I have been The Crappiest Blogger. I’ll attempt to excuse myself by saying that I started this blog at exactly the same time I was starting a new, full-time, thought-intensive job… but really, the 2 or 3 hours I have at home each day doing nothing are plenty of time to skim some non-brain-related (okay, or brain-related) stuff off the surface of my consciousness and throw it down here. I fear that anyone who may have had any interest in reading this at the beginning has now forgotten it in favor of things it’s worth the time to check.
…ok, I’m posting right now because I’m home “sick” from work (AKA I miraculously aged 30 years in a day and managed to throw my back out). More importantly, I wanted someone to see
twin musical tesla coils.
for anyone who doesn’t know about the tesla coil, it’s a transformer invented by nikola tesla which takes in a little bit of current and discharges it as a much larger voltage, in the form of an electrical arc. it has both a capacitor (current builds, voltage lags) and a coil (voltage is high, current lags). if timed exactly opposite each other, the circuit is never stable, so the current and voltage chase each other back and forth. to make shit exciting, tesla sent little discharges across a gap between two electrodes. the voltage on the capacitor builds to the point at which air breaks down as an insulator, transmitting an impulse which the coil discharges as an arc. for one thing, tesla coils can light up bulbs wirelessly (now a little bit of the prestige makes sense).
