Re: Parallel and Series LCR Circuit Qs

["Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz" <acmq-at-compuland-dot-com.br> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

Tesla list wrote:
> 
> Original poster: "Jim Lux" <jimlux-at-jpl.nasa.gov>
> 
> Even in a low pressure chamber (not really vacuum, but in the 1 torr area)
> you still get forked arcs. The chamber and stuff was cleaned quite
> thoroughly before pumping down, the chamber was evacuated fairly well, and
> then backfilled to the required pressure.  Dust would have a hard time
> remaining airborne without any air molecules to keep it up.

Really, I have seen this happen. Sparks in an evacuated tube retain
the randomness, with bright channels still visible in the glow before
the point where only the glow remains.
 
> It IS probably just some sort of random effect though.. The leader is
> developing, stops as charge accumulates within the leader.  Just then, a
> cosmic ray, or something, provides a localized area of lower dielectric
> strength, or enhanced field, which provides the direction to start off and
> it just keeps going.
> 
> There is also a scale issue... the straight segments in lightning are
> fairly long (10's of meters)

Sparks are fractals, with similar degree if irregularity observable
at different scales of size. The thick channel of a lightning spark
probably smoothes out minor irregularities, or at least makes them
difficult to observe (or nobody ever managed to observe a lightning
strike at close distance and tell the story later...)

Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz