Re: Salt water cap basics.

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

Original poster: "Colin Quinney" <crquin-at-rogers-dot-com> 

Thank you, David, Matthew, & Christoph.

I think my misunderstanding arose because I was previously reading 
something about a method of determining the dielectric constant of water, 
yet with a substance dissolved. In the article they were talking about some 
kind of impedance analysis to determine the dielectric constant and yet I 
knew that the material was somewhat conductive.

Again, thanks for clearing it up and for the references  :-)

Colin



At 12:18 PM 9/11/2004, you wrote:
>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