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Build Your Own Tesla Coil
screenbert writes "Ever wanted to keep stray dogs or neighbors from trampling your backyard, but
just couldn't find the system to really deter them? Well this
site shows how they built
a bi-polar Tesla Coil system. I've always loved the Tesla coils on C&C when
they'd zap the units as they went by.
"
I need one of those to keep my roommates off my leftovers in the fridge.
Every college student knows that to keep your roommates from your food, you just poisen some of it, after the first couple of them die, the rest learn pretty quick. It may not be high tech but it gets the job done.
And I thought watching a bug zapper was entertaining!
Prism Towers are far better.
Dyolf Knip
Make yourself a Pedestrian Electro-Bastard Array!
If you smoke after sex, you're doing it too fast.
How to have fun in a computer lab #14:
Two words: Tesla Coil
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
Any other pyros out there really really envious right now? I'm about to turn traitor any second. Matches just do not compare
That's actually a picture of his server after this story was posted.
I can see this causing brown outs if you do this in the local small town. Complete with stories of UFOs etc.
Musn't upset the town fathers.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Great, people walking around with human-zappers. I thought people with those keychain laser pointers were annoying.
That having been said, Google cache
"Hey everybody! Watch this!"
Egads. I guess these are the guys who always ignored the "don't try this at home" warnings, huh?
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Just to keep things honest, I don't believe there is such a thing as a bipolar Tesla coil. They may be describing an Oudin coil instead.
Picky, picky!
Much as I hate to reply to a troll, there are a few people who might read this and believe it!
While there was a harmonic device which Tesla built which could indeed shake a building apart, this was not his intent with the Tesla coil.
His plan was actually distributing energy on a large scale without wires. Take a look at his Pike's Peak project.
That picture of the "Man of Great Potential" is really giving me strange ideas.
I believe you are incorrect. You're talking about the Telsa "Earthquake machine" oscillator, which was a tunable steam- or electrically-powered weight. There's a book about it, IIRC it's called the "Tesla Earthquake Machine" or something like that, and includes plans to build your very own.
Tesla, upon inventing the oscillator, attached it to a bar of the finest steel he could get, and within a few minutes the oscillator had found (been set to?) the resonating frequency of the bar and shattered it. Tesla then attached it to a pillar that was driven into the earth at his laboratory [keep in mind that his lab, and several other New York buildings, were built on a patch of sand, IIRC] and turned it on. He took a crowbar to it when the buildings across the street started to shake.
Keep in mind this device was no bigger than a 2-liter pop bottle, if I rember correctly.
The Tesla Coil is a high-frequency, high-voltage transformer, and shares few parts or concepts with the "earthquake machine."
This
Anyone that can "walk around" with a 3000 lb power transformer, two 12 foot conducting towers, and generating 40 KW of electricity probably doesn't need the help of a tesla coil to be annoying.
I've been wanting to build one of these for a long time, but all the site's I've seen about building one, have very convincing warnings about how dangerous it is, But it would be really cool. Maybe someone could post the schematics for the death ray...
children mailing their lists to santa (or other applicable religious figure) for one of these. Hell who wouldn't?
.noitacidem deen uoy siht daer nac uoy fI
The tesla coil described in the page is not really of much practical use.
:-(
It operates at a high voltage and low current. This means that, yeah, it looks impressive, but any actual damage it could cause would be extremely limited. If you want something like the tesla coils in C&C, you have some problems to overcome.
The first is something that is directional. The tesla coils in C&C were far beyond today's technology, since electricity naturally flows to the nearest earth.
To really hurt something or burn something, you're looking at throwing at least 100 amps from the coil. This is far away from the 100 milliamps that current tesla coils use. But for the fun of it, let's work out what sort of power you'd need to really cause some serious damage.
So, we have the 100 amps. What about the voltage? 10,000 volts is the right sort of voltage to be able to shoot a beam of tesla lightning about 20 metres. This is calculated by taking the SU air density of 2.5Fd per metre, and multiplying that by (current / air impedence), or (100 / 0.0279)..
So, 2.5 * (100 / 0.0261) = 9,578.54 volts.. close enough to 10,000 volts anyway.
And 10,000 volts at 100 amps? You do the math. You are talking about a serious amount of electricity.
And don't forget.. the thing would have a constant load! When the coil isn't zapping intruders (okay, it's a stupid concept but I'm just pointing out the practicalities).. you're still sucking up several megawatts of power with it just going straight back to earth!
So, this is a great idea, and a cute trial.. but you're never going to get a tesla coil that can really injure people like in C&C. It's all just pretty patterns in the sky for now...
mogorific carpentry experiments
The control system and power transformer together tip the scales at roughly three thousand pounds.
