This seems nuts. A stream of water is split into two streams and falls through two bottomless cans into two buckets. The falling water creates opposite electrical charges in the buckets, and high voltage arcs jump between them periodically.
6 minutes. Link to Video
That’s MIT Professor, Walter Lewin, demonstrating a Kelvin Water Dropper or Kelvin Thunderstorm. One entire semester of Lewin’s class is available at MIT Physics 8.02 Video Lectures. This excerpt is from the end of lecture 10. He explains what’s going on in lecture 15 starting at 27.5 minutes.
Lewin’s explanation is the best, but if you don’t want to sit through lecture 15, RM Cybernetics has a short explanation and Amasci.com has a very thorough one.
