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Re: Corona and Sphere - Puzzle



Pressure (any type) is force available divided by the unit area available.
A spark occurs off a small microscopic point on the toroid which looks like
a series of large mountains on the scale of electrons.  They emit off the
highest/sharpest mountain and begin the spark streamer.  After a streamer
forms the excessive local ions provide it a favored path until blown away by
the local "wind".  The local wind is defined as air currents both naturally
and locally due to local heating.  The single rooted streamer will usually
prefer the sharpest/highest mountain just as when you do the "stand on the
small coil" experiments the sparks aways emit from the higher elevated
point, ie your head itself or off the thimbles of your outstreached hands.

Regards,

Dr. Resonance


-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Date: Saturday, October 23, 1999 4:39 AM
Subject: Corona and Sphere - Puzzle


>Original Poster: "Malcolm Watts" <malcolm.watts-at-wnp.ac.nz>
>
>Greetings all,
>                     Following some very interesting discussions offlist
>with Boris Petkovic, I and he have a problem we would like to throw
>into the arena for comment and possibly some answers.  I can
>formulate the problem like this:
>
>       I have a sphere of a chosen diameter. It is connected to the top
>of a TC. At some voltage, the sphere will issue a visible streamer.
>We know that air streamers do not lower the Q of a system to a high
>degree. The relatively high Q of system doing this has been
>measured by myself and others and manifests itself as a continuing
>series of beats which are visible on an e-field oscilloscope trace of
>the secondary.
>
>         The question:  Why does a single rooted streamer or just a
>few streamers appear when the breakdown voltage of the sphere
>has clearly been reached?  Why not all around?
>
>     Something to consider: I have operated a coil such that the
>voltage it reached was not sufficient to promote a visible streamer
>but if the sphere was viewed in *very* dark conditions, the terminal
>was indeed surrounded by a ball of wispy streamers issuing in all
>directions.
>
>     Does anyone have any comment on this? Is there any *good*
>reason why, when terminal voltage has reached such a level as to
>allow the issuing of a single bright streamer more are not issued?
>
>      The problem appears simple on the surface but perhaps not so
>simple if one delves deeply enough into what is happening.
>
>      I've tried to formulate the problem as concisely as I can but
>perhaps Boris might like to elaborate if he feels I have missed
>something. This is written in some haste as I am about to go away. I
>look forward to reading the answers when I return.
>
>Regards,
>Malcolm
>
>