One of the first questions people ask after seeing the wireless transfer of electricity is " what effect does this have on your body?". After playing with the exciter tower for a while I did noticed some interesting side effects including headaches and drowsiness.

I had shown in some videos how placing a glass of water near the tower allowed it to power a motor. The glass of water becomes energised and allows the flow of charges. It is well known that the human body is made up of more than 80% water so I did worry about the effects it was having on my brain.

When I put 24 volts through the circuit I noticed a stream of plasma coming from the end of the hotwire and the smell of ozone was distinctly noticeable. The plasma jet was splitting the oxygen molecules which then recombined as ozone which has a noticeable detrimental effect on humans. I would quickly get a headache and so decided not to play too much with the voltage set to 24 volts.

Today I decided to research the effect of the body and the role it plays in the system. Firstly I noticed that the feel detectors I was using (avramenko plug) were twice as effective at producing light from the field if they were in contact with my skin. At first I thought this was a classic example of capacitive coupling. I then noticed when using a loop of wire as an aerial connected to the plug, that my own body's field could affect the brightness of the lead. When I placed my hand inside the loop of wire, the light would dim. When a strong magnet touched the side of the light emitting diode there was more brightness.

Ultimately what made me decide that the body plays a huge role in the system was when I connected the field detector to a separate earth connection while the tower was running and held the film detector between my fingers. The light shone brightly even when I was around three metres away from the tower. If I stopped touching the detector, disconnected the ground or turned off the exciter circuit, then the light would go out.

Somehow my body was interacting with the field of the exciter which obviously reached much further than I had previously thought. The light would go out when I was further than three metres away from the tower. Quite obviously the body was playing a role in the excitation of charges producing the light. This is shown in no uncertain way by the contact of skin with the detector and the fact that the light would shine very brightly when connected to a separate earth and myself.

When the tower is placed in a faraday cage, the field is contained a fair bit, but touching the outside of the cage with the field detector results in a very bright light. The faraday cage itself is highly charged although the field is contained to the inside of the cage.