Jacob's Ladder - High Voltage Travelling Arc (10 kV)

This is my first time testing my 10 kV ignition transformator which previously was used in oil-heating-systems to ignite the oil.
I am going to use it to power my Tesla Coil I am building for school.

At the point where the 2 wires are the closest to each other, the electric field strips some of the air-molecule's electrons, which is called ionizing the air. This allows current to flow from one wire to another wire through this bridge of ionized air. When the electrons flowing through it bumb into the air-molecules, their electrons get knocked out into a higher-energy electron cloud. As they fall back into their original state, they release their excess energy in form of light.

The air is in fact so hot, when I hold my hand 1 meter over the arc, I can still feel the hot air rising.

Also, the camera has a problem focusing because of the intense light the arc is producing on the dark background (I actually had all my lights on)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• jacob
• jacobs
• ladder
• awesome
• justin
• beiber