ANNOUNCER: THIS is Capitol TV.

[Music]

[Beat, music]

DEREK: Greetings citizens. Welcome to the Coriolanus 9 solar thermal power plant in

the heart of District 5.

This facility generates over 7% of our proud

Capitol’s energy needs.

But did you know that you can generate electricity

from mere drops of water?

I’m going to show you an experiment

that does just that.

As we turn on the water, it falls through these rings, and onto this mesh below.

But look here. After a moment...

[Electrical buzz]

...there it is.

It generates a spark of roughly 20,000 volts

of electricity. [Electrical buzz]

And there is no power source here,

no turbine as in traditional hydro generation.

In fact, there are no moving parts at all.

We are creating electricity using only the

intrinsic properties of falling water.

So how does it work? Well, water contains

charged particles called ions.

It has equal numbers of positive and negative

ions, so overall it’s neutral.

However, as the water falls, there will sometimes

be a slight charge imbalance,

with a little bit more negative charge over

here and a bit more positive charge there.

Under ordinary circumstances, these variations

would even out over time, but not in this case.

Here is the ingenious part - the mesh on the

left is connected to the ring on the right.

So if this mesh becomes negatively charged,

then so does this ring.

And now that ring will attract the positively

charged ions in the water,

So the mesh on the right

will now be more positively charged

meaning so is this ring

So what we have is a clear separation of charge.

There’s a positively charged stream on the

right, and a negatively charged stream on the left.

And the more the charge builds up on the meshes,

the faster that charge increases.

And finally when we have reached our designed

operating voltage of 20,000 volts,

electrons jump from the negative rings to

the positive ones through this spark gap... [Electrical buzz]

DEREK: ...ionizing the air as they do so.

We have created an electric generator with

little more than a stream of water droplets.

No field of mirrors or enormous coal-burning

plant is required

In fact, with access to the right

materials, you could even build this apparatus at home.

Thank you for your attention.

We citizens of District 5 expand our knowledge

to better serve our great nation.

Love your labor, take pride in your task.

Our future is in your hands.

And, don’t forget to register for updates

from Capitol TV…it’s mandatory.