DIY Casimir Effect experiment - possible with household items?

[ScienceFlea]

Any ideas on how to perform a Casimir Effect experiment using everyday household items?
Kindly share ideas here as to how...

[imatfaal]

If you look at the formula you are going to see how difficult this will be

 

[latex]

F=\frac{A}{L^4} \cdot \frac{\pi h c}{480}

[/latex]

 

The first fraction is what you get to control - the Area of the plates and the distance between them. The Second is constant and comes out at about 1.3*10^-27.

 

Now 1 milliNewton is about the force exerted by 1/10gram - that is difficult to weigh at home but we will set it as our target.

 

Rearrange and you get to the fact that A/L^4 has to equal about 10^24. For a separation L of 1 thousandth of a millimetre (very small and beyond home measurement) - your area would have to be about 1 square metre. Even in lab conditions getting two plates of a metre side so exact that there is a micron distance is impossible. So if we make the gap bigger - make it 1 hundredth of a millimetre; but now our area needs to be 10,000 times bigger - that is a plate with sides 100metres long (so no chance).

 

Basically, you need to be measuring force in the region of nanoNewtons - which means you need hard vacuum (otherwise air will disrupt), total elimitation of charge to avoid extraneous force from charge differential, vibration-free mounting etc.

 

I do not think we actually even measure straight casimir in a lab - but work on clever systems with vibrations and the casimir force alters the frequency of the vibration