Huge Tesla Coils Will Recreate Natural Lightning

jjp9999 writes "In order to study the nature of lighting, the team at Lightning on Demand (LOD) plans to build two, ten-story-tall Tesla coils—the largest ever—that will blast arcs of lightning hundreds of feet in length. LOD founder Greg Leyh said the project aims to reveal details on the initiation process of natural lightning, an area that remains a mystery, since smaller generated arcs have more trouble breaking through the air. It is believed that 'laboratory-scale electric arcs start to gain lightning-like abilities once they grow past about 200ft in length,' according to the LOD website, and so the team hopes to build Tesla coils large enough to do this. According to Leyh, 'Understanding how lightning forms [and grows] is the first step towards being able to control where lightning strikes or being able to suppress it completely in certain areas.'"

Comments

Re:Where to put a 10' story Tesla coil

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the radiated output from the coils will be quite low, owing to several factors:

A) The operating frequency is *very* low, only 5200 Hz. This is actually *below* the frequency range the FCC controls.

B) The wavelength (over 35 miles) is *very* long compared to the coil height, so it's radiation efficiency is almost zero.

C) The two coils operate in opposite phase, so the electric fields will tend to cancel at a distance.

Of greater concern will be the actual *acoustic* noise... which might be upwards of 10's of kilowatts.
-Greg Leyh