Re: Directions for tesla coil research

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

Original poster: "Eddie Burwell by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <eburwell-at-columbus.rr-dot-com>


>4) High speed photography and recording.  What's a good way to get properly
>synchronized high speed imagery?  Modern CCD cameras have shutter speeds
>that are fairly fast (100 uSec or better), but that's probably much too
>slow.  Good ideas on microsecond shutters (or is the technology still
>things like Kerr and Pockels cells)?  What about modifying an off the shelf
>image converter night vision scope (fast pulse on the cathode, for
>instance.. might be easier than fooling with nitrobenzene in a Kerr cell)

Image intensifiers do seem a good route to go. 50ns shutter time shouldn't
be too difficult with a 2nd gen or better. Some tubes designed for gated
duty can hit 200ps shutter time! The timing jitter of the spark formation
will make triggering the shutter interesting.
 Perhaps non-imaging techniques could provide some useful insight to spark
formation. A high bandwidth, wide dynamic range current probe to measure the
current from the topload into the streamer would be very interesting. This
could be accompanied by a high bandwidth light sensor to measure the light
vs time correlated with the current. Filtering for different wavelengths of
light might also be useful (UV vs t, IR vs t, etc.)
  Of course if there were a way to get hold of say 5 or more image
intensified CCDs(for cheap) and have them sequentially triggered to get time
resolved images, well, that would be beautiful!!

Eddie Burwell