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Glass Sparks



Original poster: "Sebastian Fischetti" <QuantumStrings@xxxxxxx>

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So I finished building my tesla coil a couple of days ago, and I've been having a blast experimenting with it and trying different toploads and stuff. Among my many experiments I placed a piece of glass over the top of the toroid and used my grounded safety probe to generate a spark that went through the glass...well, it didn't actually go through; it created a web of sparks on either side of the glass that then produce a spark to my probe and to the toroid. In trying to figure out how this worked, I hypothesized is that the glass acts as a dielectric to a capacitor in which in broken down air on either side of it (i.e. the web of sparks) acts as the electrodes. I haven't researched this, but I just wanted to know what you guys thought?


Also, does anyone have any other suggestions for stuff to try out with the coil? I've placed almost anything I could get my hands on on the top of the coil, all with great effect, but more ideas would be appreciated! (and fun =)

Thanks!