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spark energies

I just got to thinkin' deeper over a "samich" at lunch.  In my post on 
spark energy, I would literaly have to account for all energies created 
by the sparks themselves in my scenario.

Help me out guys.

I have tried to think of all the posibilities, but doubt I have covered 
them all.  A mental conclave might be in order.  I have also opted for a 
large 15" spherical lucite ball which I have as the sparking chamber.  
This material is a poor conductor of heat and a blanket of R-19 
insulation over the ball should trap most of the heat within provided 
quick mesurements are made. I hope to use my little 15VA coil system on 
this one.

I will, unfortunately, be unable to use a toroid in the chamber due to 
its thermal mass screwing with the air temperature. A small tungsten 
pointed needle will be the discharge point. (low thermal mass).

As the spark rips through the air it disappates its energy in the form of 
light, noise, heat, and ion production (which ultimately winds up as heat 
as the ions recombine).  In air, sparks produce little RF energy, but a 
grounded arc channel produces short waves at a prodigious rate.  (must 
avoid spark hits in my test).

I believe that the light and noise are a very small component and in a 
sealed chamber, a lot of the more energetic light, (uv), will ionize the 
local air anyway and a large portion of these ions will be placed in the 
chamber in the form of heated air as these, in turn, recombine.  
Electrical, resistive, heating of the arc channel is the bulk of the 
energy dissapated, although the ions produced by this little coil have 
been shown by me to account for a very healthy amount of energy.  Again, 
If I can just let them recombine in the ball enclosure, all will go to 
heat.  I am a little concerned that the ball will become dielectrically 
charged and the energy from the ions producing this charge will 
ultimately leak out to the outside air as soak through charging as in 
series capacitor units.

By the way, I plan on scoping the input voltage across the transfomer on 
one channel "A" and the current via a Pearson wideband 1844 CT on channel 
two "B" and create a third mathed channel of A X B for a true time/energy 
plot on my tek TDS 340 digital scope so that I have a real handle on what 
went in.   I'll use my K type thermocouple meter by Precision to take the 
before and after rectal temps on the fixed volume of air within. 

 Another problem... the air is trapped and not circulating and will skew 
the results in some fashion, I am sure.  But, still, this is the best I 
have heard of being attempted in this area, yet. 

I picked up on all this here in our lab two years ago when running 
Nemesis at 13KVA resulted in noticably increased air temps after long 
runs.

Any thoughts on this guys!  Really good experiment is never easy to make, 
especially if you plan on having anyone take your results seriously.

Richard Hull, TCBOR