Re: tesla coil sfx

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

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi Justin,

Cool idea!

I think you would need only a few holes were you want the streamers to
breakout from.  Supplying the gas from an external tube may be hard since
many gases conduct fairly well at 250kV RF :-)   Small gas cylinders could
probably be placed on or in the toroid as long as it was done safely.

Cheers,

	Terry

At 01:39 PM 7/29/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>Here's an idea I had the other day that I thought might be kind of cool if it 
>could be done. Here's my idea: What if someone built a coil that had a toroid 
>with thousands of little perforations in its surface, similar to the surface 
>on an air hockey table. Then they ran tubes connected to cylinders holding 
>various compressed gases into the toroid. They could either run them up 
>through the secondary coil and make a mechanical connection between the tubes 
>and the toroid. By using various types of gases, could they change the color 
>and appearance of the arcs coming from their toroid?  For example, if argon 
>was first pumped into the toroid,  followed by helium, would the arcs change 
>from blue-green to pink?  I saw some pictures of a tesla coil that had a 
>toroid made of chicken wire, so I know that a toroid doesn't necessarily have 
>to be solid. Of course, if this was to work, the coil would have to be used 
>in a setting with almost no air currents. Click here for a diagram of what 
>I'm talking about because it kind of hard to explain <A 
>HREF="http://www.geocities-dot-com/cydesho/otherstuff/tcfx.gif">
>http://www.geocities-dot-com/cydesho/otherstuff/tcfx.gif</A>  Does anyone else 
>have any ideas or comments on this? 
>                                        Justin
>