Makes this a little difficult on the mobility side, but hey, with one of these, the world is your playground (or you'll just be really lonely)
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Before Slashdot posts stories like this, they should very expressly warn their readers about the dangers inherent in such projects. Although a simple Tesla Coil is not particularly dangerous, if a Tesla Coil is turned into a mobius strip and enough energy is put into it, a electrotemporal-topological disaster can result, plunging an area up to 5 kilometers around it into Dirac Space.
You can find more information about this strange and dangerous phenomenea here .
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Whoa, imagine a beo--No, must... not...
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Where did you ever hear that?
Seriously, Tesla coils really were always about arcing electricity. His original idea for Tesla coil usage was wireless transportation of electricity. Basically, if you crank the volts enough, you can arc across the atlantic ocean. At least that was the idea.
Yes, Tesla also did some studies on structural harmonics. And yes, he did the structural harmonics work long before he came up with the idea for Tesla coils, but aside from being the brainchild of the same man, the two were never linked in any other way.
Also, I must say that I more enjoyed his work on structural harmonics. Shaking bridges and collapsing condemned buildings was all well and good, but the nutball had the idea that he could crack the earth in half if he used enough dynamite and timed it correctly. Good thing he didn't have the resources to try that one out. Tesla was crazy enough try it, just to see if it would work.
Actually back in undergrad we used one to fling metal rings around in the stairwells. BTW that is a LOT more interesting if the rings have been in liquid nitrogen for awhile.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZAP*NYC-wide power outages* In other news,authorities in Iraq are baffled as to how a giant,crackiling lightning bolt could come out of the clear blue sky and wipe out Saddam's HQ's in one crushing blow.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
One of the other students made one back when we were undergrads and it didn't look anything like this. Of course his was much smaller
We used it to fling metal and blow up pickles...
does someone have a mirror of the movie they had on their site or did the just remember to remove the movie before the onslaught of slashdotters
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
I'd leave it off by default, and just flip the switch every time some kid wants to sell me cookies. Hah!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Of having your testicles that close to a Tesla coil? http://www.edm.net/~jwilliams/Brentonped.gif. Can you still reproduce? And if so, will your wife give birth to Magneto?
My father found an old Popular Electronics (or something) magazine from his hobby days with some plans. We hand wound the voltage stepup coil, made condensors out of perspex plates and tinfoil, and borrowed a Ruhmkorff Induction Coil from school.
The unit was powered by a car battery and could spark about an inch and a half.
We put two bent copper rods for the spark to jump between. The spark would run up and down between these rods like old mad-scientist movies.
It felt pretty cool to put a finger in the spark and watch it jump straight through, with only a weird tingling sensation.
Aaah the electric shocks, the smell of ozone, the burns and blisters - God I miss science fairs.
Given--it's not going to really hurt anybody, but I'm pretty sure anybody thinking about touching your stuff would probably be scared as hell if they saw that arcing towards them.
Anti-freeze, they like but are too stupid to figure out that it will kill them. Works in NYC, I've seen it all on the streets.
Did anyone else notice that if you click on one of the three pictures at the bottom of the pages, it brings up a new page with that image? Try clicking on segments of that image... Interesting way to have an online photo-album. Seriously, has anyone else determined what relevence the colors have to the pictures, and where you click versus what type of image you get?
.noitacidem deen uoy siht daer nac uoy fI
Nothing says "a mad scientist lives here" quite like having one of these running.
~Philly
In the early 1990's, they built a massive Tesla coil for shipment to a "customer in Japan"? Wouldn't have anything to do with these guys, would it?
If you like liked this artice, you'll love :
;-)
http://www.lod.org
http://www.lod.org/electrum.html
http://www.lod.org/electrum/electrumpics.html
You could avoid being hurt by the (insert really big number here) volt potential difference by wearing a coad of chicken wire. The charge collects on the outside, keeping you safe on the inside. (No, it doesn't need to be grounded, and I know it's called SHIELDING.) Just be sure to ground it before you step out though, or you could get a very *shocking* experience.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
it's a site map. Ingenious!p .html
http://www.edm.net/~jwilliams/Site_Ma
.noitacidem deen uoy siht daer nac uoy fI
COOL!!!!!!!!! o_O
Now I want one in my yard!!
that's what it looks like when i beat off in front of my computer for two hours at internet pr0n.......... :)
These devices aern't as cool as I had heard of. I was half-way through building one of these things when I realized it wouldn't skeletonize anybody that came within 10 meters.
Something that would generate an aurora three apartments down on the 2nd level. Of course, the EMP might take out half the computers in the building...
