Re: Argon bubble

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

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Mddeming-at-aol-dot-com>

In a message dated 3/4/02 7:26:34 PM Eastern Standard Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
writes:


>
> Hi everyone,
>     I'm 15 and used to be on this great list of yours until my internet
> crashed.  I'm fairly experianced now with them and am trying to move to a
> nicer system.  I'm building a coil for school that's pretty close to
> finished and I wanted to play around with a few things. I've read on the
> internet that using argon as an atmosphere can increase arc length several
> times(Bill Beaty).  I was thinking and I am really wanting to try using
> argon in some experiments.  My coil is a 6" with 4 12,000/30 NST's of
> input, expecting around 5 feet or so in reg air.  My cap is a .03 maxwell
> pulse cap that's rated at 35kv.  Would it be possible to make a giant
> balloon kind of thing full of argon with LDPE sheeting or something, say 20
> feet or so in diameter, and put my coil inside.  I know there may be some
> problems that would need to be overcome like dissipation of the gas,
> getting the gas to be less than atmospheric pressure, limiting arc length,
> vacuming and tuning etc, but would this be pos!
> sible to do, and if so what could I expect from it?  Also what would the
> problems be and ways to fix them that I might have with such a thing?
> Thanks for any help.
>
> Will Daniels
> Kansas City, KS



HI Will,
         While coils have been run in rarefied atmospheres, there are several
problems:
1. A 20 ft diameter sphere is approximately 4190 cubic feet. That's a lot of
gas. ($$)
2. You cannot inflate a balloon to less than atmospheric pressure. Inflation
requires higher pressure inside than out. You will need a rigid sphere. ($$)
Matt D.