Re: Water as a conductor

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Dr. Duncan Cadd by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <dunckx-at-freeuk-dot-com>

Hi Jason!

The main problem with water and Tesla coils is not in fact electrical
resistance, electrolysis or anything like that, but dielectric loss at
high frequency.  (The ohmic resistance side of things is not a
problem, either at ac or dc, given suitable purification.) I've posted
another one on that.

>and what type of container would be used? it would
>have to be ultra-clean glass or something to keep the
>water that pure!!


Absolutely right!  Mark has commented on that in another post.  In the
bad old days, before modern ion exchange resins, getting a resistivity
of better than half a megohm-cm was good going, and you did it by
repeated fractionation of water in a still made of pure quartz and you
had to store the distillate in pure quartz flasks!  Pure water in
ordinary glass leaches out sodium ions, and even with quartz, silicon
dioxide dissolves very slightly!  (Water is in fact pretty well the
fulfilment of the old alchemists' dream of the perfect solvent ;-)
The purity of the water was nowhere like as good as that obtainable
today.

Dunckx