Re: Salt water cap basics.

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

Original poster: "Christoph Bohr" <cb-at-luebke-lands.de> 

Hello Colin.

 > I
 > thought salt water being a conductor would just short out a
cap.

Hm You might have made some false assumptions here. Of course
salt water is a pretty good conductor,
so we use it for the conductive part in the cap ( the part made
of metal sheet in other caps if you want to put it
this way.) The conductive salt water is inside and in some cases
outside the bottles to form the two plates
of your cap. The glass or palstic of your bottles seperates the
two areas, isolates them from each other, thus forming
your dielecric layer.

 > What is
 > the advantage over using pure distilled water. Why does it
work?

This is another story. Really pure distiled water will not
cunduct any current as there are no
free ions to carry the charge through it. It is in some ( rare )
cases used to insulate big HV machinery.
But this only works as long as the water is really free of any
salts etc. In other words:
whirl your sweaty finger in the distilled water and you messed up
its insulating properties by putting
some salt in in.

 > How does
 > it work?

See above. The on is a conductor and the other an insulator.


 > Is there a FAQ or is the answer in the archives?
There certainly is, but you might want to have a look at the geek
groups site, they have
a very beginner friendly step by step guide for building your
salt water cap if you really like to go that way.

http://www.thegeekgroup-dot-org/projects/bucketcap/

But I would really advise you on getting a small MMC. For small
coils this is very cheap and easy.

Best regards and good success

Christoph Bohr