Phenomenon observed by Tesla

[TinselKoala]

Very cool experiment you did there TK. Can you draw up the schematic of the circuit you had?

WARNING DANGER EXTREME HIGH VOLTAGE LETHAL and LOUD but fun

Thanks, here's the schematic. All conductors to the right of the capacitor should be as heavy as possible. You will be conducting tens of kiloamperes (briefly).

Be warned: I nearly killed myself doing these experiments. I severely overvolted a 60 kV Maxwell pulse capacitor and it blew up, spewing cap oil all over, and caught fire. Fortunately I was wearing a full face shield and earmuffs. I put out the fire and was safetying the remains of the exploded cap, when I accidentally brushed against its terminals. Even though it had exploded, caught fire, was put out, it still had enough charge to knock me out briefly. I was all alone and far from help. Fortunately it was only a smallish shock as these things go, and it didn't go through my chest. I was shaky for days afterwards.

Make a sturdy platform to hold the wire. Put one piece of paper down, clip in the wire segment, put the other piece of paper on top, weight heavily over the entire wire piece (or you will tear holes in the paper). I tried many different wire materials. Fine steel wire is neat, but I got the best colors from enameled copper. A thin strip of aluminum foil nearly destroyed the platform section with the violence of the explosion.
Only one time was I able to produce the classic Graneau-style segmentation from Ampere tension, with plain iron wire of about #32 size. This wire blew perfectly into a handful of very equal-length segments.

DANGER EXTREME HIGH VOLTAGE AND LETHAL ENERGY LEVELS

(EDIT to add: don't forget to make an "Allah Rod" (or "Jesus Pole" or "Jehova Stick") which is a long well-insulated handle with a conductive crossbar on the end, that you can use to short out the gaps manually to make sure the cap is discharged fully before working on the damned thing...)

[broli]

Is there a reason you put a coil on the other side of the coil?

I kept thinking about this and I came up with two things.Let's assume the current rush is 5kA when the spark gap breaks down. And if we also assume the time differential of 1 ms (which is imo generous). This make dI/dt= 5 gigaA/s. And to make it more fun lets take L of the inductor to be 1 H. Then at the very first moment of the arc jumping over the coil will push back the current with a BEMF of 5.000.000.000 Volt. I first thought the high current destroyed the wire (unless I could make an experiment without the inductors and compare the destruction). But I believe the wire explodes? due to the giga high voltage that's produced (in ideal situations). Because I was also wondering about the fact the wire got completely destroyed and not only at the beginning which would have made sense. Why was the current able to go through the entire wire and then explode it. I would like to have your view on this.

TK if you don't mind can you repeat the experiment without the inductors. That is if you aren't traumatized from last experience  .

[TinselKoala]

I think you've put your finger on the reason the Capacitor exploded!!

(btw I did hundreds of these over the time of the project, only killed myself that one time...!!)

I can't do them right now, the apparatus is a long way away in storage, but we've been talking about setting up a system locally, but that won't be until after the new year, at the soonest.

Yes, depending on the inductance and the gap setting (voltage) the wire could do anything from blowing up the platen (what I called the wire and paper-holding platform assembly) and completely vaporizing the whole wire, to wire segmentation (hard to get right), to nice displays like the one I showed above, sometimes leaving the enamel tube behind, to just breaking the wire at one or the other mounting clip, to just scorching the paper where the intact wire remained.

Without any inductors, IIRC, I got mostly breaks and total vaporizations.

(I don't think the total inductance was anywhere near 1 H, though!!)

EDIT to add I cannot stress SAFETY enough here. Please please please protect yourself and your surroundings when trying this kind of stuff! It makes a sound like a pistol shot when it goes off, and I have felt the "stinging" Tesla described, so I always did this work behind a polycarbonate lab safety shield and with a face shield, apron, and ear protection, and kept one hand in pocket--most of the time-- And I STILL nearly died doing it.

EDIT again: I forgot to indicate on the diagram that the Overvolt Air Gap should be on the Positive voltage side of the Bonetti (or other) DC HV source.

[HeairBear]

Why was the current able to go through the entire wire and then explode it. I would like to have your view on this.

How do you view current in a wire? The way I see it, The wire is already full of the current, the voltage just pushes it through. It doesn't have to fill up first. Like a chain and cog wheel, the energy is instantly transferred. you don't have to wait for the energy to transfer to the other cog. why the wire explodes at high voltages. Is it because electrons repel each other and voltage increases that effect the instant it's applied?

[broli]

How do you view current in a wire? The way I see it, The wire is already full of the current, the voltage just pushes it through. It doesn't have to fill up first. Like a chain and cog wheel, the energy is instantly transferred. you don't have to wait for the energy to transfer to the other cog. why the wire explodes at high voltages. Is it because electrons repel each other and voltage increases that effect the instant it's applied?

Thanks for this simplistic view, it makes sense. The interesting part is that if you use the analogy of water and over pressure a tube. It would just explode somewhere randomly. In this case the wire exploded almost uniformly in the direction of the electric field around the wire. The thing to compare is try to have a steady rising current through the wire untill you reach the same peek this discharge offers and see what happens. I believe the sudden discharge has a completely different effect than just raising the current in a linear fashion. This is the main reason of Tesla's experiments.

Btw TK, you might not remember but didn't you feel some sort of shock wave or stinging just when the wire exploded?