Re: Styrofoam top loads

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

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi Chris,

At 01:38 AM 9/27/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>I made a torus out of a pool noodle from the pool store
>its was pretty easy to make. Unfortuneatly I havent been able to get it to
>work, but
>my hollow aluminum ducting one works great.
>The pool noodle is made up of open celled PE plastic
>I am guessing I cant get it to work beacuse I
>either cant tune to the point necessary (lack of equiptment/inexperience),
>or its capacitance is so high my system cant drive it?

The only thing that matters is the shape and size of the toroid.  What is
inside the metal shell makes no difference.  As long as the pool toy has
aluminum foil or some conductive surface on it and it is electrically well
attached to the top of the secondary, it should work fine.

>
>Would it be correct in thinking this type of torus would have a much
>greater capacitance than a torus made of hollow aluminum tubing?

If it is "bigger" it will have more capacitance.

>
>Would a torus with a sytrofoam center have a different capacitance
>than a hollow aluminum torus?

Yes, the electricity never goes inside the toroid.  If it is air or if it
is solid aluminum, it is all the same.  The electrons only flow on the
outer metal surface.

>
>Can you islolate a torus in space then
> measure the capacitance with a multimeter?

Sort off, The wire going to the toroid adds capacitance too.  You can
measure just the wire and then add the toroid to find the difference.  That
would be pretty close.  You may be interested in this program for finding
such things as capacitance and Fo frequency.

http://hot-streamer-dot-com/TeslaCoils/Programs/E-Tesla6.zip

http://hot-streamer-dot-com/andrewb/

Cheers,

	Terry


>
>Thanks
>Chris