The 24th ESA Annual Meeting in Milwaukee is almost upon us. In April you received the first announcement and last call for papers. In late May the Final Program brochure was sent to the Membership. Your planning Committee is at this moment putting on the final touches, hoping to live up to last year's outstanding program at the University of Rochester. One thing revived last year was the demonstration talk. At that meeting Shonosuke Kamachi presented an excellent demonstration of a variety of electrostatic phenomena. Many at that meeting expresseda longing for "the good old days" when demonstrations were more numerous.
This year your Planning Committee decided to place a special emphasis on demonstrations and the response from speakers has been very gratifying. In each session at least one demonstration will be presented and the opening session will be all demonstrations. In a special tribute to A. D. Moore, much of his famous equipment will also be demonstrated thanks to some extra effort by Lance Jerale and Glenn Schmieg. There will also be some special demonstrations that address the Internet; for example, how to use the Internet to obtain electrostatics information. You will also get to see the ESA's Home Page on the Net and you will learn how it was written. Who knows, when you leave the conference you may decide to buy that new computer and connect to the Internet yourself. If nothing else, you will have a better understanding of what the Internet is all about and why it is important for all who are engaged in electrostatics. You say you like the formal presentations? Well, there are plenty of those also. And some will be presented directly from a computer onto the big screen. You will get to see the old overhead transparency format in some talks while others will be in the new computer presentation format. With such a mix of presentations there will certainly be plenty of things to talk about during breaks and in the evenings.
Speaking of those evenings, here again, something special is planned. An ESA Hospitality Suite will be available for the Reception and for the "Taste of Wisconsin" night. However, the suite will also serve as a central point for relaxation, for technical discussions, for renewing old acquaintances and for meeting new members. If you can, bring your spouse to the conference. As you have probably already read in the Final Program brochure, the Spouses Committee has selected a lot of interesting tours in the area for consideration. In fact, a lot of thought went into trying to shape this conference to be both technically interesting and personally enjoyable for everyone. All that is left to make it a success is your attendance. Act now, fill out that registration form and get that hotel room. I look forward to seeing you all at the ESA Meeting in Milwaukee.
For the Friendly Society,
Al Seaver
PS - Just a reminder. To save money there are two deadlines for the ESA Conference that you should consider: the Early Registration deadline - May 18 and the Special Hotel Rate deadline - June 10. Also, although you did get the preliminary program in April, if you have a complaint about the Late Registration charge occurring before the final brochure was sent out, then just ignore the Late Charge if you send in your Registration Form within two days from the date you receive this ESA Newsletter. However, you can also register at the conference and pay the Late Registration Fee. Finally, a reminder to our International Members. Many of you want to pay for the conference in cash when you arrive. That is OK. But please send in the Registration Form early since the Planning Committee needs it to estimate food requirements for lunches, breaks and special events.
This year marks the 10th year of ESA member, Professor Ion Inculet's post-retirement appointment as Director of the Applied Electrostatics Research Centre at the University of Western Ontario. In recognition of his many achievements, on June 14, 1996, the university will present Ion with an honorary Doctor of Science degree at the Spring Convocation ceremonies. ESA congratulates Ion for this well Deserved honor.
Hello to all the spouses coming to the June ESA meeting. Toni Seaver has been in touch with Milwaukee's transit system and found out they have a tour of the city on an air conditioned bus for only $11. This price includes admission to a brewery and to Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory, also known as the Domes. Tours begin at 2:15 and the transit system suggests we get tickets in advance. So, if this peaks your interest, drop me a postcard - Arlena Bergen, 1043 Willits Rd., Ontario, NY 14519. Another place listed was Boerner Botanical Gardens, which opens at 8 AM. The Chamber of Commerce has promised more literature about the city and this will be waiting for us in the Hospitality Suite.
We're truly looking forward to seeing our old friends and meeting new friends.
See you in June.
Arlena [Missie] Bergen
Glenn Schmieg invites everyone to bring to the conference a favorite electrostatic demonstration or piece of apparatus and points out that there will be a display of working electrostatic generators.
He also would welcome any older books relating to static electricity which our members might like to see.
ESA member Ed Weggeland reports that the ESA Association (Rome, NY) is now on the Internet with information about the Association, its educational programs, library, standard test methods, local, regional and national meetings. The address is: http://www.eosesd.org
L. B. Schein's revised second edition of Electrophotography and Developement Physics is now back in print and offers a comprehensive overview of the basic physice of the varied electrophotography processes including an extensive list of references. Written for both the newcomer and expert, it summarizes the image development techniques used in printers, copiers and fax machines. For a copy, contact: Laplacian Press, 16525 Jackson Oaks Dr., Morgan Hill, CA 95037, tel: 408-779-7774, fax: 408-779-3638, e-mail: electro@garlic.com
To whom did Ben Franklin write his XCV letter, dated October 1, 1752 from Philadelphia?
Answer in next issue.
Everyone who works in electrostatics thinks about metals. They are the primary example of a conductor. But what about other conductors?
In 1977 high conductivity was reported in polyacetylene and the world of modern conductors continues to evolve. Electronic polymers are semiconductors that can be transformed into metals upon chemical doping. If the polymer is doped interstitially with acceptors or donors such as iodine or sodium, the conductivity can approach that of copper!
