Re: Spark Dissipation

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

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <FutureT-at-aol-dot-com>

In a message dated 1/31/01 10:14:43 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:

> It appears that the second spark might try to follow the path of the first
>  one for a short distance (an inch or less) but then finds its own path. Two
>  distinct sparks were evident most of the time, even at a spacing of 2 ms. 
>  
>  At 125 sparks per second (5 ms burst and 3 ms spacing) the
>  spark length drops about 12 percent from the 1 spark per second case. There
>  are enough other things happening in a conventional Tesla coil (resonance 
in
>  the power supply, heating effects, etc.) that this probably would not be
>  obvious either. The point is that one should use whatever break rate gives
>  the most pleasing visual appearance, without expecting that going from 60 
to
>  120 to 240 sparks per second will make a significant difference in spark
>  length.
>  
>  Gary Johnson

Gary,

Do I understand correctly, that you're suggesting disruptive spark
lengths do not increase much as the break rate is increased from
for instance 120 to 240 bps?  This does not seem to fit what I've
seen in my work.  I've found a 20% increase in spark length as
the bps was increased from 120 to 240 bps while keeping the
bang size constant.  Greg Leyh's streamers in his old coil, 
grew almost linearly with increased breakrate.  The sparks can
be seen to grow over time.  The sparks from each bang do not 
seem to be separate sparks, but seem to follow the same paths,
adding to the length.

John