I think you made my job easier, Stephen, My VDG pumps electrons from the globe to earth ground, but I intend to pump them to a roll of heavy duty aluminum foil with isolation from ground using an inverter and "D" batteries to power the VDG and digital scale. Hence a three point triangle of spheres within spheres, connected by cylinders within cylinders with pumping of electrons from the inner cylinders-spheres, should put a negative charge on the outer cylinders-spheres.... but I won't bet the store on it.
All kinds of fun abstract art with this Caltech Electric Field applet: http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~phys1/java/phys1/EField/EField.html Fred Stephen A. Lawrence wrote. Frederick Sparber wrote: Posted earlier: This Field Line Applet is cheaper than buying more VDGs. http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~phys1/java/phys1/EField/EField.html If the force around a positively charged sphere is reduced by cladding it with a high dielectric constant material (K) It won't be, not unless the cladding has a net charge. The dielectric or other properties of the cladding aren't relevant to its ability to "shield" something, which can be done only by canceling the original field. (There's no such thing as a "true" electric shield, of course. At least according to conventional theory, the E field obeys the law of superposition, and you can't actually "block" it; you can only cancel it.) If you surround a charged sphere with any spherically symmetric material which does not, itself, carry a net charge, the result will be no change in the external field (outside the cladding) and no change in the net force acting on the system (sphere+cladding) due to an external field. it's external force/field will drop off accordingly: E = D/eo = D/(K*eo) = 1/K * 1/(4(pi) eo * Q/R^2 where D = 1/4(pi) * Q/R^2 Beware being mesmerized by the D field's behavior. Maxwell's equations are valid everywhere without any auxiliary fields (D and H) -- the aux fields are just a convenience, to make calculations easier inside matter where there are lots of mobile dipoles (both electric and magnetic), and to make the equations simpler in MKS units. In electrostatics a sheet of high-dielectric insulator material immersed in a static E field perpendicular to its surface can be modeled as a capacitor: its dipoles align with the E field, all internal dipole "end fields" cancel, and the two surfaces of the insulator acquire charges, one positive and the other negative. Like any parallel plate capacitor, of course, the field outside the dielectric is (nearly) zero, and it's not going to have any effect on the external field of something around which it's wrapped. Force = 1/K * 1/4(pi)eo * q* Q/R^2 Hence a 3-point craft with a cladded positive center sphere and three exposed negative spheres should repel the earth's excess negative charge up to an altitude that requires charge reversal for getting past the ionosphere. That's just it. It won't, if the cladding is neutral (no net charge). If it did you could close the cladding, move a bit, open the cladding, move back, close the cladding, and so forth, and voila, you have a PMM. With uncharged cladding opening and closing the cladding (by sliding it) should require insignificant work.
