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CAN WE GO OUTSIDE YET
We'll do a few more imaginary, indoor tests first. It's fun sending a helper to the hardware store for a board stretcher or some postholes, but now we'd have to send him there for a bottle of plasma (not blood). For our next toys, we need stuff not found in a hardware store, so we'll have to do the rest of our experiments on imaginary equipment I've already set up. We have two more tables in this room, and there's another room for a bigger layout.
On the first table as shown below, a tube connects to a strong battery, a familiar setup. Inside the tube, on the left, we have an electron ejector, and a collector covered with some fluorescent material waits at the other end. We'll put only a little of a certain type of gas into the bulb. Then we switch on the heat source and see what happens. Notice how the tube glows as electricity flows from one end to the other.
But wait a minute. Electricity flows through some materials better than others. It really zips through copper, but it has a harder and harder time getting through water, then wood, and finally, air. Electricity can't get through a vacuum at all, so how can it travel so well in this tube in which we have a near-vacuum? The answer is in the type of gas we put in there.
The hydrogen atom has one positive proton in the center with one negative electron circling it making the atom neutral, no charge. If we split the proton and electron, they become separate, charged particles called ions, and we call a heated, ionized gas, "plasma."
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