Re: water spark gaps

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Stephen Carpenter" <sjc-at-carpanet-dot-net> 

On Wed, Nov 29, 2000 at 06:09:30PM -0700, Tesla list may have written:
> Original poster: "$" <Steve-at-g8cyerichmond.freeserve.co.uk> 
> 
> Some years ago I experimented with discharging caps through water spark
> gaps. I stopped for eone reason only, it is extremely dangerous!!. The short
> puls at high energy simply converts water to high high pressure steam (i'm
> talking about steam at 100s of degrees C.

Actually....I seem to remember reading a couple of years back some articles
on some weapons researchers using this. Their "gun" would simply dump 
electrcity into water on very short order (I am guessing capacitor discharge)
and using the resulting explosion to fire a projectile.

Accorrding to my memory, which is based on the article (though tends to be
faulty over long periods of time) it wasn't just steam, it was actually
producing water plasma. 

As a side note, they said that while it made a very effective weapon, it didn't
scale up well. As they were having problems creating large versions of their
weapon.

-Steve
-- 
"You can't legislate intelligence and common sense into people"
                -- Will Rogers