Re: MOT arc

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

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

Hi,

When you hook the battery to the primary it charges the primary coil with a
lot of current.  When you suddenly break the primary circuit, the sudden
zero current condition causes a voltage jump due the the inductance (V= L x
dI/dt).  Then the secondary just multiplies that.  So the energy that was
stored in the coil's inductance as current, suddenly got converted to
energy stored as voltage (a LOT of voltage :-)).

This is the same way the induction coil in a car works to fire the spark
plugs.  It is often reffered to as the "inductive kick" effect.  Guess
where they came up with the work "kick" :-))

Cheers,

	Terry

At 04:16 PM 6/15/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>i was messing with an MOT by holding a battery (6V) up to the terminals.  
>then there was a brilliant blue flash, the darn thing arced to my index 
>finger.  it felt like an ordinary static shock and obviously, it didn't kill 
>of hurt me. why is this?
>