Chris/all,
I've just completed a number of exhibits for the Technorama Science
Museum in Switzerland and will be heading there from the US at the
end of the month to install them. In addition to these three exhibits
kVA also built a number of Tesla Coils for the museum with an
interesting "Hands On" configuration (trying to keep this on topic).
I can share more details on the Tesla Coils after September 15th if
anyone is interested.
The three exhibits I personally built are all based on High Voltage
Pulse Discharge Machines (Moderators - While these are not Tesla
Coils they are High Voltage / High Current devices and of interest to
many coilers but I'll ask for responses to be taken off-line).
Among these exhibits is a machine which creates 20cm Spherical
Plasmoids that separate from the generation device, float up another
20-60cm, and are able to sustain themselves for a short period of
time. I will not claim that these are "Ball Lightning" but they are
atmospheric pressure spherical plasmoids with characteristics very
similar to what has been reported as "Ball Lightning".
Please Note - My work was on creating a museum quality
experiment/demonstration while the credit for the original scientific
work goes to Sergei Stepanov at the Russian Acafemy of Science in St.
Petersburg Russia, who in 2000 published the first paper utilizing
this configuration and was very helpful to me. Sergei's experiments
were recreated at the Max Planck Institut für Plasmaphysik in Berlin
in 2006 with one of their pictures receiving a lot of attention and
overshadowing Sergei's work.
http://www.ipp.mpg.de/ippcms/de/presse/pi/05_06_pi.html
Before these devices were shipped from California to Switzerland the
Director of the Technorama Museum wanted to do some experiments and
investigation of his own. His goal was to look at the instant a
plasmoid was initiated, what happens when a wire explodes, and what
goes on when a can crushes. With that in mind we brought in a high
speed digital camera crew and took some awsome high speed pictures
which I hope to share with you in September. At the moment though you
can see some behind the scenes shots at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4XLUfBR0AU (please remember we weren't
trying to shoot a great picture of a plasmoid we were trying to see
what happens when it was initiated. We also learned some very
interesting facts about how a can crushes and that the finished shape
we see after the event is not what happens by the work coil alone.
And the exploding wire produced absolute beautiful pictures with a
welth of detail. Again, I should be able to post some of these
pictures and video after the clients press release in September but
you can get a teaser in the You-Tube video above.
Sorry for this long winded post but I'm stepping out here and trying
to share as much information as I can without giving away any of
kVA's or our clients proprietory information. I hope this is taken by
the TCML community in the positive way I intended.
Regards,
Brian B.
TCML Member since (well almost the beginning of the TCML - Thanks
Chip)