Wimshurst - let's clear this up

[antijon]

Hey Nix, I doubt I can clear it up, but I can speculate. The action of charge "induction" may be the reason for the potential. I don't know much about induction, but I know it's different than conduction. e.g. my vdg has a built in light bulb by the lower brush to decrease humidity, because conductive atmosphere would kill the effect.

I'm guessing induction is related to the surface area of the plate, the potential charge of the plate, and it's distance to the pointed electrode. The electric field of the plate converges on the point of the electrode.

Hard to surmise, but in my simple mind it means the area of the plate reduces to the electrode, so the charge must have an equal increase in potential. Or, the area of the plate produces a combined action on the ions of the air causing the potential of a few ions to equal that of the charged plate. Humidity must form a return path to short out the plate which causes a drop in potential.

But what I said about infinite power, that's related to an ideal current source.
From wiki,

The voltage across an ideal current source is completely determined by the circuit it is connected to. When connected to a short circuit, there is zero voltage and thus zero power delivered. When connected to a load resistance, the voltage across the source approaches infinity as the load resistance approaches infinity (an open circuit).

So for Ohm's
1A x 10 Ohm = 10V = 10W
1A x 100 Ohm = 100V = 100W

It's just an ideal current source is completely backwards to the way that we use power. Everything would have to be wired in series and designed for the current output of the source.

[nix85]

To start with ideal current source, that is just abstraction to make a point, battery is considered an ideal voltage source (almost) yet it does not provide infinite anything.

Now that we put that away, yes, pointed electrode increases the local electric field, i mentioned it in the first post, quote..

Are all the sectors somehow adding up in voltage? That sure does NOT seem to be the case, at least i don't see how that would work.

Wikipedia says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimshurst_machine

"The available voltage gain can be understood by noting that the charge density on oppositely charged sectors, between the neutralizer bars, is nearly uniform across the sectors, and thus at low voltage, while the charge density on same charged sectors, approaching the collector combs, peaks near the sector edges, at a consequently high voltage relative to the opposite collector combs."

Wikipedia explanation that sharpness of the combs makes charge density on the adjecent sector higher and thus provides higher voltage makes sense, but i still don't see how many dozens of kilovolts would be generated that way, especially by a single sector pair.

I watched MIT video and this one too https://youtu.be/nA4aCd5qFWs?t=239

So, again, this higher voltage at the tip alone surely does not account for ACCUMULATED dozens and sometimes hundreds of kilovolts in the Wimshurts Leyden caps

Somehow, this separation of charge charges caps to much higher voltage than voltage at those tips which in my estimation hardly exceeds few hundred volts at the very tip, maybe 1kv.

Afterall, Testatika worked along these lines.