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Re: Light Bulb Experiment (ala Brent Turner)

Tesla List wrote:
> 
> >From bert.hickman-at-aquila-dot-comSun Sep 15 21:41:18 1996
> Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 14:31:17 -0700
> From: Bert Hickman <bert.hickman-at-aquila-dot-com>
> To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
> Subject: Light Bulb Experiment (ala Brent Turner)
> 
> > Tesla List wrote:
> > >
> > <SNIP>
> > > >    The 'banjo' effect images are quite striking and beautiful, plus
> > > >    there are a few others showing myself sitting atop an insulated
> > > >    table tossing 4 foot sparks off metal rods and my fingers! (BTW
> > > >    I am wearing chain-mail meat cutter's gloves which are connected
> > > >    to the table via wires hidden in my sleeves.)
> > > >
> > > >    - Enjoy!
> > > >
> > > > - Brent
> > >
> All,
> 
> After looking at Brent's picture (BRENT_1.JPG) showing a 40W bulb being
> lit from current coming off his coil, I decided to replicate this on my
> 10" coil (without me being an integral part of the experiment. ;^) I
> took a standard 120V ceramic light socket and mounted it to a piece of
> wood. A short piece of magnet wire was connected to one terminal of the
> socket, and the other end was run to the reverse side of the wood block
> and secured with a piece of conductive aluminum heating-duct tape. The
> other socket terminal ran to a 1 foot piece of HV wire. By setting the
> assembly on the top of the toroid, I could position it so that the loose
> end of the HV wire just poked out from the outer edge of the toroid. Any
> current flowing through the corona would flow through any light bulb
> screwed into the socket.
> 
> I then proceeded to try various sizes of incandescent light bulbs to see
> if they would light from the current drawn by the corona coming off the
> HV wire. Although a 40 W bulb would light (orange color), I got the best
> results from 15 and 25 Watt bulbs, lighting them to almost full
> brilliance. I also succeeded in blowing out the filament of one 15 watt
> bulb - this bulb had a filament that started jumping all over the place
> once current started flowing through it, and it finally just openned up.
> I'm also thinking about getting one of those trick "party" bulbs that
> has a dancing filament to see how it would work.
> 
> Anyway... I made an interesting discovery: If I had a fairly steady
> streamer that didn't arc to gound, the 25W bulb lit up at a fairly
> bright and constant level. However, once I got heavy discharges to
> ground, the brightness level declined significantly, and my AC primary
> current climbed from about 22A to >28A off the 120V main. I don't
> understand why this should be! I would have expected that the bulb would
> brighten, since the discharge current to ground clearly seems to be much
> higher than the corona streamers. The fact that my primary current
> climbs also would suggest that I am processing more power under this
> condition.
> 
> Some other information that may be relevant... the system's 15 KV 120 MA
> neons and tank cap resonate at about 60 Hz (by design), and I'm using
> about 170 uF of PFC capacitance. The gaps are a combination of static
> and vacuum, totaling about 0.54".
> 
> Any ideas about what is going on??
> 
> -- Bert --


Bert-

First off, what you are actually doing is using the light bulb as a 
sort of power indicator, ala a hot-wire ammeter or watt-meter. Ironically,
I have seen a 100-watt bulb work better than a 40-watt bulb due to the
lowered filament resistance (which lowers as the bulb lights up, BTW). A
low wattage lamp has a higher filament resistance, hence for a given
amount of power, will develop more voltage across it.

In the 'me-on-the-coil' trick, bear in mind that we are really, really
loading the coil down with the extra capacitance of my body. (The coil is
re-tuned for this by adding in 2 additional turns via a moveable clamp)
Hence, with a 'top-heavy' coil, we are pushing a bit more 'bang' out the
coil, but at the cost of shorter sparks.

Richard Hull has touched upon this many times. Tune for spark and disapate
the energy in arc channels. Tune for maximum RF power, and get just that -
power!

- Brent