Re: Test Cap, dry/oil (fwd)

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: Test Cap, dry/oil (fwd)
From: Tesla List <mod1-at-pupman-dot-com>
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 19:07:36 -0700 (MST)
Approved: mod1-at-pupman-dot-com



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 06:30:07 -0700
From: Scott Stephens <stephens-at-enteract-dot-com>
To: Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Subject: Re: Test Cap, dry/oil (fwd)

At 08:19 AM 12/15/97 -0700, you wrote:

>I have had an idea about this for some time that seems to have been born
>
>out by Gary's experiment. If you have an air space cap, it will have a
>lot of air between the plates causing a fair bit of looseness between
>plates. When you measure its capacitance with a small applied voltage,
>the plates will be at a certain spacing and you will get a certain
>reading. At a higher applied voltage you will get a higher reading as
>electrostatic attraction will cause the plates to be closer together.
>
>Under normal TC operating conditions, this cap will have a small range
>of capacitance value rather than a single value and should have a less
>sharply defined tune point on the primary. This may be the cause of the
>cap heating and lack of energy in the sparks that Gary describes. Adding
>
>oil on the other hand will do a lot to "stiffen up" the cap. This may
>also be why commercial caps seem to perform slightly better than our
>home made jobs. It might be worth doing some experiments with flat plate
>
>caps held very tightly in metal frames.
>
>What do you think?

It's easy to forget the electric and magnetic fields are FORCE fields. Only
at very high power, and in very dense materials, does the force perceptibly
manifest itself.

Using super energy-density materials like ferrites and piezo-ceramics (with
Mu0 and E0's in the 1000's) requires ultrasonic-acoustic considerations, or
you end up with heated scrap.