PG13
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9
HOW I ARRIVED AT THE PG13.
(A little history, if you please!)
Let me introduce myself. I am an engineer at Ramsey Electronics, and have
been so for over 12 years now. Who said anything about company faithfulness
being dead? Anyhow since I was in high school I have been messing around
with high voltage, because it is a challenge, a bit risky, and is simply
fascinating. I suppose the fixation on high voltage stems from an earlier
fascination with fire, but I won’t get into that. The connection is that fire and a
good spark are both made of the same stuff: Plasma.
This kit is NOT a Tesla Coil by any means, in fact it exhibits very little of the
effects that Tesla Coils use to achieve a very high output voltage. Tesla coils
use a completely different effect from turns ratios to achieve a high voltage
output, which involves transmission line theory, magnetic fields, and a lot of
power. Tesla coil’s output voltages are dependant upon factors such at
secondary Q factors, and not as much on turns ratios. My PG13 is completely
dependant upon turns ratios because the Q factor is too low to exhibit Tesla
effects.
This project was conceived due to an inability to find those old flyback
transformers that do not contain diodes. Diodes convert the output of a
television flyback transformer to DC, preventing them from working for many
AC experiments. I searched long and hard, and finally found a manufacturer of
a perfect experimenter’s coil. No more stopping at the side of the road at an old
console TV to see if the flyback is usable!
So, what the heck is plasma, you may ask? No, it’s not the plasma in your
blood, swimming along with the red blood cells. Plasma is matter in an
extremely excited state. Basically it is molecules being repeatedly stripped of
their electrons, and then electrons falling back into place. The process of
electrons falling into place is what gives sparks and fire (plasma) its
characteristic colors. These colors are dependant upon the mixture of gases
that the plasma is made up of, and how excited the gases are. Our atmosphere
is mostly Nitrogen, with Oxygen and other gases thrown in as an afterthought.
Nitrogen emits blues and violets mostly in a low excitement state, and that is
why sparks appear violet at low currents, and blue as the current increases.
Why is fire orange and yellow? Because particles such as carbon and ash in
the plasma are heated to incandescence, like the filament of a light bulb. If not
for the particles the flames would be blue, like Natural Gas burning.
Aurora Borealis is another example of plasma In this case upper atmosphere
molecules are excited by high energy particles from the sun. Auroras vary from
green to red, depending on intensity and elevation in the atmosphere. At higher
elevations and low atmospheric pressures found in the upper atmosphere,
Nitrogen will emit quite a bit of green. Down a few dozen kilometers closer to
earth, Oxygen ionizes (turns to plasma) much more easily and Oxygen tends to
emit red. That is why you see different colors in aurora.
