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HOW DO WE GET AT PLASMA COSMOLOGY
We've struggled with some pretty abstract ideas up to now, but this time, we can sit down at a nice, solid table in our lab and from there, work our way up. To begin, we'll need a battery, flashlight bulb, small compass, roll of bare copper wire, and a bar magnet. To save going to the hardware store, we'll use our imaginations again, something you should be getting quite good at by now. At first, some of this discussion may be way too simple, but the concept's got to be clear. And plasma cosmology will only make sense if we base it on concrete experiments done in a laboratory.
Below on the left, we have an ordinary flashlight bulb showing the inside connections. The glass bulb on top contains a thin wire at C, the filament, which connects to a metal case at B. The whole case makes up one terminal of the bulb, and electrons go into the metal case and the wire at B. On their way, the electrons squeeze through the filament C heating it enough to make it light, and they exit at the little metal bump A, the other terminal. We can light the bulb by hooking it up to some power, a battery for instance; at least, that's the theory.
You can test this theory as done in the picture on the right. Wrap a piece of wire around the case and attach the other end of the wire to the top end of the battery; duct tape might work. Take another piece of wire, touch one end to the little bump on the bulb, and touch the other end to the unused end of the battery. If the bulb stays dark, it doesn't mean you've proven the theory to be wrong; you've only proven it's not easy to set up a good experiment.
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