Re: Superconductivity

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

Original poster: "Jason Johnson by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <hvjjohnson13-at-hotmail-dot-com>

Based on this thread of cooling the gap with liquified gases of different
sorts, I got to thinking (uh-oh!) and thought I'd throw in my comments as
well. First off there is a problem with the gas going from a liquid to a gas
from the heat of the plasma. Now there is no way (well maybe, but I'm saying
no) to supercool a plasma. The high temperature is really what causes plasma
to start with. Now I don't know how somebody was going to cool there gap
with liquid whatever but here is my plan:

Take two electrodes with a fair amount of room in between, on the order of a
triggered gap. Now insert another smaller electrode with a hole drilled
perpendicular to the axis of the two larger electrodes, in the center of the
two but not directly in the arc path (that is if you had a straight arc
path), but slightly behind the gap. It would look something like this 0_0
where the 0's are the main electrodes, and the _ is the smaller one. Now
connect the center electrode to a trigger source, such as an auto coil, and
the hole in it to a liquid nitrogen source under a slight amount of pressure
(just the pressure formed by the LN evaporating in a sealed container should
be plenty). The two main electrodes are hooked to your tank circuit like
normal. Now when you trigger the gap with a flow of LN present the main arc
channel would form as usual, but as soon as the hot plasma came into contact
with the very cold nitrogen (it probably wouldn't be in liquid form by now,
but would still be cold enough to work) there would be a small "explosion"
of sorts which should completley blow out the arc present in the gap, along
with keeping the main electrodes quite cold, which should reduce power
arcing from hot metal ions in the gap. With a good flow of supercold
nitrogen the gap should be able to operate to very high repetition rates
without any problems.

I like this idea (I'm a little biased, however :-), but I would like to hear
feedback from people who know more than I. Also feedback as in: No that
won't work because..., or: Thats a great idea! It should work
beautifully..., Not insulting my intelligence, as has recently happened to
me offlist.

Jason Johnson