Commercial applications? While early polymers were insoluble and infusible, much progress has been made. Some polymers now are soluble or have soluble precursors. Currently, there is much interest in applications such as antistatic coatings and electromagnetic shielding. Watch for these new lightweight flexible metals.
Glenn Schmieg
ESA member, Don Maurer, who is Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer of Empi, wrote us the following:
"I thought ESA members would be interested in the "freak" electrostatic event experienced by my brother-in-law. He works for the state and travels around the state quite a bit. The three days he is in the capital he used to stay in a motel. Well, it was cheaper for him to get an apartment, so the state agreed. He knew that I was remodeling and that I had an older RCA 25" color TV I wanted to get rid of: he asked me the price and I said "$20.00" and he said "that is not enough.....I'll give you $40.00". I agreed and helped him load the big TV into the front seat of his compact car. He got it set up at his apartment and it worked beautifully. Recently, his wife had a birthday party in the apartment and the family had brought in z number of the colorgul metalized mylar helium birthday balloons. The ceiling of the apartment is perhaps 15 feet high and it has a large fan in the center. He had just settled in for an evening of couch-potatoing when the fan caught one of the balloons and it swooped down toward the TV. When it got within about a half foot from the wooden side of the TV, a large spark jumped from the balloon to the TV, the TV screen went black and the volume jumped to maximum. Not too long ago, my brother-in-law had a mild heart attack and he said when that happened he thought he was going to have another one! The TV was unrepairable, so he dumped it in the garbage. I told him he should have only paid me $20.00! I explained to him that the swishing around on the ceiling of the balloon probably charged it by triboelectricity and the large potential of the picture tube attracted the balloon until it close enough to discharge to the TV. This was sufficient to blow out many of the TV's solid state components. What do you think? Has anyone else experienced electrostatic events from these mylar balloons?"
Anne Benninghoff sent us a copy of a page from The Joy of Cooking that explained how to mke mayonnaise. Since Hellmann's has always tasted just fine to us, we've never studied that part of our cooking bible. So we missed it! But sure enough, on page 363 of the 25th printing (1985) of the 1975 edition, the would-be mayonnaise maker is admonished, "Don't try to make mayonnaise if a thunderstorm threatens or is in progress, as it simply will not bind." We leave the explanation for this strange phenomena so those skilled in the appropriate scientific fields and will be happy to include such explanations in subsequent issues. We have no doubt that The Joy of Cooking is providing sound cooking advise, and modern, too. This warning did not appear in the 1943 edition! We're not at all sure what unbound mayonnaise tastes like, or what it would do to you if you ate it but it hardly seems worth the risk. Especially when Hellman's is so much easier.
JURASSIC PARK
Many of you probably saw this recent film and enjoyed the recreations of dinosaurs. But do you remember the premise about DNA and its connection to static electricity?
If you saw the previews, there was an outline of the story. A prehistoric mosquito bites a dinosaur, then gets stuck in tree sap which turns to amber. Many millions of years later, the DNA from dinosaur blood is recovered. Is this really possible?
The idea was expressed in print as early as 1983. John Tkach wrote in the Extinct DNA Newsletter (2nd edition):
"Somewhere there may be a mosquito that fed on a dinosaur and got preserved in amber. If one could recover a white blood cell of a dinosaur from the stomach of a mosquito, he might be able to transplant it into an enucleated egg and grow a dinosaur tissue culture or ultimately a dinosaur. If the genome is partially destroyed, it might be possible to complement it by using several nuclei."
Amber has been connected with triboelectrification for centuries and has been used in medicines and art for an equally long time period. When the movie hit, world prices for amber zoomed and many fakes appeared. Two people who perhaps know the whole story better than anyone else are George and Roberta Poinar. I just finished their book The Quest for Life in Amber and encourage you to enjoy it. In a section on Berber amber, they say:
"Few Berbers did the actual selling; they usually turned the merchandise over to Arabs, who were much more skilled in business matters. The amber dealers here performed an assortment of acts to "prove" that their beads were real amber. One such trick was to pick up a bead, rub it against your shirt, and then pick up a small piece of paper, since rubbing it produced static electricity, this "proved" that it was amber - but I already knew that many plastics had a similar property. Another trick was to smear a little pine sap on the back of the bead and then heat it with a match. The pine odor is conspicuous. That the plastic piece doesn't burn with this treatment is not important, since most tourists don't know that real amber burns.
Glenn Schmieg
Long-time ESA member Chuck Gallo is selling about 50 pieces of equipment, including such things as oscilloscopes, power supplies, metersm recorders, pulse generators, electrometers and plotters. The list is two pages long - too long for inclusion here. For details, contact Chuck at: 261 E. 5th Street, St. Paul, MN 55101, phone: 612-222-0046, or fax: 612-222-0049.
A letter from Lance says, "If anyone has pictures or videos of A.D.'s lecture demonstrations, I'm looking for some help in reproducing minor details of some of the generators and demos. I would particularly appreciate clear close-ups of radial dirod juniors and some other related equipment. Please contact me at 627 N. 9th Street, Manitowoc, WI 54220.
Lance also writes "....that on January 18th, Glenn Schmieg spoke to my 8th grade science students about the wonders of physics - concentrating heavily on electrostatics, of course. Glenn demonstrated several generators, including a dirod and a sectionless Winshurst machine and many other "toys", all in the greatest tradition of A.D. Moore himself. Since Glenn's visit, students are fired-up and motivated even more than usual about this most wonderful and "fun" of sciences, electrostatics!"