This sig no verb.
Whoever modded that post redundant does not understand the difference between what a tesla coil does to a person and what it would do in a computer lap. 3 letters-- EMP...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Look here, and at the links within:
http://www.hills2.u-net.com/tesla.htm
The transmission of electricity via tesla coils had absolutely nothing to do with the arcs of electricity that shot off of it. He wanted to transmit power via EM radiation.
Hold a flourescent lightbulb near a tesla coil and it lights. It has nothing to do with "arcing."
Duh, that's why you build the nuclear power plants.
So, this is a great idea, and a cute trial.. but you're never going to get a tesla coil that can really injure people
Yeah, but I bet it will keep the neighbor's cat from pissing in my flowerbed.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
C&C Music Factory? What?
and theres a damn good reason its 100ma,
... assuming you DONT want to kill stuff :)
(from Electrical Saftey Engineering 2nd Edition)
Physioligcial Reaction to Current
3-5 mA Barely Perceptible
35-50 mA Extreme Pain
50-70 mA Muscle Paralysis
500mA Heart Stoppage (books word not mine)
Besides, dialectric strength is like voltage*thickness right? So a high current would be a waste of electricity
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
You're quite correct, but you need to take air resistance into account. The current might be X amps at the terminal, but after taking into account all of the resistance, you're looking at (X divided by hundreds) at the point of contact.
This actually raises the interesting point that you couldn't design a tesla coil that could stun, but not kill, for as the intruder moves closer, the ampage increases exponentially.
You're right on the second point, however.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Some people have to ruin all the fun with facts and figures.
So if we can't actually hurt someone it's useless?
Hmmm, Somebody has issues...
I stole this Sig
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How about a beowulf cluster of these?
*zap* OW!! *zap* *zap* OW OW OW! I won't make that joke again I prom-- *ZAP* @#%(T@ !!!
#2 Video tape it and sell it to a Japanese game show so they can place bets how long it will take you to die.
Tournament Management Online &
Good thing he didn't have the resources to try that one out. Tesla was crazy enough try it, just to see if it would work.
And brilliant enough that it just might have...
Now This guy seems to understand Tesla coils nicely, in fact he is trying to build a 100kva Tesla coil for his next show (he does his thing at Burning Man festivals) , check out the movies
i swear he's mad,
cool
but mad
Apply Insanity Sauce generously and even the local mongrel will steer clear.
As somebody who has built several tesla coils, I though I might be able to provide some information on this topic. A tesla coil is basically a high frequency transformer. They come in two varieties, traditional and solid state. A schematic for a traditional tesla coil can be found here. The main for a traditional tesla coil is usually a neon sign transformer, or NST as we call them. The capacitor is often a milspec jet engine ignition capacitor or a leyden jar made out of beer bottles. Solid state tesla coils are similar, except they use a less powerfull main transformer and use a flyback transformer (found on most tv's, although flyback's from the 50's and 60's work best, as they don't have as many safety devices) as the resonator. Just be forewarned, the information on the site I linked to is about 5 years out of date.
There's no sig like SIGSEG
>10,000 volts is the right sort of voltage to be
>able to shoot a beam of tesla lightning about 20
>metres.
Uh... not quite. It takes about 2,000 volts per centimeter of air that you want the current to flow through. I have a 15,000 volt transformer and it can create arcs around 3 inches or 7 1/2 centimeters. To get 20 meters you'd need about 4 million volts. (20m * 2000 V/cm = 4E6 V)
----- "I'm still sane on three planets and two moons."
