The other end of the rod is threaded to fit into a hole in a small brass ball about three-eighths or one-half inch in diameter. Many experimenters may have difficulty in securing a suitable brass ball for this purpose. An ordinary binding post may be used instead. The hole in the bottom of a binding post is usually threaded to fit an 8-32 screw. The end of the rod is just the right size to receive an 8-32 thread and so there should be no trouble in getting the parts to fit. The brass ball is marked "A" in the illustration. The ball is preferable to the binding because it has no sharp corners from which the electricity might leak. Static electricity leaks from sharp edges or corners and they must always be avoided as far as possible in the construction of static apparatus.
The end of the rod where it screws into the ball or binding post should be threaded back for a distance of about three-quarters of an inch and two brass nuts screwed onto the rod. These nuts are marked "C" in the illustration.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.—The Driving Pulleys. These are turned out of wood and mounted on a shaft having a Crank at one end.]
The collectors are held in position by the supporting bar illustrated in Figure 13. This bar is made of a strip of hard rubber, five and one quarter inches long, five-eighths of an inch wide and three-sixteenths of an inch thick.
Three holes, each five-thirty-seconds of an inch in diameter, should be bored in the bar. One hole should be exactly in the centre and the other holes seven-sixteenths of an inch back from the end.
The centre hole is slipped over the end of the shaft which projects through the front standard supporting the plate and the bar fastened across the support at right angles like a cross by driving in two small brass nails or screws through holes made in the rubber for that purpose.
The threaded portion of the collector rods should be slipped through the holes near the ends of the hard rubber bar and clamped firmly in position by placing one of the nuts "C" on the back and the other on the front and tightening them up.
The exact position of the collectors is best understood from Figure 1. They are lettered C R in the illustration. The brass balls B are screwed onto the ends of the rods after the nuts have been tightened. Each of these balls should have a hole, one-eighth of an inch in diameter drilled through it at right angles to the collector rod. The hole provided in the binding post for the accommodation of the wire may be used in case binding posts are employed instead of the rods.
These holes are to accommodate the Discharge Rods, which are two round brass rods, one-eighth of an inch in diameter and three and one-half inches long. One end of each of the rods is fitted with a small brass ball.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.—The Crank is bent out of a piece of 3/16 rod, 7 inches long, into the shape shown.]