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Re: Cap discharge time: was: Re:NEW break-rate/power tests



Hi Reinhard,
             What you say is valid but doesn't gain much in the 
scheme of things:

> Original Poster: "Reinhard Walter Buchner" <rw.buchner-at-verbund-dot-net> 
 
<snip>

> Take a cap and charge it to "x" volts. Then take a piece
> of wire and short it for, let|s say, a minute, all the stored
> energy (in the cap) will have been used up (turned into
> heating the wire in this case). If you remove the wire
> and take a DMM to measure the voltage, it will read
> zero or almost zero volts (no surprises here). If you now
> repeat the experiment, but this time only "brush" the
> wire against the cap terminal, you will find that the cap
> has residual voltage on it.
> 
> Taking this to Tesla coils:
> A low break rate will allow the cap to discharge (more)
> fully than a high breakrate system. Meaning the lower
> bps setup might be able to transfer more power
> (because the cap has the time to discharge fully).

The gap does go out at some fixed voltage leaving a residual charge 
on the caps. If 50V is left on a 0.1uF cap that amounts to 125uJ 
which is rather miniscule. Also, the dielectric recovery time 
constant is rather long compared with the time between breaks at 
2Fmains.

Malcolm