Electric Field & Conductive Fluid: Exciting Bubble Gas?

[Bishop]

Does anyone know if an electric field passing through a column of conductive fluid would excite the gas on the perimeter of a bubble in that fluid, if the gas were prone to be excited?

 

[AHolico]

All I know is that if there are charged species in the gas, then those charged species will acellerate in the pressence of an electric field. When those charged particles have a collision with other particles (if it have enough energy), they can transfer energy and exite the gas particle. So, to my knowledge, gas can be exited, if you have a current flowing between the potential diference that is creating the electric field.

 

[Bishop]

Do you mean I would have to charge the gas before I passed it through the
conductive fluid?

There would be a current running from
one end of the channel to the other,
through the fluid.

 

[AHolico]

It is an interesting experiment. I really doesn't know the outcome of it.

I believe some gas lights works on this principle. You have a tube filled with gas, and two electrodes at each end with a potential difference. Some electrons will escape the negative electrode, and will be acellerated. The collission of those electrons with the gas molecules, will exite it, and then produce light. In this case, the gas wasn't charged.

So what I'm saying is, that if a current of charged particles enters the bubble, and the kinetic energy of these particles is enough to exite the particles, then it will do it. The problem here is that a current of any fluid (in this case charged particles) will prefer to go through the path of least resistance. So my guess is that little current will go through the bubbles, but it will be enough to exite them, and you will start to see the bubbles glow (if the delta energy of the ground state to exited state falls in the visible spectra).

 

[Bishop]

yeah, that was the idea.. to get them
to glow on the outside.. I didn't
expect it to get the whole bubble
going.

Wouldn't that make a cool lamp?

Sometimes, I have the strangest ideas.

 

[Bishop]

Oh, especially interesting might be a thick
fluid.