Re: Exploding wire (fwd)

["High Voltage list" <hvlist@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Steven Roys <sroys@xxxxxxxxxx>



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 10:24:38 -0800
From: Peter Lawrence <Peter.Lawrence@xxxxxxx>
To: High Voltage list <hvlist@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Exploding wire (fwd)

Jim,
    wow, and I thought the difference would be whether the vaporized
metal would burn or not, aluminum is very combustable, copper is not,
iron is somewhere in between, and I was having a hard time imagining
how the vaporized metal could mix with air efficiently enough to get
some secondary energy out of the system...

-Pete Lawrence.




High Voltage list wrote On 11/23/06 06:36 AM,:
> Original poster: Steven Roys <sroys@xxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> 
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 21:48:30 -0800
> From: Jim Lux <jimlux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: High Voltage list <hvlist@xxxxxxxxxx>, hvlist <hvlist@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: Exploding wire (fwd)
> 
> At 08:41 PM 11/22/2006, High Voltage list wrote:
> 
>>Original poster: Steven Roys <sroys@xxxxxxxxxx>
>>
>>
>>
>>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 11:17:35 -0800
>>From: Peter Lawrence <Peter.Lawrence@xxxxxxx>
>>To: High Voltage list <hvlist@xxxxxxxxxx>
>>Subject: Re: Exploding wire (fwd)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>Hello All,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>I just bought 1400ft of .008, 32AWG piano wire. My Capacitor charge will be
>>>>14.3uf @ 40KV, I could do up to 50KV but the history of the Geek 
>>
>>Mighty Caps
>>
>>>>is unknown. How many feet can I blow of this wire? Surely this 
>>
>>would be more
>>
>>>>spectacular then a copper wire. Am I in the right ballpark for gauge? I
>>>>would like to reach 8 feet ~ 2.5 Meters. The caps are rated at near 9KJ at
>>>>full charge.
>>>
>>hmmm, vaporized metal is vaporized metal, not sure why anyone would expect
>>iron to be much different from anything else...
> 
> 
> 
> The kind of metal has a fairly significant effect.  It changes the 
> resistance, so the trade between resistance and inductance is 
> different. Ideally, you want the resistance to be such that the 
> circuit is close to critically damped, so that all the energy is 
> absorbed by the wire in that first quarter cycle, as opposed to over 
> multiple cycles as the circuit rings down.  For a given 
> configuration, there's not much you can do about inductance.
> 
> There's also a tradeoff in the amount of energy it takes to fuse and 
> then vaporize the wire, which is different for different metals, not 
> only because the melting and boiling points are different, but 
> because the density of the materials are different.  The thermal 
> capacities are similar for most metals.
> 
> but wait, there's more: the temperature coefficient of the resistance 
> is also different for different metals.  As the wire gets hotter, its 
> resistance increass, changing the circuit properties.
> 
> 
> This is all very difficult to predict easily, hence the "try it and 
> see if it works" advice.
> 
> Jim
> 
> 
> 
>>but then, I can't actually predict the outcome either, so let us know how
>>it turns out !!!
>>
>>-Pete Lawrence.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>