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Re: Science Fair success!

Hi Matt,

At 04:57 PM 05/08/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi all, this is matt and just won the science fair.

Great!!  congratulations!!!

>The judges were very hard 
>to get along with and stated some false info also.He said Tesla was famouse 
>for DC and not Ac!? Am I wrong or is he?Several other arguments suggested he 
>knew very little about tesla coils.

Maybe the judge was just "testing" your knowledge.  It is fairly unlikely
he would have known such detail (like knowing Tesla's name) and managed to
get it backwards.  Of course, you may have won because you taught the
judges something ;-))

>Also my sparks were only 7 in!!!They used 
>to be 15 at home.Is it the ground rod? At home the ground rod was 1ft away 
>from the coil.At the school it was about 20 or more feet away.

Grounding or positioning the coil in a different place could have changed
the tuning accounting for the shorter arcs.  There are a lot of
possibilities...  Best to see if it returns to normal when you get it back
home.

>Thank goodness 
>it was only 7 in because a stupid guy in 11th grade went in when no one was 
>around and turned it on! He said he touched it bare handed right on the 
>toroid and it knocked him silly.

Those darn 11th graders ;-)))  That is why many of us use key lock switches
on or coils.  Curious people may do things they shouldn't, so you need to
insure that they can't go hurt themselves.

>>matt
>

BTW -  The sleepy moderator staring at 70+ posts this morning (thanks
Chip!) let the bearing thing slip through. :-O  For some reason I thought
it was for a rotary gap.  Perhaps since I have a rotary with a burned up
bearing and being half asleep anyway...  Oh well, think of it as a 'once in
a lifetime' reward for winning the science fair!  ;-))  If worst comes to
worst, contact me off list and maybe I can find you some.

Cheers,

	Terry