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Re: Displacement Current Revisited
Richard W. -
Thank you for doing the compass test. To my knowledge no one has ever made
this test before now. As Ed points out it is a known fact that there is a
DC bias in the operating Tesla coil. The question is whether this bias is
due to currents in the secondary or due to rectification in the discharge of
a spark. Is this bias due to an unsymmetrical waveform?
It is my belief that the instanstaneous currents in the secondary winding
are sufficient to affect a compass. The next question is whether the
polarity at the secondary terminal is positive or negative. Tests made to
date have been contraditory.
John Couture
---------------------------------
At 07:17 PM 3/28/99 -0700, you wrote:
>Original Poster: rwall-at-ix-dot-netcom-dot-com
>
>2/28/99
>
>Yesterday I lashed up a horizontal TC. I bolted my 4" coil to a piece of
>1/2 plywood with three 1/4" nylon bolts and fastened an old 6" helical primary
>to the same bolts. There was only 1" between the primary and secondary.
>Without major retuning, I placed it in the horizontal position. The TC was
>placed horizontally with the base East and ball termination West. I attached
>a cheap plastic compass to a 5' wooden stick with masking tape.
>
>With the coil firing at low power I approached the side of the coil with the
>compass. The compass reacted to the TC magnetic field(s). The fields were
>nonuniform, probably due to poor tuning. At this point I noticed occasional
>racing sparks at the lower 1/3 of the coil arcing to the top of the primary.
>
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