【Haichuan Teahouse】Have you ever seen frozen lightning? ? ?

For those who study plasma physics, the name Lichtenberg is certainly familiar; his observational experiments and theoretical research laid the foundations for this field. This experiment was the earliest experiment on freezing lightning. Lichtenberg used a electroscope to apply very high voltages to insulating materials such as glass and rubber. The extremely high voltages caused electrons to penetrate into the insulators. When the voltage was removed, those electrons remained trapped inside the insulators due to their inherent properties; in other words, the lightning was \"frozen\" in place. At this point, if you sprinkle some ink powder on it (sulfur powder was used by Lichtenberg in his experiments), the shape of the lightning will be clearly visible; this pattern is also known as a Lichtenberg figure.

In 1742, Lichtenberg was born in Darmstadt, Germany. His father was a priest; there were 17 children in the family, and he was the youngest. Lichtenberg showed a curiosity about nature from an early age, as well as a love for mathematics and science. At first, his family could not afford to cover his education costs, but a generous scholarship from a noble patron enabled him to attend the University of Göttingen. He eventually became a physics professor there, which was his only career throughout his life. Lichtenberg’s physique was quite interesting; his spine was deformed, causing him to be hunched over, which led to severe breathing difficulties in his later years. However, as a satirist and scientist, he enjoyed an excellent reputation and was very popular among women; he had several romances before marrying Margaret, who gave birth to 6 children for him. Currently, Lichtenberg’s literary reputation is primarily associated with his maxims, which he collected over the years in his private journals that he referred to as \"waste books\". In these discarded books, he hastily jotted down his observations on human nature and his daily notes, as well as accounts of his life, even the reading materials by his bedside at that time, and the scientific notes from his many experiments. It was an era when scientists in the Western world were all deeply interested in electricity, or what they called at that time \"electrofluids\"; many scientists devoted themselves to conducting experiments using various instruments, including Leyden jars and batteries, in order to study charged objects and how electric sparks jumped from one object to another. Benjamin Franklin was one of them; he conducted a famous experiment in which the experimenter stood under the protection of a structure similar to a soldier’s booth, using a tall lightning rod or wire to draw the \"electric fire\" down from the stormy clouds. At least one scientist, Georg Wilhelm Reichmann, died after attempting to replicate Franklin’s experiment and unfortunately coming into contact with ball lightning.

Lichtenberg’s interest in electrical fire was not diminished by this tragic accident; he was one of the first to bring Franklin’s lightning rod to Germany. He installed several lightning rods near his home in Göttingen, and he was also one of the early scientists to use such devices in his own laboratory. Lichtenberg built a large electrostatic generator, namely the well-known electroscope, with a diameter of 6 feet, which he used to study the behavior of electric sparks, including determining how to record the branching patterns left behind after discharges. Initially, he applied high voltage to insulating materials such as resin, glass, or hard rubber using a battery. Then, he mixed three types of powder—sulfur, red lead, and lead tetroxide—and spread it on the surface of the material. After observing the pattern that formed, he placed a piece of paper on top of the material to transfer the pattern onto it. Lichtenberg noticed two special patterns: one was the positively charged pattern, which was longer and had more complex branching structures ； The other is a negatively charged shape, somewhat similar to a shell. His conclusions were published in the 1777 paper \"A New Method for Investigating the Nature and Behavior of Electric Fluids.\" The basic principles of the Lichtenberg experiment laid the foundation for modern plasma physics. In the 1920s, Arthur von Hippel and other scientists documented the light emitted when high-voltage discharges were applied to photographic film. Fan Xibai inferred that the unique Lichtenberg figures are formed by the interaction between ionized gas and the surface of insulators ； He also found that the length of the branched pattern could be changed by increasing the applied voltage or reducing the air pressure around it.

It might be a photographic effect, but other things can be used to achieve such an effect, such as instant crystallization

This is clearly a soul seal: lol