the reason that the light glob lit for an instant was because you moved a strong static charge which induces a potential difference (voltage) between the wires that where close to the charge and the ones forther away, resulting in electrons flowing through the light bulb. the actual energy for the light in the light bulb came from moving the charged item, not from the charge itself. static electricity is an interesting thing, you can quite easily get a voltage rating in excess of 1,000,000 volts in a
van der graaf generator, but the total amount of power that is stored there is pretty small, probably the less then what you would get from a tiny watch battery.
It can be extremely powerful if you design it like a
capacitor, where you have two sheets with opposite charges. With a strong insulator such as thick glass or a ceramic insulator and very long, thin metal sheets, maybe it will be possible to capture lighting energy ! the main reason that we have wind energy and solar energy and so on but not lightning energy, is because with lightning energy you have to capture extreme voltage and power in a tiny fraction of a second, but that's exactly what capacitors are good for…in theory… They are not exactly like static because they have two opposite charges, so even a few inches away, the two charged will cancel each other out and it should be safe.
Anyone have any comments?
