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Re: Spherical discharge terminal
From: Greg Leyh[SMTP:lod-at-pacbell-dot-net]
Sent: Sunday, June 22, 1997 6:47 PM
To: Tesla List
Subject: Re: Spherical discharge terminal
Esondrmn wrote:
> There was some discussion here a while back about the different effects
> produced by using round v.s. toroidal discharge terminals. Last night I
> placed an aluminum foil covered styrofoam ball (about 6" in dia.) on the top
> of the toroid of my 3" coil. When running, for the first several seconds,
> the discharges are similar to using the toroid - dancing around the ball and
> many forked like normal, then after maybe 20 seconds it settles down to just
> one streamer going straight up. This one streamer walks around the ball
> somewhat but has no forks in the discharge except at the very top. It goes
> straight up for about 16" to 18" then produces many forks at the top. I have
> never seen this before. It reminds me of a tornado in appearance.
>
> Has anyone tried this on a larger, higher powered system? That would be
> something to see a single discharge going straight up for seven or eight
> feet. This would probably only work outside with absolutely no wind.
My coil does the same thing, but with the toroidal electrode. I think
that it has more to do with the time of formation of the ion cloud, and
convection currents around the coil.
-GL