Re: Light Bulb Experiment (ala Brent Turner)

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: Light Bulb Experiment (ala Brent Turner)
From: Bert Hickman <bert.hickman-at-aquila-dot-com>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 00:04:33 -0700
Tesla List wrote:
> 
> >From huffman-at-fnal.govTue Sep 17 22:08:31 1996
> Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 09:12:23 -0500
> From: huffman <huffman-at-fnal.gov>
> To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
> Subject: Re: Light Bulb Experiment (ala Brent Turner)
> 
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> > >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>
> 
> snip
> 
> > 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 --
> 
> Hi Bert,
> I tried the 'party' bulb since I had one laying around. I managed to get
> the entire length, of the filament, to glow a couple of time before it lit
> brightly at the tip and opened. The carbon filament certainly danced around
> vigorously while intacted. The bulb also prefered to arc in the base wires
> rather then do work in
> the filament. Now even though the filament is very close, but open, it
> won't jump the gap inside the bulb. At some point I will remove the base of
> the bulb and insulate the lead in wires to see if I can force the arc
> inside.
> 
> Bert can you tell if your socket/bulb is arcing over at these higher
> levels? The power you are putting in has to go someplace.
> 
> Dave

Dave,

I didn't know the filaments of the party bulbs were made from carbon! I
thought all bulbs used tungsten these days! Interesting!! It sure looks
like the filament is getting hit with large current pulses, and magnetic
forces may be at work making the filament "jump". 

In some cases, I CAN see arcing between the filament support leads
inside the glass, so that the apparent inductive rise across the
filament must be fairly high. I don't know if there is any arcing inside
the base for those bulbs that don't show obvious arcing. I may try
removing the base on one of the bulbs so that everything is visible this
weekend....

Thanks!

-- Bert --