Electrifying

Chaosmanor and I stumbled across Night Caching: The Tesla Experiment, while out caching back in August.  One of our local cachers, Losel2 made this particular cache his 4000th find about a week before we ended out in the same area.  

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go with him when he made his milestone grab and so didn't get the full effect of this really intriguing cache.  Chaosmanor and I went during the day, got the gist of the cache, but didn't get the full effect.

In short, Nichola Tesla theorized that electricity could be conducted through the air and went about creating experiments to prove this.  This cache is placed under high tension wires in an effort to help the cache finder recreate a couple of Tesla's experiments.  We took a voltmeter and conducted our experiment, getting a slightly  higher reading for it after we touched the fence with the volt meter.   Using the voltmeter probably wasn't necessary, as all you had to do was touch the fence and you'd get a mild shock from the excess electricity coming from the wires to the chain link fence.  As you can see from one picture, the electrical wires hang fairly close to the ground.

When the gang that accompanied Losel2 on his 4000th came, they came at night, which was probably the better way to go about it. After coming home and logging the cache from our daytime excursion, I looked at some of the pictures in the gallery.  Impressive is one of the words I'd use.  Fluorescent light bulbs lighting up just by touching the fence are standard pictures there.

The one thing I've learned about geocaching is to always expect the unexpected.  Local cachers know their area best and show off the unique aspects of their area in creative ways.  Well thought out caches that take you to interesting areas you probably wouldn't even think twice about on normal days if you didn't understand geocaching help with the enjoyment of this hobby.  Had I not been a geocacher, I never would have stopped here.  It was a fence next to a dirt road.  There's lots of them out here in the desert.  But add an electrical field into the picture and you have science in action which makes for a learning experience.  Something like that makes my top 5% list every time.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
Night Caching: The Tesla Experiment - by KG6EAR & co-maintained by WindyMatters!