Re: Air Caps

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi Winston,

Can you check into this?  If those plates are the only capacitor for his
coil, that would be very unusual!  There may be a hidden cap inside, with
this air cap used for demonstrations or to show the theory better.  I know
of no 5 foot coils that only use 20pF of primary capacitance but if someone
has one that works we should figure out how!

It is possible the coil is working more as a loosely couple transformer
too.  "intense arcs" would suggest that.  Be interested to get more details.

Cheers,

	Terry

At 10:22 PM 2/14/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>Hi Terry, Cory!
>
>	My physics teacher has a coil about 5 feet tall that puts out INTENSE
>2.5 foot sparks (no toroid, uses a bolt as a top terminal), using a 20
>pF primary cap (if my calculations are correct).  Two 18 by 18 inch
>plates 3.5 inches apart, with air as the dielectric.  It puts out so
>many sparks per cycle that it looks like the thing is on fire.
>
>Winston
>