From: "Malcolm Watts"
Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 08:50:50 +1200
Subject: [TSSP] Magnifier Voltages
Hello All,
I crave your indulgence to digress for a moment. Somewhere
in the last couple of days I have read the suggestion that the bulk
of a magnifier's voltage is developed in the resonator. On the face
of it and without further data, that suggestion appears reasonable.
But it was also suggested that this is the case based on the length
of sparks that could be obtained from the wire leading to the
magnifier's base vs sparklength from the top terminal. As we all
know, it is highly questionable to judge output voltage for a TC
system of any sort from sparklength, although there is undoubtably a
dependence of sorts there.
This led me to ponder the following points:
- why is it that sparks leap and grow from the top terminal in a
magnifier but merely appear to flashover to some object from the base
lead (transmission line if you like)? (note - the flashover distance
shows the voltage to be pretty substantial).
- What causes a spark to jump a gap of a foot or more without
exhibiting the usual streamer vs breakrate growth phenomenon?
- Has a measurement been done in sshot mode to determine the arc
distances from (a) the transmission line, and (b) the top and compare
them to get some feel for the the voltage differences?
- In Richard Hull's #11-E, *I think but may be wrong* that the bulk
of the inductance is in the secondary rather than the resonator
(which also has some huge capacitance attached to it). What does
modelling say about the relative voltages being developed across each
coil?
I have personal ideas about some of these points but I would be
most interested to hear what the knowledgeable and scientific members
of this project have to say about these things.
Regards all,
Malcolm
Maintainer Paul Nicholson, paul@abelian.demon.co.uk.