i take no credit for this, this is from UPL18, written by Jolly Spamhead, http://phonelosers.net In this article I'll show you how to make a very effective modem killer weapon, especially on crossbar phone systems (CPS). I take no responsiblity whatsoever if you kill yourself or get hurt in an attempt at trying to do this fucked up trick or for some reason it just doesn't work anymore as I haven't performed it since early 1998. A great person once said it is never too late to pass infomation on...so on wit the show bitch! What the fuck is this strange device? It's a Tesla Coil! Concentrated static electricity you f00l! The Tesla coil when properly used will generate litrally thousands of volts at very low amps. That just happens to be the right current to bake silicon chip cookies over a open camp fire strumming Bodycount songs! Construction: 1. Disconnect all phones from your line. Disconnect answering machines and any data-transmission devices. 2. Run a test on the coil and disconnect nearby grounded objects. (Lamps, stereos, TV's, Sex Vibrators...) 3. Connect one phone that you would'nt mind maybe having to sacrifice for the act of revenge.(It usually doesn't destroy phones, but people have told me they have seen them melt off walls!). =) 4. Connect iron or steel balls to the green and red wires of your connected phone (aka the biege box wires that go on the clips.) It and 12 terminals of your phone. 5. Put on a pair of thick rubber gloves (EXTREMELY IMPORTANT STEP HERE!) 6. Charge the coil to at least 10,000 volts. An ideal setting is around 18 to 19 thousand, but 10,000 will jump Ma-Bells line surge protectors and that's what we are trying to do here. 7. Hold metal balls in your left hand. In your right hand hold your cock and proceed to stroke firmly until climax is reached, then lick up the mess! Just fucking around here again! =) Just Make sure the balls don't touch each other ok? Great! When the coil is fully charged, clip the steel ball connected to the red wire to the base of the Tesla coil and hold the other metal ball as far away from the coil as you can. 8. Dial the offending modems phone number (OCI's fax # would be nice). 9. When you are connected, move the metal object connected to the green wire within 2 feet of the coils top. Don't be afraid of the little bolts of electricity shooting from the top of the coil...its only the stuff that hits poor hopeless saps like Amit Grover AKA Foreskin boy every once and awhile. 10. Within 3-5 seconds a huge bolt of lightning will shoot forth at the phone from the hand you are holding the balls in. Hold on tight cause it will feel like a load of ants! You will immediatly hear many strange occilations to the carrier on the phone. The last noise you will hear from the phone is a pop! That is the last cry of agony as the modem shuts down This is guaranteed to fry the modem, the computer and any peripherals connected to it like Scanners, printers, 8-ball porn cams.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
It's real. Been there, done that. Though not as big as that one. I could get 8" flames off my fingers with the one I built.
When all else fails, run.
I've wanted to build a Tesla coil for years.
:).
The reason I still haven't is that they're about as good for electronics and magnetically sensitive media as a lightning strike. The intermittent arc gives off *vast* amounts of RF crud, which will induce currents in just about anything electronic and degauss anything magnetic nearby.
Your computer case will not save you if your machine has drive bays. All connected wires (modem, network, power) will also act perfectly well as antennas penetrating the case's shielding.
Credit cards and bank cards generally aren't shielded at all
Set up those Faraday cages before building anything like this.
Misato: Where is he?
Ritsuko: I think he fell into Dirac space created by the angel's shadow!
(Or something like that... hahahaha... )
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Finnaly someone showed this to the public. It really is an old idea, but in the world we live now, it has some interesting effects. I was tracing the development of such toys based on Nikola Tesla's ideas for a while now and found a lot of impresive stuff. Just do a quick search on "telsa weapon" and read some of the articles that pop up. One of the most scary is located at http://www.peg.apc.org/~nexus/bskies1[2345].html (yeah thats five parts of it). Hints about causing earthquakes with similiar technology as described in the story above. Other interesting sites are Gravity gate http://www.starwon.com.au/~rayd/index.htm, Kelly BBS www.kellynet.com, Tesla web ring and similiar. If you like to search a lot, you may even find hints about top secret super high tech weapons developed in Russia for knocking out satelites, which are also based on one of the Tesla's ideas and are powered by also originaly Tesla's work, improved by dr. H. Moray, the so called Moray generator. Basicaly you just set up an antenna and some electronic wizardry and you have electricity. Sounds too good to be true, but there's a story on the kellynet about how Tesla made an electric car powered by such a device.
:) And the next thing would be to cover my house entirely in somekind of conductive mesh, to make more or less effective faradey cage. I feel like protecting computers and other electronic equipment will be big bussiness in the next decades.
Back to the EMP stuff...does anyone have some nice information about project HAARP and similiar "experiments" all around the world? I heard somewhere that US military already developed their small EMP "bomb" for knocking out "e-criminals". I would like to take a look at one of those toys
Does it go on forever?
One hopes that the above poster is intentionally posting pseudoscientific nonsense... but a few people seem to have taken it seriously... so...
.1 Amp. That will stop someone's heart.
While these Tesla coils are probably harmless, to do damage to a human you need not 100 amps, but less than
Furthermore, let us say that you want to put 100 amps into something from 20 meters. First of all, 10,000 volts isn't anywhere close (you calculations are way off - in fact, they are sheer nonsense!) A few megavolts at a minimum would be required.
But... as far as power delivered to the load... the resistance of the air is uninteresting. Once the arc starts, the resistance drops dramatically in the plasma. Thus one could deliver 100 amps at 20 meters with a lot less power than you calculate.
The statement that electricity naturally flows to the nearest earth is likewise fallacious. Electricity flows (or tries to flow) across potential differences. If you hook one end of a potential difference to the earth, electricity from the other end will certainly try to flow there. But if the Tesla coil is insulated from the earth, the electricity will have no particular interest in flowing to the earth!
