I wrote:
> As far as I know, you cannot make a glow discharge appear with 10s or > hundreds of watts. > I meant the plasma does not form WITHOUT at least 10s or hundreds of watts. Nothing happens at low power. You have turn up power until the cathode is incandescent and then purple streams of plasma form between the cathode and anode, in the water. It is dramatic. It looks like miniature lighting -- which I suppose it is. After it forms you turn it down voltage and overall power as low as you can without breaking the streams of plasma. It takes much higher power to form the plasma than it does to maintain it once it is formed. At lower power you can detect the anomalous heat more easily. It produces more heat at very low power with the anomalous effect turned on than it does at high power with no effect. The heat is measured as a function of the total temperature rise in the 1-liter of electrolyte. Thermal gradients are enormous, since a portion of the water is converted to plasma, at thousands of degrees. There is a magnetic stirrer at the bottom, but you still have to measure temperature at several locations. It is easiest to ignore heat losses and pretend it is perfectly insulated for 20 minutes (a bomb calorimeter). It is very difficult to measure the temperature of the plasma. Only approximations of this have been made, with IR cameras. - Jed
