["Followup-To:" header set to sci.electronics.design.]
On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 01:14:42 -0800,
Floyd L. Davidson wrote
in Msg.

The way to get ni-cad to boil at room temperature is simply
reduce the pressure to something significantly below its vapor
pressure. We did it knowingly with gold too once, and that was
nothing short of beautiful as far as the results went. The
entire inside of the bell jar was very faintly plated with gold.
That particular experiment was testing the voltage breakdown of
ceramic wafers, so in addition to the gold plating there was the
bluish white glow from a high voltage arc too. Really great
visual effects!

What you did here wasn't evaporating gold at room temperature. By creating
a vacuum discharge you sputtered the gold off the surface (by ion impact),
and it was this sputtered gold that covered the inside of the jar.

robert