Re: Fw: Tesla Coils & Ball Lightning

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>

On Sun, 31 Jul 2005, Tesla list wrote:

> 	On of my friends, whose wife doesn't mind foul smells, used to produce
> little fire balls from his TC by putting on his HV terminal a piece of
> rubber insulation stripped off a wire, lighting it, and firing up.  I
> have some pictures somewhere.  Many others have used similar methods.  I
> can't get away with that sort of thing around here, only dangerous
> experiments which aren't so obvious!

If it has any similarity to "microwave oven ball lightning," then the key
is to inject metal ions or carbon ions into the arc.

It's not hard to produce arcs inside a microwave oven (just use pieces of
aluminum foil.) But if you want to make disconnected blobs of plasma which
fly around inside the oven, you *must* put either some carbon or some
sodium (etc.) into the initial arc.  It's really amazing how different the
plasma behaves once it has something besides nitrogen and oxygen involved.
You can collect the carbon-ion-plasma in an inverted glass inside the
microwave oven, and it will sit there sloshing back and forth like an
upside down liquid.  (Then it shatters the glass after a minute or so,
since it's as hot as a flame.)  While it's sitting there, give it some
salt crystals and it flares intensely bright yellow.  But this isn't
genuine BL, since it winks out instantly when the RF is turned off.  (I
wonder if this kind of BL plasma could be kept alight by putting it in the
intense RF fields surrounding a TC?)

See:

  http://amasci.com/weird/microexp.html#candl
  http://amasci.com/weird/microexp.html#plasm

  http://amasci.com/tesla/bigball2.html

  http://amasci.com/tesla/bigball3.html



(((((((((((((((((( ( (  (   (    (O)    )   )  ) ) )))))))))))))))))))
William J. Beaty                            SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb at amasci com                         http://amasci.com