements and then collect some relevant information on the nominee. If you feel strongly about an individual's contributions, please make the effort to nominate. By the way, you can obtain the nomination forms directly from this web site by clicking here.
ESA elections are coming up. Any ESA member can nominate a slate of candidates. Information on the process is given elsewhere in this Newsletter.
The ESA Annual Meeting at the University of Georgia is fast approaching. The deadline for papers in reader-scanner or computer disk form is April 15. The preliminary brochure should be out about May 1.
You might want to make an early reservation on campus by calling (706)542-6364. More information on the meeting is given elsewhere in this Newsletter.
Other things happening include a new way to find where government research funding and education opportunities are occurring in electrostatics. Information on the sign-up process is given elsewhere in this Newsletter.
The ESA Annual Meeting places and dates for 1997, 1998 and 1999 have been established. Would anyone like to volunteer for the year 2000?
I could write more, but instead I think I will call and get a hotel room for my wife and me "before" the brochure arrives and the rush starts.
From what I have heard about the beautiful campus at the University of Georgia and the great efforts that have occurred by the planning committee, I am already convinced this will be one ESA Annual Meeting we will not want to miss.
For the Friendly Society,
Al Seaver
ESA MEETING REMINDER - JUNE 29-JULY 2
Meeting time will be here before we know it ! Make your plans now to join in with your ESA friendly society colleagues for our 4-day conference and activities on the University of Georgia campus in Athens.
Early registration cost, including most meals, will be in the $140 range. ESA members will be mailed registration forms and program information in the Conference Brochure on May 1. To take advantage of the early-registration savings, be sure to return the form with payment by the May 30 deadline.
Information regarding air-conditioned hotel rooms within the conference center (NOT student dormitories) and their reservation is available directly at (706)542-6364 / Event # 33662. Per room costs (depending on room type) are $48-58 for single occupancy and $55-58 double occupancy.
Additional conference details are available from Conference Chair Ed Law at (706)542-0866 or e-mail at You still have opportunity before the final deadline to submit a presentation/paper title only, or an abstract for inclusion in the conference proceedings, or a full-length paper for publishing in the proceedings---your choice. These should be submitted DIRECTLY to Publications Chair Joe Crowley as per instructions on home page for RECEIPT BY APRIL 15.
WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU AT CONFERENCE TIME !!!
ELECTION OF ESA COUNCIL MEMBERS
ESA elections are coming up. New Council slates sought. Based on Article 4 of the ESA Constitution, the two-year term of the present ESA Council ends on June 30, 1997 and the new Council term of office begins on July 1, 1997. It is now time for the Secretary (address found on back page of this ESA Newsletter) to receive slates of nominees for the upcoming (7/1/97 - 6/30/99) term. Article 4c states, "The Council shall be nominated as a full slate, naming the officers and members." Article 4d states, "Slates may be self-nominated, each being presented by a member of the slate. Also, the Council may nominate a slate." Article 4e states, "The several slates shall be presented to the Secretary three months before the end of the Council's term. After validation of the nominated slates, the Council shall cause the Secretary to present the slates to the membership two months before term end, with the mail vote deadline to be one month before term end. The slate receiving the largest number of votes shall be
If two slates are tied in receiving more votes than any other slate, the Council shall act to break the tie."
Since the Council shall be nominated as a full slate, the presenter of that slate is responsible for checking with all the members of that slate to insure each nominee is willing to serve. A slate consists of five members: the President, the Vice-President and three Council Members.
If more than one slate is presented to the Secretary, a ballot will be mailed out about April 15 with the deadline for receipt of the ballots by the Secretary being May 31, 1997. If only one slate is presented (then as tradition has held) no ballots will be mailed, and the Membership present at the ESA Annual Meeting will be asked to vote on the slate. If no slates are presented, then, as Article 4b states, "If extraordinary circumstances prevent the election of a new Council, the existing Council shall continue in office, year by year, until an election can be held."
ESA member Nick Reinhardt has recently sent to us a copy of an article that appeared in SIGNAL, October 1996, an Official Publication of AFCEA, which reports on a newly developed detecting device named "Manhunter". This is an electronic, battery operated, hand-held, one pound device that reportedly detects the presence of humans, even when they are concealed from view and separated from the observer by barriers such as walls etc. It consists of an "antenna array of modules containing elements such as reflectors, directors and amplifiers". According to the article, "Manhunter sets up an electrostatic field similar to its intended target. The user sweeps the device which points to the target when it recognizes a matching field. Reverse polarity causes an attraction which pulls the antenna towards the human".
The inventor of this device, Thomas Afilani, describes it as "basically a space-age divining rod".
Manhunter, which will be marketed soon by Sixth Sense, a division of Wind Gap Detecting Systems of Montgomery, PA, is still being improved and hopefully will come to meet the expectations of the inventor.
We report this here and make no claims as to the accuracy of the statements made since we have not observed tests which have been conducted. The original article referred to above is much more detailed and too extensive to be included here. If you would care to have a copy, contact me and it will be reproduced and forwarded to you.
Emery Miller
We have received a letter from ESA member Hal Fox describing some of the activities of the Institute for New Energy. Hal is Editor of the monthly NEW ENERGY NEWS as well as the quarterly JOURNAL OF NEW ENERGY. He points out that the institute is interested in any and all developments related to new energy or alternative energy devices, including such devices as low energy nuclear reactions, such as cold fusion; electromagnetic or electrostatic motors that are over 100% efficient; and solid-state devices that produce more energy output than energy input. In his own defense he hastens to add that, "if a device taps energy from the surrounding environment, then such a device violates no conservation laws but is merely a clever Energy Transformer.
