Documentation for Introduction to Plasma

In the old days, this project would have been real simple: carbon rods were readily available from the cores of dry-cell batteries. Today's alkyline batteries do not contain carbon.

I contacted Austin Theatrical Supply, a long-time supplier of theater lighting. There the owner found a whole box of rods for the Strong Trooper spotlights. He was once a student in the UT Drama Department and has worked theater in the Austin area since theater was done in Gregory Gym. (Ugh, well, I remember those days, too.) We had a good chat.

I had the other supplies to build the project and reassembled a power supply, once canabalized for parts in another project, which provides about 30 volts at 4.5 amps. Its ferro-resonant transformer allows it to operate safely into a short circuit. It has a hefty 32,000uF output capacitor to punch the arc ignition.

I have learned to take pictures all along the project process for documentation purposes; I shot a few stills and videos with my digital camera. I loaded them to my computer and thought no more about it.

The project presentation was, as always, a lot of fun. A number of my fellow ACTLabbies have not seen electricity in this form.

The fun really began when I started work on this website. The plasma formations in the video was incredible, and I spent several hours stepping through them frame-by-frame. Check out the next page for frame shots and slo-mo video.