x-rays from TC capacitors?!!!

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>


I stumbled across an odd idea.

If a home-built stacked-plate capacitor is operated with high-volt pulses,
then the thin air-film trapped between the foils and the dielectric sheets
will glow violet.  (I verified this idea using a quickie test device made
from a thin glass bowl, foil on the bottom, and salt-water on the top.
Sure enough, under pulsed HV drive there's a purple glow shining from the
foil surface under the glass.)

Ah, but we know that plasma leads to pumping: both from ion pump effects
where gas molecules embed into metal surfaces, and also from N2 turning
into metal nitrides, and O2 turning into metal oxides.  (Plasma does
chemistry.)

So I seal up the edges of the foil on the glass/saltwater cap, then run it
for awhile.  Sure enough, the purple glow from between the foil and glass
changes color after a few minutes.  Becomes greyish.  Maybe even greenish.
I place it on the large ion chamber of a GM counter, but don't detect any
rise above background count.  I could keep running it for lots more
minutes, but I'd burn down the contacts of my little "vacuum tester TC."


So... any high-voltage pulse capacitor which is sealed but which isn't
vacuum-impregnated with oil is going to have plasma-filled air films, and
the internal pressure is going to drop over time.  And in theory, over
time these air layers might pump down to just below non-glowing vacuum
threshold, and then start emitting soft x-rays!

What to do?  The whole problem might be a crackpot idea, eh?  It's all
speculation (except for my glass/saltwater test.)  Suggestion: paint the
outside of your home-built well-sealed Tesla coil stacked-plate capacitors
with ZnS glow-in-dark paint.  Run them in a darkened room separate from
the bright streamers and spark gap.  Or instead make an xray alarm: a
solar cell as sensor, painted with fluorescent paint and embedded in black
epoxy or silicone.

First one to detect a dim green glow wins a prize:  slightly irradiated
gonads!

:)


If the effect ever proves real, then does it mean we can replace the
vacuum tube in the dentist office with a bunch of aluminum foil layers
with spontaneously-appearing vacuum inside?   (And would a cylindrically
wrapped capacitor act as a line-source of x-rays?)

More pure speculation: if capacitors ever do emit x-rays, then it gives
one more source of x-rays that Nikola with his fluorescent screens and
glass photographers plates might have stumbled upon.  Yes, he probably did
find x-rays when operating his carbon button lamps.  But what if he
hadn't?  Imagine how confusing it might have been if he'd tracked down the
capacitor as the source of a new kind of radiation, only to later hear
from Roentgen that vacuum tubes also produce it.


((((((((((((((((((((((( (  (    (o)    )  ) )))))))))))))))))))))))
William J. Beaty              Research Engineer
beaty chem.washington.edu     UW Chem Dept,  Bagley Hall RM74
billb eskimo.com              Box 351700, Seattle, WA 98195-1700
ph425-222-5066                http//staff.washington.edu/wbeaty/