All in all... very cleverly stated nonsense.
Naughty of you (or ignorant of you).
The only good weather is bad weather.
As much as I'd love to have plans for one of these HERF guns, I think that it would probably make it too easy for "hardware script kiddies" to then go out and wreak havoc. What I'd really like is a reading list (preferably with difficulty ratings) on what to study to be able to design your own.
Does it go on forever?
You can easily make a Tesla coil if you have an old busted TV to rip apart. In general, the older and bigger the TV is, the better. And color TVs are better than black and white. This won't be a *great* Tesla coil, but it will throw a spark a few inches long and you can do all the standard Tesla coil tricks with it (St. Elmo's fire, etc.) without investing too much time or money.
Yank the flyback transformer out of the TV, and discard all its primary windings. Keep the big high voltage secondary winding (the one with the zillions of turns). It's usually encased in rubber and may look like a big rubber wheel. Its main lead has really thick insulation and connects to the side of the picture tube (where it looks like a stethoscope). The other lead (the ground) won't be as heavily insulated.
The only other parts you need are two NPN power transistors (2N3055), two 5W power resistors (20 ohm and 200 ohm), some wire, and a good supply of DC current (12-24 V). The circuit is a piece of cake. The first time I did it, I put the whole thing together with alligator clips.
This circuit has two primary windings around the flyback transformer core. The power winding is 8 turns, with a tap in the middle. The feedback winding is smaller (4 turns), also with a tap in the middle. The power winding leads connect to the collector leads on the transistors, with the center tap going to the +24 V DC power source. The feedback winding leads connect to the gate leads, with the center tap there going to +2-3 V DC (connect the resistors in series across the DC power to get the lower voltage in between). The emitter leads are grounded.
As current flows through one transistor, the changing field in the core induces a voltage in the feedback windings that turns that transistor off and the other one on. Then current flows the other way, and the same thing happens in reverse. So the circuit tunes itself to the proper frequency. But it also means that the first time you power it up you run a 50-50 chance of connecting the leads to the wrong transistor gates, in which case you get a stable DC circuit. So if it doesn't work the first time, try exchanging the gate leads.
This circuit is fairly well known, and doing a Google search for "flyback" and "Tesla" I found a schematic for it right away. The guy mentions on that page that the transistors get really hot and he is not kidding- they do. Don't leave it running for more than a minute without a heat sink. The RF noise generated by Tesla coils is incredible so expect to generate some interference. They make lots of smelly ozone. And if you let a spark go through paper, you can start a fire so be careful.
If you're lucky you can get 20-30 kV, which throws a purple spark a couple inches. (I only got about 4 kV out of mine- the spark was about a half inch long.) Pick up a neon bulb when you're at Radio Shack- these light up if they're around. The effect on a candle flame is interesting. Don't stick your bare finger near it because the spark does hurt if it hits unprotected skin. But if you hold a metal object and use that to touch it, you don't feel a thing (it's high frequency AC). Cool tricks include having sparks jump from the coil to a metal object in your hand, having sparks jump from a metal object in your other hand to ground (even a lousy ground), and having fluorescent tubes glow softly if you hold them in your other hand. If you touch one terminal of a fluorescent to ground then it will glow brightly between that end and the place you are holding it, like there are Orcs nearby.
Interesting note about magnetrons: missile-firing units (empty IFVs, GGI-IFVs, battle fortresses with one or more GGIs inside) can still fire while being suspended. And if the battle fortress has Yuri clones or psi-commandos inside, they can still take control of units.
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
And Tesla, himself, was nothing more than a floating head with squid tenticles, IIRC.
If you don't get the joke, just move on.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
In those pics where the arcs are coming off of his fingers, he looks like a sith lord! Lucas could use this and save a lot in special effects! Plus it's REAL, well, excep the pain....
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
As others have pointed out, these "calculations" are completely meaningless and wrong. It doesn't take much current to cause damage. Another thing to note is that current through your body is not the only danger involved with tesla coils. Hearing protection is a must for large coils. Good fresh air flow is needed. Eye damage can result from the watching the arcs on larger coils. Another intersting thing is that the human body is not equally vulnerable to all frequencies (and I don't just mean skin effect). Low frequency AC (60Hz is actually quite bad) is worse for you than DC. High frequencies aren't as bad until you get sufficiently high, and there they are worse than low frequencies. So while skin effect may offer you some protection, if you get that high frequency AC going through heart/spine/brain/etc, it will most definately harm you.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
The statement that electricity naturally flows to the nearest earth is likewise fallacious.
