To: mhking
750,000 watt Tesla coil at home! I don't think so. Tesla coils are continuous AC, so this isn't a pulse power. They must have meant 750,000 volts. A typical 200 amp service to a home only provides about 50,000 watts continuous. He'd need 15 times as much power.
8 posted on
04/29/2003 6:18:50 PM PDT by
jlogajan
To: jlogajan
A Watt is Volts time Amps. 750,000 volts drawing 1 amp of power would qualify.
With a Tesla coils (a transformer), this would not surprise me.
But dang, I want one!
12 posted on
04/29/2003 6:23:51 PM PDT by
Hunble
To: jlogajan
Gotta be volts....
Did anyone know that Edison promised Tesla $50,000 to develop AC distibution in the US? Edison was pushing DC current but knew it would never carry over long distances efficiently, so he hired Tesla to implement his AC system in the US.
Edison stiffed Tesla for the $50,000 by the way!
Did you know that Marconi recently lost his patent for radio and the patent was rightfully given to Tesla over a hundred years after the fact?
16 posted on
04/29/2003 6:28:11 PM PDT by
Milwaukee_Guy
(Having France in NATO, is like taking an accordion deer hunting.......)
To: jlogajan
A tesla col isn't like the ordinary transformers that we are used to. Since they are loosely coupled electrically you can get massive swings in power output. Transformers have a net power loss because of resistance and heating. But with a loose coupling and the harmonic resonance of their design, TC's can actually give a net power gain. Watts might not be a misnomer in this case.
79 posted on
04/29/2003 8:10:39 PM PDT by
plusone
To: jlogajan; All
No doubt about it. IT IS VOLTS. I would guess less than 400 watts. Perhaps more than the reported 750,000 volts though. A friend and I built one in seventh grade. It kicked out about a million but at very low amps. Still, it would light up every light in the science lab. Mine was about the same size as this one.
They are pretty easy to make and pretty safe-at least on the secondary side. The input voltage is about 15,000 volts, 25 ma (an old neon light transformer) BUT! That goes through a capacitor made out of a 2'x2' x 1/4" glass plate with aluminum foil, glued on both sides. There is a spark gap of about 2" after the capacitor. That sucker has some JUICE at that point. That "low voltage" (15kv) gap sounds like a machine gun. It hurts bad if you get into the gap too! The gap at the capacitor will actually break the glass in time. The spark from the top of the secondary is high frequency and while much more voltage, it just bites a little.
The primary winding of my Tesla was about ten turns. The secondary is about a gazillion turns of 30 gauge magnetic wire. A small motor with contacts on a spinning dielectric disc just before the primary coil really ramps up the spark on a Tesla coil.
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