--- On Tue, 6/23/09, Michel Jullian <michelj...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Kyle, nice work as always. Couldn't the plate (the support
> of the net
> charge) be simply the inside surface of the glass tube, and
> the plasma
> be just the conducting "wire" leading to that plate? In
> this case,
> suppressing the "wire" would also stop your oscillator
> wouldn't it?
> But it wouldn't change the ch
Might be, but the 'plate' must be some conductive material, perhaps a thin
layer of the plasma, in order to act as a capacitor. AFAIK, there's no way to
make a conductorless capacitor simply by having opposite charges on sides of a
chargeable material. Or is there? It'd certainly be interesting.
I did a follow up test, pulling the filament 6V supply and letting the plasma
slowly die; the frequency of the relaxation oscillation slowly *decreased*...as
if the capacitance of the tube were increasing. There were, however,
interspersed low-level oscillations of a much higher frequency. Could this be
evidence that the plasma 'wire' as you call it was no longer effectively
allowing for charge to accumulate and be withdrawn from the inner surface of
the glass?
Further test: replacing the 15k limiter with a 47k limiter cut the oscillation
frequency in half. Again, as if the capacitance were increased. 100k barely lit
the tube, the oscillation was very noisy and unsteady...but lower in frequency
still. What do you think? Is the effective capacitance being increased in some
way, or is something else happening?
> Michel "the static"
Hehe, I'd never call you that in a bad way. Hmm... matter of fact, it sounds
like something from the 'days of old, when knights were bold.'
"And so it came to pass that Michel the Static did journey forth to bring
knowledge to denizens of the land... and there was much rejoicing."
