Re: water arc expolsion- was: water as spark gap dielectric

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Original poster: "S & J Young by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <youngs-at-konnections-dot-net>

Hello coilers,

David is right - submerged spark discharges are used for metal forming
because huge pressure waves result.  I have blown out the side of cans with
underwater discharges from a 4 mfd 15KV capacitor bank.  About like a cherry
bomb.

As I understand it, a lot more energy gets released in an underwater spark
than one through air.  The underwater gap has a lot more resistance and so
is able to absorb a lot more energy, and less gets wasted in the capacitor
and associated wiring.  For this reason, I don't understand why one would
prefer water gaps for TCs.  We want our gaps to exhibit the lowest possible
loss.
--Steve Y.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2003 10:12 PM
Subject: water arc expolsion- was: water as spark gap dielectric


 > Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<Tesla729-at-cs-dot-com>
 >
 > Hi all,
 >
 > With all the talk on the two Tesla lists about water arc SGs and
 > so on, I thought that I may take the oppurtunity to post a little
 > safety reminder. I think most of us are discharging only a few
 > joules of energy with these experiments, but when you start
 > discharging multi-kJoules into water, all of that released ener-
 > gy has to manifest itself someway. I believe Richard Hull has
 > done some experiments with water arc exlposions, so you
 > may want to talk to him before you attempt such an endeavor.
 > Just like with quarter shrinking, you can get yourself seriously
 > hurt with the water arc explosion if you don't know what you're
 > doing! Sorry, I can't recall R. Hull's webpage maybe someone
 > else on the list has it handy.
 >
 > David Rieben
 >
 >
 >