Re: A kinda? new discovery and coiler in northern ca.

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Jan Wagner <jwagner@xxxxxxxxx>

Hi,

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Tesla list wrote:
> Original poster: lystrash2@xxxxxxxxxxx First off I was wondering if you 
> guys have heard anything about them finding a superconducter that works at 
> relativly warm temperatures (40 kelvin I think) for those of you who dont 
> understand the significance of that (doubt theres many of you on this kind 
> of listing) you should be able to run as much electricity as you want 
> through something with zero resistance or heat energy.

Kelvins start from 0K and up, and 40K is like (40K-273)~= -230 centigrade 
i.e. -380 Fahrenheit. Newer materials are currently getting close to 150K, 
IIRC. So you'd need a bit of cooling with for example liquid nitrogen 
cooling (70K?), or liquid hydrogen (20K?), or others, in order to keep 
below the critical temperature of the superconductor.

Anyway, until you find superconductors on eBay at reasonable prices, using 
superconductors in Tesla coils is more of academic interest (if such exists 
for TCs ;-)

AFAIK they wouldn't bring any noticeable boost to streamer length anyway, 
at least not in spark-gap coils. However, maybe some day they could be used 
in various types of pulsed SSTCs as a replacement for the capacitors for 
building up massive amounts of energy before dumping
it to streamers... (thinking of (1/2)*L*I^2 ) 8-)

cheers,
 - Jan

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 Helsinki University of Technology
 Dept. of Electrical and Communications Engineering