Re: salt water cap test

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

Original poster: "Chris by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <chris-at-atomic-pc-dot-com>

Hi Christopher,

You could find a capacitance meter on eBay for under $100, something in the
1-3000 pF range would be
ideal for SW bottles... I've tested a bunch of Snapple bottles, filled up
to the edge of the textured
part where the bottle starts to taper, and coated with aluminum foil on
outside.  The results vary from
720 to 790 pF, with the most common being 735 pF  (either the company has
pretty uniform bottle
production or I was just lucky).

Small Tropicana orange juice bottles (conical taper at top) give an average
of 540 pF.
I tested a Stewart's root beer bottle, the brown glass kind that's shaped
sort of like a barrel, and it
shows 840 pF.  Not exactly a scientific survey but there's my $0.02.

EPE Online has a nice capacitance meter project but I gave up & bought a
meter because I am not good
enough w/ electronics to build one   :-)

Chris


Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: "master koola by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <masterkoola-at-hotmail-dot-com>
>
> I have a salt-water capacitor I recently built and I was wondering how I
> would test it (sorry about my ignorance in these things). I was thinking
> about wiring it up to a spark gap and charging it till it fires. I am using
> a 7500-volt neon transformer to charge it. I don’t have any fancy equipment
> to test it with thanks for any help.
>
>                                                 christopher