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From: brad@kontron.UUCP (Brad Yearwood)
Newsgroups: net.analog
Subject: Re: Jacob's Ladder
Message-ID: <212@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Jun-85 23:01:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.212
Posted: Sun Jun  9 23:01:15 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Jun-85 05:39:30 EDT
References: <72@biomed.UUCP> <1834@ukma.UUCP>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Irvine, CA
Lines: 16

For a truly impressive Jacob's Ladder, go see the electrical
demonstrations at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.  The transformer
is about the size of two 3-drawer filing cabinets side-by-side.
I think the voltage was around 120Kv, but with a fairly high current
capacity.  It seems reasonable that a high current would heat a larger
amount of air around the arc, making the arc travel up the electrodes.
The luminescence seemed to persist in a little ball after the arc had
come off the top of the electrodes.  The noise was an impressively
menacing combination of hum and hiss.

Additional demonstrations included a noisy 300Kv arc between two
electrodes separated by a piece of thick plate glass at least a
meter square - the arc forms a pattern of radial lines across both
faces of the glass plate, a man in a Faraday cage attached to the
same 300Kv source, and a 1+Mv capacitor bank for small scale
(small scale, large noise) lightning simulations.  Fun!