Hi Terry,
You shouldn't have asked ;) .......
>On 17 Jun 2005, at 17:55, Tesla list wrote:
>.........................
> confused with anything else...
>
> Comments, observations, thoughts, suggestions....??
A qualification is needed to apply John's equation, that being that
it describes the best you can do under certain circumstances. It does
not say that you will always get "x" sparklength for every possible
combination of E x BPS. To demonstrate by way of an extreme example,
it most unlikely that 0.1J x 10,000BPS = 10J x 100BPS in terms of
sparklength. What we are really running into are some inherent
characteristics of ionized air (a specific mix of gases) at some
specific ATP when stressed by some specifically tailored electric
fields. It appears to me that the "F" constant arises because of
these properties, sort of like other universal constants. Interesting
to think too that while there are questions in some circles as to how
constant some of those constants actually are (when considered over a
long time span), our "F" might also be subject to modification at
some finer level as the atmospheric mixture changes over time.
Malcolm