In his letter he extended to ESA members an invitation to submit energy-related news or professional papers to him for publication in NEW ENERGY NEWS and the JOURNAL OF NEW ENERGY. He has offered to send a free sample copy of NEW ENERGY NEWS to any ESA member contacting him at 801-583-6232 or Fax 801-583-2963.
Hal has also requested that he would like to hear from any member who can tell the best thermoplastics from which to make electrets.
Emery Miller
The following information found in the IEEE newspaper "the institute" [Vol. 21, No. 2 (1997) p. 3.] under the title "Research funding info available on the Web" might be of interest to some of our Membership.
The Federal Information Exchange Inc. (FEDIX) is providing free, comprehensive on-line information on federal agency research funding and education opportunities to the research and higher education communities nationwide.
FEDIX allows users to create a personal interests profile using a Grants Keyword Thesaurus. Every business day the system compares your profile with all new and/or updated opportunity announcements issued by the 12 participating federal agencies and, through its Federal Opportunity Alert system, sends you an e-mail notification of related opportunities.
With over 5,000 new users added each month, FEDIX claims that it "has become the key entity in the U.S. bridging the research and educational programs information gap between government and academia." For more information or to register your profile, consult the FEDIX Web site at http://www.fie.com.
Al Seaver
At our June 1966 meeting in Milwaukee I showed several experiments with a very strong (and quite small) magnet. These modern magnets are small cylinders about the diameter of a dime, but thicker, like a stack of three quarters. Emery Miller has asked that I write a few lines about them for the Newsletter.
These magnets are often called neodymium magnets, but actually their atomic composition has fourteen parts of iron and one part of boron to each two parts of neodymium. Thus, like most magnets, they are predominantly iron. In small quantities they are sold for about $5 to $10. If you have a pair, they can pinch skin hard enough to cause a blood blister.
Magnets have a very strong attraction for only a few materials: iron, steel, cobalt, nickel, and mixtures of these. You might be surprised to try a few Canadian coins. Sample some different years if you can. But place a magnet near copper or aluminum and there is no force of attraction.
I mentioned copper and aluminum because they are common conductors that we use in electrostatics work. And if you move a magnet near a conductor, then something happens. The moving magnet sets up a voltage, which in turn causes a current. Charges flow in the adjacent conductor. This induced charge flow is called an eddy current. And there are forces between the moving magnet and the eddy current!
At our meeting I dropped one of these magnets into a piece of one-half inch copper water pipe, which I held vertically. The magnet fell through, but because of eddy currents and the forces, it fell through very slowly. With a piece of pipe three or four feet long the time to fall is over five seconds! The same magnet falling four feet in open air would take half a second.
These magnets can be used to perform dozens of striking experiments. And the practical applications are just beginning. Why not invent something today?
Glenn Schmieg
At a recent computer software engineering course in the US, the participants were given an awkward question to answer:
"If you had just boarded an airliner and discovered that your team of programmers had been responsible for the flight control software, how many of you would disembark immediately?"
Among the ensuing forest of raised hands only one man sat motionless. When asked what he would do, he replied that he would be quite content to stay on board. With his team's software, he reasoned, the plane was unlikely to even taxi as far as the runway, let alone take off.
Professor Stuart Hoenig at the University of Arizona writes as follows:
Dr. Hoenig can be reached at Tel 520-887-3815, Fax 520-887-9727, e-mail Lance Jerale (ESA member and past "ESA Teacher of the Year" from Valders Middle School in Manitowoc, WI) spoke to his daughter's fourth grade class on Electrostatics. Next he says, "ELECTROSTATICS will be featured in the "Valders Sunday Family Funday" scheduled for April 6th. We'll be doing all sorts of demos for the public!!" No wonder he was teacher of the year!
About six months ago Discover Magazine, a Disney Science publication, contacted us, via our website, to request new electrostatics technologies to feature in their magazine. I sent them the "proceedings" of the ESA meetings for the last three years. After looking through the papers, they decided to feature the work of Ed Law and Souvik Bannerjee in the February, 1997 issue.
The article, "Charged Pollen", appears in the "Breakthroughs in Science, Technology, and Medicine" section of the magazine. It focuses on their experiments on pollinating plants electrostatically. They report their method of spraying charged pollen water on plants and the results of the field trials in the almond grove in California.
Thanks, Ed and Souvik for bringing electrostatics to yet another venue of the media world,
Barb Crowley
Mr. Harold Schweriner of ElectroStatics, Inc. is looking for general and specific information covering the known hazards created by static electricity and hopes that someone in ESA might be able to help.
Mr. Schweriner can be contacted at, 352 D Godshall Dr., Harkeysville, PA 19438; tel: 215-513-0850; Fax: 215-513-0855; website: www.electrostatics.com
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ALL MEMBERS - PLEASE READ AND ACT AT ONCE
HIGH-TECHNOLOGY DIVINING ROD DETECTS HUMAN PRESENCE
INSTITUTE FOR NEW ENERGY
RESEARCH FUNDING INFORMATION
NEODYMIUM MAGNETS
CONFIDENCE
MAGNETS AND BEES
"I have a friend on the faculty that works on bees. He has some evidence that they respond to magnetic fields. In fact they seem to breed at spots where there are magnetic poles. We need to build a box for the first studies and want to line the box with something that will keep out the stray earth fields. Umetal was what I thought of but who sells it. This is a bit out of my experience, maybe one of the members can help."
SPREADING THE GOSPEL
DISCOVER MAGAZINE & ELECTROSTATICS
Notice: