Traveled down south on the weekend to see a live demonstration of High Voltage Tesla Coils in action: a 2 hour drive but well worth it. It was a small invite only group at the Tesla guy Peters house, where it was being filmed for a show on the Dutch TV network “Veronica TV”. (Previously it has been filmed for Discovery Channel, and apparently there are more film crews on the way).
There were a couple of very interesting aspects of the demonstrations, firstly the high power electric arcs being generated, and secondly the safe handling of said arcs by Peter the Tesla guy and the TV show presenter – they had these huge arcs from the coils terminating on steel rods being held, as well as on a metal cage with a person inside, on a steel glove, and even a tinfoil hat worn on the person whilst immersed in the family pool. This was made safe by making sure the circuit was constantly grounded through nice fat copper cables and/or the water of the pool – so while it looked like the arcs were millimeters from frying the humans involved, the current was actually happier to literally follow the path of least resistance (the copper, instead of the human).
Pretty amazing stuff to watch, I’m really glad I went. You can see photos and videos of this and more of the projects Peter has done on his website: www.tesladownunder.com – well worth a look.
