RE: fluorescent tube question

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

Original poster: "David Thomson by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <dave-at-volantis-dot-org>

Hi Ed,

I don't see any posts suggesting there is no current flowing.  The only
posts I have seen are those that said there is a lot of current flowing and
those that say there is very little current flowing.  Air is not a good
conductor, therefore energy must be increased in potential and decreased in
current in order for power to flow across it.

Considering that we're usually using 60mA or less at 15KV or less and
stepping the voltage up to around 100,000V or so, the radiated current would
therefore be around 4mA.  Then there is the inverse square law that applies
between the coil and the free fluorescent tube.  It doesn't take much to
realize at this point that the current is very low in a fluorescent tube
that is not in contact with the secondary; a lot less than 1mA, in fact.

Fluorescent tubes do not have voltage step down transformers in them, so we
can correctly state that the nature of electrical energy in the fluorescent
tube is high voltage, low current.

Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla list [mailto:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com]
Sent: Sunday, March 24, 2002 3:19 PM
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: fluorescent tube question


Original poster: "Ed Phillips by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<evp-at-pacbell-dot-net>

Some of the posts here seem to overlook the fact that current must flow
through the tube to ionize the mercury vapor/gas fill and excite it into
generating UV light.  Since there is a voltage drop across the tube that
means power must flow.

Ed