Re: Spark-gap sparks vs. solid-state sparks

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

Original poster: "Kennan C Herrick by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <kcha1-at-juno-dot-com>

John (& all)-

If there's an ion cloud there, I sure can't see it.  But it seems certain
that there's none there after the coil sits for a while & then I hit it
with 1 spark.  And just 1 spark acts, for me, exactly like repetitive
ones except, as I've written, when they are very close together in time. 


I may try gating the spark on & off using an external sq.-wave generator,
during my 7 ms burst-period.  That way I can find out how long it takes
for each repeating mini-spark to require essentially the full break-out
voltage of the first one to break out itself.  That'll be a nice
experiment.

While so far it's on the basis of no evidence, I'm convinced that
air-inertia is an important factor.

Ken

On Fri, 20 Apr 2001 15:23:38 -0600 "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
writes:
> Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" 
> <FutureT-at-aol-dot-com>
> 
> In a message dated 4/20/01 12:23:22 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
> tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:
> 
> >  It is the much higher electrode voltage, accumulated during one 
> or
> >  > more leading-quarter-cycles of excitation that occur during 
> the
> >  > inertial-containment time(s), that accounts for most of the 
> spark.  It
> >  > may well be that several consecutive quarter cycles are 
> involved, and
> >  > that the spark grows step-wise during a number of cycles of
> >  > excitation--until the spark's added circuit-resistance 
> diminishes the
> >  > secondary's current too much for that process to continue.
> 
> Ken, Malcolm, all,
> 
> Maybe also, a slow buildup of energy creates a larger, more intense
> ion cloud around the toroid before spark breakout.  This ion cloud
> may affect the spark's formation, by letting the streamer grow 
> fatter
> and brighter than it otherwise would (since the air is pre-ionized 
> over
> a large area).  This fatness and brightness of the streamer burns up 
> 
> energy which would otherwise go into extending the spark.  Just a 
> suggestion, I have no idea if it works this way.  Any comments?
> 
> It would be interesting to see if the pre-breakout frequency shifts
> more in a CW coil than in a spark gap TC.
> 
> John Freau
> 
> 
> 
> 
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