Why does top capacitance work?

• To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
• Subject: Why does top capacitance work?
• From: Steve Falco <sfalco-at-worldnet.att-dot-net>
• Date: Sat, 08 Feb 1997 10:47:25 -0500
• Subscriber: sfalco-at-worldnet.att-dot-net Mon Feb 10 21:49:24 1997

I must be suffering from a misconception about top capacitance - i.e.
the toroid.  People talk about putting a larger toroid on top as a way
to get a larger spark.  The claim is that the larger toroid has to
charge up to a higher voltage before breaking out.

The problem I have with this, is that the coil will be resonating with
an A.C. voltage, at 50 kHz or 100 kHz or whatever.  So, won't the top
capacitance charge and discharge at the same rate?  I would think the
average voltage would be zero.  (I know I'm wrong here - I've seen the
sparks!)

So what is going on?  Is there some sort of rectification effect here?
Can anyone tell me what they think a plot of the voltage versus time
would look like assuming we could hook a strip-chart recorder to our
tesla coil and record the instantaneous voltage?  Or do we get an
oscillation that builds over time where eventually the swing exceeds
the breakdown voltage?  This seems like the most likely description to
me.

	Thanks for any insights,
	Steve Falco
	sfalco-at-worldnet.att-dot-net

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