Re: Tesla Coils in Practical Applications

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Jim Lux by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>

The most practical application for TC's is entertainment.  I'd venture to
say that anyone who makes a living from making and/or operating TC's these
days is in the entertainment (or museum display, which is essentially the
same thing) business.

Just because they're not used for some seemingly more worthy reason (i.e.
finding a cure for cancer, sending man to the moon, etc.) is no reason to
sneer at the application.  In economic terms, entertainment is a much larger
industry than those other ones.  Compare how much we're spending to send a
fairly unsophisticated robot to Mars (say, $300M) and how much they're
spending to make a single Harry Potter movie (>$150M).  In terms of
providing satisfaction and net good to society, I can't make a good case
either way (bread and circuses, nothwithstanding).  (Also, leaving aside
spectacular misspent sums on either failed space probes (Mars 98 missions)
or epic movies of not much value (Hudson Hawk, e.g.)


If you need a "test hypothesis using control group" kind of experiment, then
I'd do some sort of "effects of tesla coils on xyz".   Set up a "haunted
house", measure heart rates, or pupil dilation, etc., as they go through,
with and without TC randomly being turned on.

If you want a "engineering" kind of project, then measuring spark length
with varying coupling factor (done by changing relative position of primary
and secondary) might be a good one.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001 4:24 PM
Subject: Tesla Coils in Practical Applications


> Original poster: "CJ Moore by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<wizard1234-at-home-dot-com>
>
> I know that while there has been a great deal of research in Tesla Coils,
> has anyone found any real practical application for these devices?
(besides
> testing aircraft)
>
> The reason that I ask is I have done Science Fair (school project type
deals
> for those who don't know) projects in the past with tesla coils, 1st one
was
> something really stupid and I don't remember what it was about. The second
> one was a little better, I tested to see if the magnetic field around the
> coil decreased proportionally to the distance from a given point. (I used
a
> multimeter and a search coil, which is a like a small secondary).
>
> This year I don't have any ideas and need one fast.
> If anyone could help me with an idea I would be very grateful.
>
> I need something which is constant, and then a variable to test.
> IE: which flower lives longest 1) NaCL solution 2) sucrose solution 3)
> pepper solution 4) aspirin solution 5) pure H2O (constant) * The flowers,
> amount of water, sunlight, etc. would remain constant but the substance
> changes.
>
> So I need something like that but in the TC field.
>
> One idea that I had was to create one coil and then the 3 different types
of
> primaries to see which one worked best with the given system, but I don't
> know how well that would work out.
>
>
> Thanks,
> CJ
>
>
>