What is a Tesla Coil?
2003 A Tesla coil is device to develop very high voltages pioneered by Nicola Tesla over 100 years ago. In its simplest form it is an air cored transformer driven by discharging a high voltage capacitor through a few of the primary turns. This sets up a high frequency resonance in the secondary coil. This resonance occurs between the inductance of the tall secondary coil and the capacitance of a rounded metal object (typically a donut shaped toroid) and a very high voltage results in streamers directly into the air or sparks to nearby objects. (click to enlarge) From the Tesla coil sparks page. A Tesla coil such as this one with sparks of 8 feet equates to about 500,000 Volts. It is very hard to measure this voltage directly. See calculations of voltage in Tesla coil 6 inch. The largest spark that I am aware of at 325 ft was from a 5 MV Marx generator, not a Tesla coil. Interestingly, real lightning is only estimated to be 10 – 120 MV . Lightning length appears to be determined by cosm
The Tesla Coil is used to produce fantastic high voltage long sparking displays. It takes the output from a 120vAC to a several kilovolt transformer and driver circuit and steps it up to an extremely high voltage. Voltages can get to be well above 1,000,000 volts and are discharged in the form of electrical arcs. Tesla coils are unique in the fact that they create extremely powerful electrical fields. Large coils have been known to wirelessly light up florescent lights up to 50 feet away, and because of the fact that it is an electric field that goes directly into the light and doesn’t use the electrodes, even burnt-out florescent lights will glow. To learn more about Tesla Coils check out the resources in our Links page.
