"Slowly dying" should not be expected to generate the effect. The capacitance apparently increasing on the death of the plasma is curious.
On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 2:16 PM, Kyle Mcallister <kyle_mcallis...@yahoo.com>wrote: > > --- 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 effectively allowing for charge to accumulate and be withdrawn from the 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." > > > > >
