Original poster: Jim Lux <jimlux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> At 08:04 AM 4/10/2006, Tesla list wrote:
Original poster: BunnyKiller <bunikllr@xxxxxxx> Hi Langer... we see it pretty much the same way we see a neon tube glowing...
Folks.. all this talk of ionization levels and such are fine, and there's no doubt that some of the light coming of the sparks on a TC is from excited nitrogen. Nitrogen has a whole raft of lines all the way from red to blue.
However, the dominant source of light is going to be blackbody radiation from hot gas, at least for any spark that's reasonably bright.