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State finalist in the science fair with a Tesla Coil
Hello all!
Well, if you can remember several weeks ago I was picking your brains
concerning my step son's science fair project, a Tesla Coil. And, as I am also
sure you remember, it was a porject that took six months in production and was
finished in the eleventh hour. Well anyway, he passed the judging at the
school to actually advance to the local science fair . At the science fair he
received a superior. With this in his belt he advance to the regional finals
held at a university. At the regionals, he competed against over 400 students
and earned another superior, scoring 78 out of a possible 80 points. Only 43
students (of all grades) advanced to the state finals. So now this 8th grader
will be competing against over 800 students in the Ohio State finals. Boy am I
excited, of course not as much as he is. The finals are at the Ohio Weslyan
University on the 17th of April. Anyone in the area on this date I would look
forward to meeting you and talking "Tesla"!
Anyway, we have several things to accomplish beforehand. First, he was told
that he need to actually turn this into an experiment, which we have had a
difficult time in doing. One of the problems we've had is that how do you use
a TC in an experiment? One of the judges suggested creating a data table on
how caps change the effect of a TC. I guess that the key is a DT (data
table). Has anyone crossed this bridge and have any sugggestions? I suppose
we could create a DT on all the trials and errors and all the things we tried,
I just thought I would probe your minds for something a little more dazzling.
Second, The discharge on our unit is poor, while we've come to the
understanding it's capacitance. Currently we are running SW caps that we
fab'ed, it really matched the rest of the decor of the TC :) We are currently
using 16 Nestea bottles (four serial bottles in a sting, four strings in
parallel), Gary Lau was kind enough to test the capacitance for us some time
ago (THANKS GARY!) and it tested .00057uF, our system is going to require 4
serial bottles in a string, and ten stings in parallel, I think. When it comes
to series/parallel when working w/ caps I get really confused. Anyway, I have
four caps in a series because it is WAY over the voltage needed and after
running the TC for nearly 10 minutes in one run the caps didn't even get warm!
I really like that feeling! So tell me, are we going to throw this together
right? (with four bottles in a series to form a string and 10 strings in in
parallel).
Here is a question that is off the topic of the science fair, has anyone done
any reasearch on what exactly is going on INSIDE the secondary on a TC?
Kent