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Re: Tank frequency
Tesla List wrote:
>
> >From DavidF4797-at-aol-dot-comTue Oct 8 21:57:34 1996
> Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 10:24:12 -0400
> From: DavidF4797-at-aol-dot-com
> To: tesla-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com
> Subject: Tank frequency
>
> In response to Kyle Chadwick, it was mentioned that the ocilation frequency
> of the "tank" circuit is primarily a function of the inductance (L) of the
> primary coil and the capacitance (C) of the tank capacitor. This is of
> course a boilerplate description of a typical LC circuit..... In a neon
> xformer driven tesla circuit (primary), however, I understand that the
> inductance of the neon supply xformer (its secondary winding) has a much
> greater impact on the tank circuits frequency of occilation than the
> relatively measily inductance of the tesla primary coil. Any comments?
>
> Second, I have heard the term "tank circuit" used to describe an LC circuit
> for years and have never found anyone who knew what "tank" orriginally
> referred to or why the circuit was blessed with this name...... it has been
> suggested that the orriginal reference may be lost in antiquity. Any
> guesses?
>
> - DavidF
I too once inquired of some old Radio guys who went back to spark
gap days. They informed me that it came from the storage of energy as in
"storage tank". The energy just recirculated around the resonating "tank
circuit" as the capacitor and the inductor swapped energy back and forth.
This energy was tapped off as needed. A laser is an optical resonant
cavity or "tank" and energy is swapped back and forth in it via the
mirrors, pumping the ionized gas to ever higher and higher energy states.
In the old days, in spark gap transmitters, the tank circuits were just
like our Tesla coils. They amassed multi-megawatt pulses for release
into the capacitive loads of antenna systems.
Richard Hull, TCBOR