Animation of traveling electrostatic waves on personal computers

A computer animation of traveling electrostatic waves in electrodynamic induction pumps was prepared on a personal computer. This involved (1) a finite-difference solution for the potential, using spreadsheet techniques; (2) translation of this solution for different voltage phases and active electrodes; (3) superposition of all fields at a given time, producing a plot of the field along the wave direction, which is a single frame in the movie; and (4) sequencing the frames, using inexpensive commercial software. The movies described here were prepared by copying each image from the electrostatic field program into a ´scrapbook´ and then rerunning the program to get the next image. After all the desired images were collected, the animation program was run, and each image copied from the scrapbook.<>