Re: Ball lightning - Terry's thoughts....

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>

On Sat, 6 Aug 2005, Tesla list wrote:

> >Unlike say wood at only 400 degrees, a chunk of wood suddenly
> >(microseconds) "promoted" to 20,000 degrees might turn into a
> >flaming ball of stuff that might float around for a moment as all
> >the materials decide what end combustion products and chemical
> >states they are going to end up as...

Speaking of which...   the SRL, the arts group with the killer robots and
the Greg Leyh coil, they have a spark shooter device, the "thousand points
of light."   If I understand it, it's just a can-crusher capacitor.  But
instead of discharging it through copper as we normally do (which just
shatters the copper and flings out the shrapnel,) instead they discharge
it through welding rod.  Lots more resistance.  The welding rod liquifies
instantly, and Lorentz forces fling the melted droplets outwards.  They
were using it in the 1990 Seattle show I attended, and I have it on
a rented SRL video.

The temperature of the "bang" would not only depend on the joules in the
capacitor, but also on the size of the conductive object.  Perhaps a
fairly small hunk of charcoal, if selected to produce a milliseconds-long
neutrally damped current pulse, would do weird things if connected
directly to a can crusher bank.


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William J. Beaty                            SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
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