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TC SECONDARY ELECT


 Te> I found that when I move a fluorescent lamp up and down about an inch
 Te> from the  secondary winding of my Tesla coil after it has been
 Te> disconnected from the  mains, the lamp flashes.  This phenomenon will
 Te> occur for several hours after the 
 Te> TC has been operated.  The secondary coil is wound with magnet wire on
 Te> a PVC  tube and heavily insulated with styrene paint (Q dope).  I
 Te> suspect that this  effect is due to residual charge stored in the
 Te> secondary capacitance.   
 Te> If I let it sit for a while after having generated many flashes and
 Te> seemingly  discharged the capacitance, it recovers.  Any theories about
 Te> what is going on?

Since the coil (form) has been "stressed" with a very high potential, it
will, being a "capacitor" store some of that electrical potential. Even
when discharged, it will regain some of its potential voltage due to this
"stress". I found this out (the hard way!) when I was designing computer
type monitors, and after discharging the CRT's, they would "charge them-
selves " back up again. This effect was exploited by the Japanese during
WW2, they had a portable transceiver that used a microphone with a wax
element that not only was a capacitive "electret" type, but provided
the necessary negative grid bias from the stressed electrical potential.
(I later found one of these little transceivers, but stupidly sold it!)
I do not know the exact scientific "physics" explaination as to why the
electrical stress on a dielectric will do this, perhaps someone out
there can provide a more "scientific" dissertation!

Brad Alheim
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12