Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>
On Sat, 18 Jun 2005, Tesla list wrote:
> However I believe ball lightning is an AC phenomena, and the Golka
video > is
> DC,
IIRC, natural lightning is totally DC, and a shorted battery bank *might*
be a closer match than a Tesla coil. I'll have to double check this (I
think the Martin Uman book LIGHTNING has the waveforms of the transient
fields during lightning strikes, perhaps even currents.)
> and I'd imagine what he is generating is bits of molten metal, and not
> ball lightning. - I could be wrong.
That's the issue. Unless you're on a slow modem, check out that
video: http://www.eskimo.com/~bilb/GolkaBL.wmv (30 megs)
The "welding spatter" skittering around on the watter appears to be
glowing beads about 7mm in diameter, but they shrink enormously as time
goes by, perhaps to 10x smaller diameter.
If someday I have a way to create those same "welding spatter" beads, I'll
try casting their shadows on a frosted screen. As with the shadow of a
candle flame, it will eliminate any "illusions" and make the diameter
measurable. It will also prove whether or not there is a liquid metal
droplet buried in the center of the (larger?) glowing sphere.
> AFIK Tesla had a problem with ball lightning, they are allegedly
related > to
> a resonance of E fields, all oscillating around one another to create a
> ball, imagine a Fourier series in 3 dimensions....
My suspicions exactly. But such a thing might be created by a DC pulse
from a battery bank.
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William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
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Seattle, WA 206-789-0775 unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci