Original poster: "Mike" <induction@xxxxxxxxxxx> Hi All,I've been reading the thread with much interest once it came into the area of polarity asymmetry. I had forwarded a few posts this thread to a friend at MIT and it got his attention because he's been dealing with this asymmetry for a while in his specialty atmospheric electricity. Provided here is a link to a 2 meg PDF file Earle Williams did back in October of 2005.
www.hot-streamer.com/mike2004/Eindhoven_paper_revised.pdfThere are some good examples, page 4 and 5 area of positive and negative discharge pictures. In one, a two sided chamber, one of each polarity, has an equal charge, with a triggered gap between them. This is a frontal view so you see the positive, the negative and the gap tube view all at once.
Also other good pictures, many good references, etc.Earle found interesting the comments of the charge left on balls to 30 feet away from a small ~ 15 or 20 watt coil. Is there direct references if this was in a text or were these documented experiments, this would be the charge of 4 volts on the ball I saw spoken of. Is that a list member and who? The quoted messages in reply to can get confusing, depending who is replying, what prior message parts were quoted or clipped and so on. Earle found it interesting that in an RF environment of discharging TC's, this was yet another case of polarity asymmetry at work. He asked for more or better data on the charged ball experiment, he hoped there were notes, etc. Who do I follow this back to? The paper is a good read, hope it brings something to you.
Mike ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> To: <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, December 26, 2005 8:07 PM Subject: Re: Terry's New Plane Wave Antenna
Original poster: "Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz" <acmdq@xxxxxxxxxx> Tesla list wrote:Original poster: "Dmitry (father dest)" <dest@xxxxxxxxxxx> > Original poster: Terry Fritz <vardin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Hi, > It is well known that coils tend to charge up the surroundings > negatively due to the fact that negative voltages arc "easier" than > positive ones. Ie, mercury arc rectifier. ? B&R "Spark discharge", page 284: "6.11.1. Negative leader. [...] it`s more difficult to make the breakdown by the negative voltage, we need higher voltages to do that."The book is wrong. Corona really forms more easily on negatively charged bodies. Or it appears to do so. In an electrostatic machine producing symmetrical voltages, longer sparks are obtained when the positive terminal ball is smaller than the negative, so the positive side breaks down first. Otherwise the negative ball is observed to emit corona while nothing happens in the positive, and sparks do not form (why, I don't know). Probably, this is more related with spark generation than with breakdown voltages, and I don't remember seing actual measurements of breakdown voltages with positive or negative voltages, that really don't have reasons to be different. Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz