Re: Tesla Coil RF Transmitter

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz" <acmdq@xxxxxxxxxx>

Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: stork <stork@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Antonio,
> What is the path of this current going into the ground, moving just 
> a bit away from the ground connection and then returning to the terminal?

It moves from the ground connection in all directions, until the local
electric field is counterbalanced by the electric field attracting the
current back to the top terminal. The current then stops, leaving the
charges in the ground surface distributed as in a charged capacitor,
where one of the plates is the top terminal (with some influence of the
coil too) and the other plate is the ground.
Some current moves away, as a ground wave following an electromagnetic
wave in the air above, but it is very small for conventional Tesla
coils, with dimensions much smaller than the wavelength of the operating
frequency.

Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz