No Subject

To: rmp-at-cica.mlb.semi.harris-dot-com
From: mike-at-garfield.csuohio.edu (Mike Mayer)
Date: Tue, 3 May 94 15:06:52 -0400
To: rmp-at-cica.mlb.semi.harris-dot-com (Russ Pate)
Subject: Re: Help with Homemade Capacitors
Newsgroups: rec.radio.amateur.misc

In article <1994May2.201258.239-at-mlb.semi.harris-dot-com> you write:
: I am trying to fix an old
: Quack Medical Device that has a glass
: and foil stacked capacitor inside it.
: I have seen similar capacitors inside
: Leeds & Northrup equipment.  Does
: anyone know how big (uFs), these
: capacitors tend to be and what the 
: breakdown voltages might be?  I hesitate
: to rebuild it.
: 

Russ,

Just a side note.  I once build a capacitor out of a pane of
glass (about 10" x 12") with foil on each side, edges of foil
about 1" from all 4 edges of glass to keep arcing away.  Sounds
silly, but I put 10,000 volts across it (oil burner ignition
transformer, 60Hz) and send a spark across a 1" gap.  The shriek it
emits can raise the dead.  Probably also lots of nice EMI/RFI.
Without my glass cap, the arc is just a soft hum.  Have never
figured out what the cap is really doing, but it's interesting
to see.  Makes plenty of ozone smell too.

I would also like to know what uFs rating this thing is.  Probably
a book somewhere that you can calculate based on distance between
plates, type of dialectric used, (i.e., glass) and surface area and
shape of each plate. 

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