Photographs of Lightning-on-the-Lawn Cheesehead Teslathon#1

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

Original poster: "D.C. Cox by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <resonance-at-jvlnet-dot-com>

 
photos in J-PEG format and virus scanned.
 
D.C. Cox
 
I am putting all of the photos at:

http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/LOL/


David Weiss's Cheeshead hat the one the pole pig.  Dave's hat featured a
working laser that fired with voice activation.  He screams fire and it fires
for 3 sec.  Also plasma ball works and it's all powered by 2 batteries encased
in the foam hat.
 
Very original and the big winner at the party.
 
Dr. Resonance

The wild Chicago style 2,000 volt DC, 20 Ampere, flowerpot "Soil Cooker"
produces it's own volcano.  It all starts with a melting resistor!!   Very wild
indeed.
 
Dr. Resonance

The amazing 220 volt / 2 kV DC, 20 Ampere flower pot "Soil Cooker" power
supply.
 
The lights dimmed as we actually cooked soil in fulgarites and other strange
forms.
 
Dr. Resonance

 
Jason about to Tesla vaporize a series of CD disks.  I believe he did say
something about Britney Spears falling out of style these days as he began the
vaporizing process.
 
Dr. Resonance

 
R. Scott Coppersmith actually standing still long enough to pose by one of his
excellent "twins" which produced dazzling 10 ft sparks all afternoon and into
the evening.  The cry "Let's hear those twins again" was heard more than once
in the lab.
 
Dr. Resonance 
Jason at the controls of his neat TC.  His left hand operates an adjustable
spark gap that can be changed while the coil operates.  Dozens of hard-chrome
plated steel balls on a moveable bar.  Another neat design idea.
 
Dr. Resonance

 
David Weiss's synchro RSG coil with a nice spark output.  Dave was modeling hit
hat at this moment and not available for an opeational blast.
 
Dr. Resonance
 

 
Sam's unique railgun design.
 
The large black U-shaped tube is a large resevoir of 150 PSI compressed air
that fires down the center to get the projectile up to 400 meter/sec velocity
before it hits and rails and shorts out which dumps all the cap energy into the
projectile and away it goes at around 4000 m/s.  By using this compressed air
accelerator initial projectile inertia is overcome and helps to provide better
overall projectile speed at the rails.
 
The small solenoid in the lower center is a special rapid dump solenoid that
opens in a small fraction of a second.  
 
The upper 1/2 (where all the bolts are) contains the rails which provide the
capacitor bank dump as the projectile hits the rails.
 
Hungarian physics Prof. Paul Nonn was on hand to give Sam a few design tips to
increase the velocity even more.
 
Also Prof. Clinton Sprott, Director of Plasma Physics at UW-Madison, was on
hand to look over the unique tubes we had on display.  Prof. Sprott does a
totally incredible "Wonders of Physics" show in mid-Feb. that is worth the trip
up to Madison, WI, to see.
 
Dr. Resonance

 
Sam Barros railgun shattered a few plywood boards and some styrofoam at the LOL
event.  This side view shows the huge capacitor bank Sam used.  
 
The top left half is the rail accelerator and the right half if the air
assisted gun to overcome the projectile's rest inertia.
 
Dr. Resonance