Re: An couple of interesting observations and an idea.

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

Original poster: "Jim Lux by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>

I've done quite a bit with making colored sparks in a Jacob's ladder. All
you need is the appropriate salts (Strontium for red, Barium for Green,
Sodium for bright yellow etc.)  They ionize readily, and are so luminous
compared to the nitrogen in air that it doesn't take much to strongly color
the spark.  In fact, the ions hang around for a while (being slow to
recombine), and dramatically reduce the breakdown voltage in the gap.

You can squirt a water solution with a fine sprayer into the sparks, or
paint the surface, or...

With a flame, you might try an alcohol lamp with the salt dissolved in the
alcohol.  methanol is popular as an alcohol because it burns very lean with
minimal sooting(colorless), unlike isopropyl, which tends to burn with a
yellow flame.  Nitromethane is popular in commercial "colored fire" mixes
because the included oxygen reduces sooting, and it also has a reasonably
high flame speed, so it doesn't blow out in the wind..

here's another idea: build a small aspirator that blows a fine stream of
aluminum powder (available from big paint supply places as pigment)


Tesla list wrote:
> 
> Original poster: "Garry Freemyer by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <garry-at-ndfc-dot-com>
> 
> Last night I tried a simple experiment. Put a squat candle on the toriod of
> my coil and started it up.
> 
> As expected, the flame flickered around and a streamer shot out of the top
> of the flame. It seemed to follow the rising gasses over the flame.
> 
> Would be interesting if anyones coil would be strong enough to put the flame
> out with the turbulance.
> 
> Also noted that the Hue on the pictures takein with my digital camera
> shifted towards the blue end of the spectrum making for some real neat
> looking BLUE streamers rather than the violet colored ones.
> 
> Would be very intersting to run a program or filter to change the streamer
> color. I bet a picture of a TC with GREEN or RED streamers would be a VERY
> interesting conversation piece.
> 
> I might even post up some pictures of such different colored streamers after
> you have all forgotten about this email. Would be interesting to see how
> many ask me how I got green, red orange, yellow and other colored streamers.
> *Evil Grin*