Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>
On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, Tesla list wrote:
> Original poster: "Ethersmith" <siveya@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> I would like to build a mobile tesla coil (onboard a modified car) that
> operates entirely inside a cage like sculpture of a brain (on top of the
> car). The brain will be six feet across at its smallest diameter and > made
To vastly reduce the power required to produce impressive streamers,
consider filling your brain with argon! As an example of the effect, note
that the purple corona discharge from a violet wand "vaccuum tester" is
about an eighth of an inch across, but when the metal tip is dipped into a
pool of cold argon in an open glass bowl, the discharge fills the bowl
with white plasma streamers many inches long. As I understand it, N2 and
O2 in air will consume large amounts of energy in chemical changes, while
single-atom gases like Argon, Neon, etc., don't do this. The same power
level that gives an invisibly small discharge in air will give a huge
impressive discharge in argon.
If your sculpture used copper tubing inside some sort of formed
transparent shell, and if you kept the shell topped off with argon, you
wouldn't need kilowatts to run the thing. (Maybe you wouldn't even need
the copper tubes.) The transparent shell wouldn't have to stand high
pressure. You could even use an inflated plastic bag, with some kind of
solid shell (or copper tubing) to force it into a "brain" shape.
When first starting an argon fill, it helps to use an aquarium air-stone
or a wad of tissue wrapped around the hose end. Without a diffuser the
argon stream just continually stirs air into the mix. (A tiny percentage
of air will poison the long-streamers effect.) But once the layer of
argon is deep enough, newly entering argon remains within the dense layer
and doesn't tend to drag air down into it. Then you can remove the air
stone and crank up the fill rate.
See
One-atmosphere plasma globes
http://amasci.com/tesla/heli1.html
> out of copper tubing. It will be built upon a 4X8 foot 3/4" piece of
> plywood. Mounted to the middle of this plywood will be the 2 foot tall
> secondary coil and torriod. The idea is for the coil to arc to the > brain.
> Ideally the car will be mobile which means the coil cannot be grounded > to
> earth without dragging heavy chains under the car.
(((((((((((((((((( ( ( ( ( (O) ) ) ) ) )))))))))))))))))))
William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb at amasci com http://amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair
Seattle, WA 206-789-0775 unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci