Re: fire conducts electricity?

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

Original poster: "Rick W by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <potluck-at-xmission-dot-com>

Adam,
Sure thing. It's the ionization of the "skin" of the flame. Introducing
certain chemicals to the flame can create a skin that can be vibrated to
produce sound. Due to the skin's small surface area it produces frequencies
greater than 2Khz quite easily.

Got this from an issue of Popular Electronics back in the late 60's.

It's a "flame speaker". The flame will turn a light purple indicating skin
ionization. The DC bias voltage is increased just until what looks like
small sparkles dancing on the electrodes. Then the audio is applied. The
first tune I heard from my first one was "Proud Mary" by CCR. :)

ftp://ftp.xmission-dot-com/pub/users/p/potluck/pics/flamespeaker.jpg

Rick W.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 11:31 AM
Subject: fire conducts electricity?


> Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<Beans45601-at-aol-dot-com>
>
> Okay, I was trying to light my blow torch (not like the blow torch that
had the
> tank of oxygen and take of fuel, just a little handheld one. Not sure if
those
> are called blow torches also...) a couple of days ago. Well, I didn't want
to
> use a match, they smell, and I didn't have a lighter. So, I decided to use
my
> tesla coil (I am sure it was not the smartest thing to do). Anyway, I
stood on
> a big plastic bucket to get my self off the ground, then turned on the gas
and
> held it up to the tesla coil. Well, it light (big suprise) and I noticed
> something weird, the sparks from my tesla coil were jumping to the fire,
not to
> the tip of the blow torch, but the fire. And I was thoroughly amazed!
Okay,
> what is happening here? does fire really conduct electricity, or is it
> something else I didn't think about?
>
> Thanks
> Adam
>
>
>