"Beethoven Virus" - Musical Tesla Coils

These are two gigantic solid state musical Tesla Coils. A Tesla Coil is a special type of transformer invented by Nikola Tesla that is able to generating extremely large voltages using a phenomenon known as electrical resonance. Each coil in this video is capable of generating a 13 foot spark. This equates to about 500,000 volts of electricity.


The primary drive system for the coils consists of high power semiconductors arranged into an H-Bridge switching configuration. During a spark event, the coil is pulsed on for a few hundred millionths of a second. During this short time, thousands of amps circulate within the primary tank circuit and the energy is coupled into the secondary resonator through magnetism.


So what appears to be a continuous burst of sparks is actually a specific number of sparks generated per second. By modulating the number of sparks that emit from the coil each second, different tones can be produced by the coils.


These coils were constructed by Eric Goodchild and Steven Caton.


Eric Goodchild is currently an EE student at ASU Polytechnic.


His personal website is: http://www.goodchildengineering.net/


Steven Caton is currently an EE student at UCLA


His personal website is: http://stevencaton.com/

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Frodo Baggins]

Isn't God amazing to produce such beautiful things?

[Eric Goodchild]

God had nothing to do with it, this is cold hard science and engineering my friend.

[couldnotthinkofit]

Excuse me sir, but wouldn't it be 12,000,000 volts? The dielectric of air is 3 MV/meter and 13 feet is about 4 meters.

[Eric Goodchild]

That dielectric constant only holds true for a static DC potential. This is a high frequency AC potential. The amount of voltage the air can stand off drastically decreases at higher frequencies. After the air is converted to a plasma it also becomes incredibly conductive, other plasma physics that are to complex to explain in a YouTube comment also play a part.

Hence why this system can produce ~12 feet with only 500Kv This is also not a linear model.

[redhawkmillenium]

Just goes to show what us humans can do. We build giant coils that can make impressive displays of electricity, and what do we use them for? Music!

[KRC1023]

Yeah.

[KRC1023]

Agreed.

[durielsdb]

that was.... impressive

[Frodo Baggins]

My mate owes me £25, I bet him I could elicit a response from the uploader using any means necessary. I chose the 'Ignorant Religious' comment method and it worked!

More fool you for rising to it.

[Ray Liu]

Epic reply !

[Kzummo]

Don't you know he means Nikola Tesla?

[Einstein Nikola]

What is your power source and what capacitors do you use?

[Einstein Nikola]

Wow that's damn pro!!!