Yes, as is the assertion that electricity somehow âoechooses a path of least resistance.â This is also an example of the anthropomorphic fallacy â" attributing human-like qualities to something inanimate.
In an electrical circuit, given an electric potental (i.e., a voltage), current will flow through all available paths. The magnitude of the current in each branch is inversely proportional to the resistance (or impedance if we consider more than simple DC) so it can often seem as if somehow those lazy electrons survey their options and decide to take the easiest path.
The problem in understanding usually is emphasized when you deal with paths of conduction through air or other materials that are normally insulators. The issue here is that the breakdown voltage of air and most nonconductors is very large. Unless the electric field strength exceeds this threshold then the material is an insulatore. In these cases there are no alternate paths, except for the unwitting human who happens to come too close, and gets a shock. So it's no so much that his body formed the path of least resistance; more like he formed a path period where before there were none.
Try a solid state tesla coil.
I have plans to make one that runs off a 9 volt battery, and should generate somewhere in the region of 20000 volts (OK, at a low current, but also at a high frequency). The plans require a television fly-back transformer.
Take a look at this:
Google search
Hm.
I'm always wary of these sites. They show all this electricity zapping round, and guys with electrofingers.
Only problem is this: Unless a tesla coil is specifically built for this purpose, the skin effect does not work on telsa coils. You actually cook your organs.
I think it's highly irresponsible to blaze things like tesla coils.
I've built one, I've used one, and had an enjoyable time, but safety must be the first priority, not pretty pictures.
For more information about the dangers of tesla coils, Here[Chip Atkinson's Safety sheets]
2 amps may be enough to fu*k someone up, but imagine using 100+ amps... here in Louisiana, that's called "deep fry". :-)
100 Ampere? Sors but I'm pretty sure 4 Ampere is fully enough to kill a human.
At least that's what our physics teacher used to say, and he should know!
Solar energy comes from a nuclear power plant.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I built a medium sized Tesla coil for a school project. I put it in my car the night before and someone moron my complex parked next to me and thought it was a bomb.
I was awoken by a phone call from the police at 1AM with no less than 4 police cars and 3 firetrucks in my condo development. They actually were trying to shield nearby condos from an explosion with the firetrucks. The bomb squad was being dispached.
I had to leave my condo in only my boxer shorts and give an oral report on how a Tesla coil works.
I cover it with a blanket now when I move it.
Ever wanted to keep stray dogs or neighbors from trampling your backyard, but just couldn't find the system to really deter them? Careful, as this sort of mechanism to defend your property might subject you to civil and/or criminal liability depending on your jurisdiction. Even though you are protecting your own property, you are not supposed to set traps to do so. . . . .
One of my friends built a coil last year at Middle Georgia. (MGC is a small 2 year school in COchran GA. Very small place). One of the more interesting things was that it was mostly made from pieces laying around the dorm. Wood, pie plantes, copper tubing, 12 guage wire, beer bottles (yes, they were filled with salt water and made a fairly nice capcitor array). Forshows he would zap AOL cd's and hand them out.
Even mor einteresting was his friend who lived in Cochran was also building them. He had two in his garage, a "small" and a large. The large one had industrial capcitors and a 12kV pole transformor from Euorpe acting as they power supply. Plus it knocked out phone and DSL in his house if anyone happened to be oinline when one fired.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
IIRC the dielectric strength of air is ~3kV/mm, which means you would need about 60 megavolts.
Regards / ushac
See powerlabs, http://www.powerlabs.org/. Amazing hi-power electrical and other interesting stuff.
The big one has text saying it was built for a customer in japan. Must be a very weird country if devices like that are legal for normal citizens to have and use. Does this mean that that device he built is legal in japan and not controlled by any international arms agreements?
Ever wanted to keep stray dogs or neighbors from trampling your backyard, but just couldn't find the system to really deter them? Well this site shows how they built a bi-polar Tesla Coil system
Ofcourse it depends on how the Tesla Coil is feeling at that moment. It might see the dog and think "oh, i won't bother zapping it, life sucks!". On the other hand, it may have a manic episode and send out little zaps to make the dog dance! (Dance Doggie! Do the Hustle!)
Not amps. Read again. Milliamps. 1/1000 of an amp
The book's a bit off, it only takes 300mA to kill.
Never meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for you are crunchy and good with catsup.
Just for reference:
I was working on building a power supply for a vacuum tube amplifier. This one needed a 300V, 50mA supply. I stupidly got a pinky finger in there and touched the high voltage rail off the last 100uF power supply capacitor. *ZAP* It hurt like a bitch when it happened. Then my wrist was stiff. The next day my pinky finger was numb, and stayed numb of a week.
