[NewCandle] Status

[Horace Heffner]

On Oct 21, 2008, at 12:15 PM, Keith Nagel wrote:

> Hi Horace,
>
> I read the paper you linked, interesting work. An old
> friend of mine was of a similar opinion, that pair formation
> in arcs and sparks could be the source of additional
> energy. I don't have a copy of "vacuum arcs" but as
> most of my other texts point to that as the ur-text
> I suppose I should. You mentioned a comment in it about
> adding a 2500 microhenry inductor and not changing the
> high frequency oscillation. That seems logical to me,
> why was the author puzzled? Can you elaborate on the
> experiment in question?  In fact, I would guess that a
> "good" inductor would act like a choke, and amplify the
> effect in the arc. A "bad" one ( with much distributed
> capacity ) wouldn't affect things at all. If the intent
> was to change the resonance in the cell, that's not
> really possible using lumped elements in that fashion.
>
> K.

Sorry for the delay.  Not keeping up with my reading.

Keep in mind this is about pure DC vacuum arcs, and not arcs used as  
circuit elements to drive tank circuits via their negative resistance  
characteristics.  DC vacuum arcs set up HF AC oscillations when  
dropped to near quenching voltage.  I don't think the author was  
puzzled by ordinary circuit effects, but rather added various  
inductive components to the simple series DC circuit, including a  
25000 microhenry inductor, to demonstrate the oscillation frequency  
is intrinsic to the arc itself, i.e. completely independent of the  
circuit elements external to the arc.  The puzzling aspect is the  
source of the AC fluctuations during arc quenching.  The DC vacuum  
arc experiment is very different from the kind of tank exciting  
experiment you have done, though there could be some similar effects  
driving the very high frequency components in your experiment,  
especially at near quenching voltage. It could also mean there are  
tantalizingly difficult to optimize ou effects operating in this very  
brief extinguishing interval, and that a tank circuit is not  
necessarily the way to maximize such an effect. Also, electrode  
material is clearly key.

Best regards,

Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/