Welcome to the Remote Glow Discharge Experiment (RGDX)!

What am I looking at?

The Remote Glow Discharge Experiment is housed at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory but you can control it through this website!

Inside the glass tube there is air which is held at pressures of about 100 mTorr by a vacuum pump. As a reference, the pressure at sea level is about 8,000 times larger. You can control the pressure with the green slider.

For more info on pressure control, click on the "Pressure" link in the "Controls" menu.

At each end of the tube there are metal plates. You can control the voltage between the two ends by using the blue slider. The voltage range is between 0 Volts and 2000 Volts!

For more info on voltage control, click on the "Electrode voltage" link in the "Controls" menu.

As the voltage is increased, the gas starts conducting electricity and becomes plasma.

To learn more about plasma, click on the "What is plasma?" button.

Finally, around the tube, there are two electromagnets that create a magnetic field inside it. The magnetic field interacts with the plasma in ways you can explore. And you can control the magnetic field using the red slider.

For more info on controlling the electromagnet, click on the "Electromagnets" link in the "Controls" menu.

Want to get started? Click on the "How can I make it glow?" button!