Sean Breheny wrote:

> What I observed was a dim glow only near ONE of the two electrodes.

  You *are* young, aren't you Sean?  Or rather, I'm getting old.  At one
stage, I used to have a neon (one lead was broken, so couldn't use it
for anything else) on the end of the antenna on the car.  Looked cute at
night when you transmitted.

  We're talking here about capacitive coupling, so forget the DC
component, nothing will happen on DC except at very high voltages where
corona discharge occurs.  The neon is registering the small reactive
current flowing due to the parasitic capacitance from its envelope to
ground, including you.

  It's very sensitive (in the dark at least), so the sub-microamp-range
current causes the electrode connected to the line to glow.  The other
"electrode" in this case is the envelope and the reactive current is
evenly distributed over this so no one area achieves the necessary
current density to produce a glow except at particularly high voltage.

  If however you hold the insulation on the second lead very firmly and
certainly if you touch the second lead, the second electrode will glow.
I'm sure you have see the "test" screwdrivers which operate this way
(but contain a resistor too, and you don't always need to touch the
other end).

  As to the capacitive effect coupling current through the glass
envelope, I'm *sure* you've seen this demonstrated beautifully by those
decorative plasma balls, even if you don't already have one (as I do -
garage sales are fantastic!).

  At least for the two foot diameter ones in the museum, although
excited by AC, these do tend to give you a static charge which you
notice when you walk away!  This is presumably due to asymmetry of the
drive waveform (flyback transformer) and non-linearity of corona
discharge.  Do you recall the use of spark gaps as high-voltage
rectifiers?

  But again, this latter effect is *not* the explanation for the glow
concentration in the NE2.
--
  Cheers,
        Paul B.