Got a question about something I am working on. I'm using spark gap surge supression, and I'm having trouble visualizing the circuit properties of spark gaps in series and parallel.
If I had two gaps that arc over at 100 volts each and put them in series, will 200 volts make them arc then?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Just scribble something to the effect of "Lab sample #U185-S" on the container. Or even better, see if you can get some of those stickers with the biohazard symbol on them from your biology lab.
That's not a Tesla coil, he just living inside one of those Van De Graaff generator-globes
The best way to have fun in a computer lab is with fractal
sound. I find a simple one-dimensional version of the
ever-popular "plasma clouds" fractal, using the range of
frequencies a PC speaker (yes, the old pre-soundcard kind)
emits for the values at each point, works great. Get about
three PCs in the lab doing this at once, and there WILL
be excitement if there's anybody else in the lab.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
It's definately a voltage divider. :) I once got the crap zapped out of me (7,500VAC 30mA) while building a jacob's ladder.
All other loads can be ignored.
And I have tried this
Life is too short to proofread.
And I thought that without microchlorians I would never become a jedi/sith...
- Please, ignore everything written above.
If you are interested in the picture on the website, here is an additional photograph of Tesla himself in the same pose, only his coil is giant-sized, and the arcs fill a warehouse. He is sitting reading a book under the giant coil with the million-volt sparks fly overhead.
Note that for this photo to work, it had to be reexposed several times for all the lightning forks to be catptured (and he sat at the end).
Picture of Tesla under his giant active coil
The noise genereated from the coil in the photo could be heard 10 miles away.
-----
Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
Actually, they both share a very important concept-- the idea of resonance.
It's just that the Telsa Coil uses electrical resonance while the earthquake machine sought to take advantage of mechanical resonance.
It has always fascinated me how similar the math is for LCR electrical circuits and spring damped oscillating masses. (I guess we could throw heat loss equations in there as well.) I dont have a strong enough math background to speculate, but I have always wondered if it is because these things are fundamentally the same or if we have just developed a generic differential equation that can be wrapped around almost any process.
Ingredients:
1 (or 2 or 3) orange habaneros;
1 lb. (500g [cook's rounding]) shrimp, deveined, and shelled, but with tail on;
1 tsp. chopped garlic;
2 tbsp. cooking oil;
3 limes
; pinch of black pepper (fresh ground is best).
Chop habaneros fine (gloves are advised for wimps). Retain seeds and fruit placenta (yes, this makes it very hot. Save one habanero top "cap" for garnish. Fry gently in oil (gas mask is advisable for wimps). Add shrimp. When almost done, add garlic, and fry for about 30 seconds more. Remove from heat, and drain excess oil. Add juice from two of the limes, and black pepper to taste. Refrigerate three hours. Serve garnished with wedges from the last lime and the top of a habanero pepper.
These make a wonderfuly "surprising" appetizer. Not for the timid. Keep away from pets and small children.
You could've hired me.
I saw a show on Disvoery or TLC about the Ark of the covenant and some speculation that it was actually similar to a Tesla coil.
I found a similar description on a web site.
I can't vouch for the accuracy of the web site, since I'm not very knowledgeable on the topic, but I thought the concept was interesting.
Or you could just buy a stun gun for $30.
I did come across this. I wonder what Osama would think...
Eat at Joe's.
Pictures
Scroll down to "Kid's Night"
Every night, during the Telluride Tech Fest, they have a Tesla coil demonstration. Some poeple are given fluorescent light bulbs to hold, which light up when in the vicinity of the coil, no wires attached. It's a really impressive show.
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
Ooops. So you don't want to enter my cube and run your narcware on my computer?
Have a nice day.
should read MILK EXPERIMENT, 15 JAN 2002!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Although it ain't no Tesla coil, you can draw a spark 2 feet long from a tabletop Van de Graaf (sp?) generator, which, since it makes static electricity, can be used to zap your friends without harm (stings a little though). Plus they are cheaper and use less power.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
wouldn't this be really similar to the "zapper" personal protection devices?
A friend of a friend had one of these. Turns out, he didn't have it for self defense. Rather, he wanted to see if it would hurt when turned on his own skin.
His piece of advice? "Don't light a cigarette with it. It sometimes zaps your lips."
Karnal
Now you've done it. I have found another way to terrorize my neighbors... as if rapid CO2 discharges weren't enough... >:D
N. Tesla and T.Edison had quite a rivalry going in their day; Edison of course was the more popular both with the press and the people. This increased the rivalry. Edison prefered direct current electicity, it's a lot easier on incandensent light bulb filliments, reducing mechanical stress (I run my photo enlarger's bulb on rectified current for stedier output and longer life), and wire Henery Ford's home Fairlane Manor for DC. Tesla favored alternating current because it's easier to transport tranformers to increase voltage and reducing I x R losses. If memory serves me correctly Telsa claimed Edison had infringed on several of his patents conserning electrical power transmission.
