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Re: St. Elmo's Fire?



Subject:   Re: St. Elmo's Fire?
  Date:    Tue, 22 Apr 1997 10:33:21 -0700
  From:    "DR.RESONANCE" <DR.RESONANCE@next-wave.net>
    To:    "Tesla List" <tesla@pupman.com>


St. Elmo's "fire" is a high voltage direct current discharge that
ancient
mariners noted coming off the crow's nest of tall ships mast especially
during times with a lot of culmulo nimbus (big black thunderclouds)
overhead.  It is a DC discharge, also sometimes called Trichel Pulses
which
occur from a HV terminal such as on a Wimshurst machine.  It can occur
as a
steady glow or intermittant pulses of HV direct current discharge.  It
is
called fire because it is usually rather quiet as compared to a
lightning
strike.  

I noted it once while skiing in the mountains of Colorado -- it was
shooting off large rocks and discharging into the air about 4 feet ---
during the daytime!  Needless to say we vacated the area rather rapidly
and
a powerful thunderstorm soon followed in the same area we saw it.

Most of Tesla's work was with AC and RF currents although he did do some
interesting work with a Van de Graaff style generator using an air
blower
and some dust (flour) materials.

DR.RESONANCE@next-wave.net


----------
> From: Tesla List <tesla@pupman.com>
> To: tesla@poodle.pupman.com
> Subject: St. Elmo's Fire?
> Date: Monday,April 21,1997 10:12 PM
> 
> Subject: Question
>   Date:  Mon, 21 Apr 1997 19:11:59 -0400 (EDT)
>   From:  FriarSpam@aol.com
>     To:  tesla@pupman.com
> 
> 
> What is St. Elmo's Fire? I think it has something to do with Nikola
> Tesla.
> 
> 
>                                    Ty (FriarSpam@aol.com)