Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

If there were say, a copper shell of sorts that was recently "charged" by an electric arc, could the said shell discharge this energy at a limited pace? Maybe be able to discharge for .5 to 1 seconds. Also, could the shell even hold any energy on its own? What if the ark it was hit by was producing/ transmitting 100kw of power. This said copper shell would also be quite small. About 9 mm in diameter, 25 millimeters or 1 inch in diameter.

This does all sound crazy but it is in fact for a science project, really trying to stand out here.

i also wanted to say this. I know 100kw is not very "Small scale" and isn't exactly achievable by an 8th grader. I was just saying it as a maximum and was hoping to work down from the said number. If any of my 'what ifs' were wrong, i was implying that i wanted to know why it wouldn't work, and any way to make it work if possible.

Hi DTH,
Sorry about the delayed response.
What you have described is very similar to how a battery / capacitor works. Please take a look at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_battery

Based on the fast "arc" charging that you described, I am going to steer this post toward capacitor. The energy that can be stored by a capacitor is 1/2 * Capacitance * Voltage^2. In order to achieve the 100kW, you will need a huge capacitor (probably a large building worth) in order to store this amount of energy. (To put it in perspective - a electric car running at highway speed on flat ground (65MPH) uses about 20 to 30kW. A Tesla running in ludicrous mode 0 -60 in 2.5 seconds puts out ~550KW through its banks of battery.)

With the dimension that you have provided, there are "super-capacitor" that gets you closer.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor) As far as I know, these are primarily used at the electronics level at this time and not really designed to push out this level of power.

At any rate, here's an experiment on that may help you explore this further:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... gy#summary

Good Luck!
Willey