Actualy T Edison grew up about a block from where I had lived in Port Huron MI (He hated Port Huron), the Train Station where he boarded the train to sell newspapers has been turned into a museum.
I not sure I would classify Edison as a scientist, he seemed more like an experimental engineer or even a hardware hackers than a scientist. Tesla was more of a scientist
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I think that you need to be corrected.
You are better to be hit with 1+ amp then with less.
What happens is with less then 1 amp of current passes through you, it will not cause your hart not to stop but go into defiberlation. Which your hart is working but not pumping blood.
A large current passing through will stop your hart but normally will start back after the current flow stop's. The only problem with large current is it will cuase burns.
Ether way, is best to be take care with electricty
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
Not necessarily. It depends on all sorts of factors, such as how fast the voltage builds up, the relative leakage of the devices, the capacitance of the devices, etc. You get the idea.
There are ways to help equalize them... for example, put a large resistor in parallel with each gap (same value on each one). This would help to equalize the voltage across them before they flash over - assuming the rise time of the pulse isn't too fast (a *dangerous* assumption).
The only good weather is bad weather.
Good point. It is typically in hundreds of kHz and will cause a *lot* of interference when it is arcing. However, any small amount of nonlinearity in the "circuit" would rectify some of the current, so it might penetrate.
BTW... RF burns are wierd. I once got my finger too close to the output of a mere 75 watt transmitter at a point where the impedance was very high (antenna mismatch), and a small arc burned a tiny spot on my finger - all the way to the bone (a little cylinder of burned flesh eventually fell out)! Ouch! This was at 7 MHZ.
The only good weather is bad weather.
I got one of those Electra Lamps from ThinkGeek and ran a metal slinky over the top of the tube. When turned on, electricity would arc about half an inch from the slinky. Great for burning french fries, CDs, business cards, sales guys, etc.
Sorry but arcs are ionized air, there presence indicates that the un-avoidable dissociation of air atoms and one or two of their electrons has became structured such as giong from point A to point B. Air Ionization always happens when the charge density is enough to strip the electrons. the charge density is dependent on the amount of charge and the shape of the charge. that's why point things arc more than smooth things. just becuase the dischrge isn't great enough to be visible doen't mean it isn't there. Power is the product of the charge and the current, voltage alone dosn't make power, it's voltage times current.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
there is a why around the problem, given that it takes considerable voltage to throw an arc say 10 M as you said, we don't have to conduct the current through the air because the air has broken down into a conductive plasma so the current can be carried at a much lower voltage. My electric arc weld outputs 12 volts. use the tesla coil to start the arc and once conduction begins the voltage can drop.
Florecent lights work that way, the ballast puts out about 50KV to start the light then drops down to maintain the light
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
"Thousands of computer geeks toasted by self-built tesla coils"
but then.. but less geeks means more free jobs..
Thanks for posting! *evil grin*
Karma
Once I wanted to build a Tesla Coil. But now I want to build a Flux Compression Generator.
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
I've actually only played it like four times, and that was a few years ago. :)
slashdot!=valid HTML
Here's a sure fire way to do the trick. EMP Bomb. Same principal, but unspeakably more devastating. :)
-Guanno
When I was young and stupid... we had an old refridgerator with a short circuit. If you placed one hand on the metal hinge and the other on the kitchen sink the AC would arc through you. Wow that was fun. We would line up in chains with one guy in the middle and a guy on either side pointing at his temples. It's amazing how fast one's eyes can vibrate with an alternating current running through your brain. Who needs drugs? :)
-Guanno
HSV Technologies has thrown together two such devices: a tetanizing beam (similar to a Tazer), and a vehicle-disabling weapon (Oops, did you need those electronics?). In case you were wondering, yep, it's patented.
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
http://www.amazing1.com/tesla2.htm
"Tesla Earthquake Machine"
that's the book I meant.
This
It was a C&C joke: If you're Soviet, tesla coils use up so much power that you will quickly run out of it if you build the standard tesla power plants. In the game, nuclear plants have something like quintuple the power yield, so to have any number of tesla coils it's a good idea to have nuclear plants.
Yes, he called the device a tele-geodynamic oscilator, and had both electrically driven and one driven by compressed gas.
A friend of mine works with KVA. They put on shows using tesla coils to create mad phat effects. My friend's part in all this: He puts on a chain mail full body suit and 'directs' the lightening. VERY VERY COOL.