My Lightning Tube.

Although the pictures below don't show it, this tube contains a thin white stream of plasma that appears to flow upwards. It kind of spazmatically wiggles as it flows so that it almost looks like lightning except that it does't fork. Unlike the standard plasma globes the streamer is only mildly attracted to your fingers. If you pick a point near the top it might stick to you but if you have your finger on the side it won't stick for more than a second. I know that the upward flow is due to convection because if you tilt the tube the streamer will cease to wiggle and will simply move along the "top" edge of the tube. I avoid doing this for too long for fear of heating the glass with the plasma and causing it to weaken and shatter. There is undoubtedly some level of vacuum in side of it.

	A cropped picture of it taken in operation. Was 1600x1200x24bit before I cropped it and I didn't use a flash.
	Another cropped picture of it taken in operation. Was 1600x1200x24bit before I cropped it and I didn't use a flash. I must have moved cuz even the frame is blurry.
	I finally converted a the Quicktime (MJPEG) video from my camera to MPEG-1 so you could see it in action (~4 sec). Problem is I recorded it with my camera sideways and don't have a program to rotate it yet. Its 640x480 so its ~2.84MB(!!!). I'll have to scale it down again for those with modems so stay tuned for updated sizes and orientations of this file.