A few weeks ago I brought home a 9V AC/DC adaptor they were going to throw away at work because the cord was shorted. I took it apart leaving long enough positive and negative wires after cutting the cord in order to experiment with it a bit. The first thing I did back then was create one heck of a bright light inside a glass jar with a graphite rod after plugging it into the wall. Worked great for a few moments before the graphite rod basically blew up!
So anyway, there this thing sat for weeks after that. Today I thought about it again in such a fashion as my thoughts seem to go:
"When I plug this into a 120V AC outlet it puts out DC at 9V. Hmmm...? What if I pushed DC power into it from the usual output wires? Would it turn into AC? Ok, I'm trying it. Didn't work or do anything so hey Rolland, another stupid idea of yours man! Besides, the transformer is a step down transformer anyway buddy! Yeah, that's true so let's try this... run a 9V DC into the usual AC input area and see what happens! Hmmm... the first time it rose to almost 8V and after disconnecting the battery, well, on the other end of the capacitor it is going from 7.88V to 7.87V and so on every two seconds or so. Let me discharge the capacitor and try again! This time it gives a quick 5V charge. Hmmm. Let me disconnect the wires and try once more. Odd! Once I took the negative lead off of the battery while the positive lead is still connected it is still charging! What happens if I connect the negative lead back up? I connected it back up and the voltage rose some. Interesting? What if I take the negative lead off and rub it on the terminal with the positive connected? Wow! It rises for some reason!"
This is basically what I witnessed happen today and I'm not sure why. The adaptor contains only a diode bridge, a capacitor and a transformer... apart from the input and output wires of course. What was going on here? Any ideas?
So anyway, there this thing sat for weeks after that. Today I thought about it again in such a fashion as my thoughts seem to go:
"When I plug this into a 120V AC outlet it puts out DC at 9V. Hmmm...? What if I pushed DC power into it from the usual output wires? Would it turn into AC? Ok, I'm trying it. Didn't work or do anything so hey Rolland, another stupid idea of yours man! Besides, the transformer is a step down transformer anyway buddy! Yeah, that's true so let's try this... run a 9V DC into the usual AC input area and see what happens! Hmmm... the first time it rose to almost 8V and after disconnecting the battery, well, on the other end of the capacitor it is going from 7.88V to 7.87V and so on every two seconds or so. Let me discharge the capacitor and try again! This time it gives a quick 5V charge. Hmmm. Let me disconnect the wires and try once more. Odd! Once I took the negative lead off of the battery while the positive lead is still connected it is still charging! What happens if I connect the negative lead back up? I connected it back up and the voltage rose some. Interesting? What if I take the negative lead off and rub it on the terminal with the positive connected? Wow! It rises for some reason!"
This is basically what I witnessed happen today and I'm not sure why. The adaptor contains only a diode bridge, a capacitor and a transformer... apart from the input and output wires of course. What was going on here? Any ideas?