Tesla Hairpin circuit - curious phenomenon

[Dejan567]

Hi All,

Has anyone played with Tesla's hairpin circuit? Please refer to the video below:



Any comments on the strange effects? Some of it can be understood, but most of this seems new to me...

[T3sl4co1l]

Appears to be varying cases of transmission line, transformer or inductive loop circuits.

In the first case, the glow tube acts as a shorted stub, having some series inductance.  The extension of the line therefore can resonate against its low impedance, acting as an impedance matching circuit.  This will require quite high frequencies (100s MHz); which can be produced by sparking, so this is a possible explanation.  Alternately, the glow tube's drop is enough that the bulbs glow anyway, and they simply act in parallel.

It is doubtful that any of the lightbulbs are near nominal power.  Incandescent power varies strongly with applied voltage (note that it's not square law as a plain resistor, because of tempco; nor is it linear (constant current), because the resistance curve isn't quite that steep*).  Light output (and color) varies even more strongly with power, but it doesn't take a whole lot to be blinding to look at by eye or camera; it's hard to tell without contrast (and even harder to be sure without a photometer!).  But, that's just to say -- the exact positions, voltages and impedances might not be ideal, but obviously some power is going around.

*You can make a CCS or even slightly negative resistance characteristic with various kinds of wire in gas; the classic case was near CCS, I believe using iron in hydrogen atmosphere, called a barreter.  Was used for limiting current back in the tube days (or even before, I suppose).

In the second case, they're simply in parallel, in a series resonant circuit between the ladder inductance and resonator capacitance.  This will be a pretty high frequency given dimensions of the circuit; but again, sparks can commutate very quickly so this can happen.

In the third case, the "hairpin" acts as an inductive loop, with the lamps tapped along it, thus voltage corresponds to distance from the short.

Tim

[Dejan567]

Appears to be varying cases of transmission line, transformer or inductive loop circuits.

In the first case, the glow tube acts as a shorted stub, having some series inductance.  The extension of the line therefore can resonate against its low impedance, acting as an impedance matching circuit.  This will require quite high frequencies (100s MHz); which can be produced by sparking, so this is a possible explanation.  Alternately, the glow tube's drop is enough that the bulbs glow anyway, and they simply act in parallel.

It is doubtful that any of the lightbulbs are near nominal power.  Incandescent power varies strongly with applied voltage (note that it's not square law as a plain resistor, because of tempco; nor is it linear (constant current), because the resistance curve isn't quite that steep*).  Light output (and color) varies even more strongly with power, but it doesn't take a whole lot to be blinding to look at by eye or camera; it's hard to tell without contrast (and even harder to be sure without a photometer!).  But, that's just to say -- the exact positions, voltages and impedances might not be ideal, but obviously some power is going around.

*You can make a CCS or even slightly negative resistance characteristic with various kinds of wire in gas; the classic case was near CCS, I believe using iron in hydrogen atmosphere, called a barreter.  Was used for limiting current back in the tube days (or even before, I suppose).

In the second case, they're simply in parallel, in a series resonant circuit between the ladder inductance and resonator capacitance.  This will be a pretty high frequency given dimensions of the circuit; but again, sparks can commutate very quickly so this can happen.

In the third case, the "hairpin" acts as an inductive loop, with the lamps tapped along it, thus voltage corresponds to distance from the short.

I am not sure about the color comment. It seems as though in the first scenario the voltage was bright enough for the second incandescent bulb, and it did not change color much.

In the third case wouldn't the lower rated voltage bulb light even dimly at a different distance away from the inductive loop? It did not light, even dimly. It is rated at half the voltage and seems to be roughly half as far from the short circuit stub at the end. Seeing that the inductance should be roughly half, you would expect this bulb to light, no?

What about the part where the bulb is being lit under water? The high-voltage not shocking the person can be explained only if there is very low current, but that depends on the winding ratio of the transformer. Not sure how I would explain the under-water effects...

Do we think there is every any new phenomenon we are unaware of, or do we know everything about electricity? I wonder...

[T3sl4co1l]

Seems, yes.  It might also be a hybrid equivalent circuit, perhaps the low voltage bulb is in series resonance with the line capacitance, with a voltage maxima in the middle near the high voltage bulb.  The effective topology changes with intensity because of the tempco (the ratio of resistance for tungsten between operating and room temperatures is something like 8 times!), so keep that in mind as well.  A single effective circuit might not be meaningful anyway, due to the wideband excitation.

Nerves don't respond above a kHz or so; you can still very much be cooked by RF energy.  You won't feel a shock, but you can still be cooked internally by it.

At high frequencies, water is a better dielectric than conductor; that simply means enough energy is carried along the wires to light the bulb.  Presumably the frequency shifts (which has no effect due to the wideband excitation), and presumably a lot of power also flows into the water, but evidently in addition to, rather than subtracting from, the power in the bulb.

Water here does have a lot of dielectric loss.  The response is closer at these frequencies (10s or 100s MHz?) to the response at 2.45GHz (i.e. microwave oven), than to that at DC or mains frequency (<60Hz).  In particular, the dielectric constant is much lower, but it's also decreasing as frequency rises, which is to say it has a loss component.  The faster it's decreasing, the stronger the loss; there's a time constant (dipole relaxation, perhaps some ionic motion as well) at low frequencies (~kHz I think?), below which the famously large (~80) value can be measured, but it's a lower figure at these frequencies.

There are no new phenomena in electricity, only ignorance of the many ways in which it can be applied.  This is no accident: other than in the 300-600THz range, it is quite literally opaque to our senses: therefore we must always probe with measurement tools in lieu of eyes and ears.  (And note the absence of them here!)  The somewhat surprising permutations here are entirely explained by the impedances and topology of the system, and the wideband excitation.

Tim

[Dejan567]

It seems your explanation it based on a lot of assumptions...Would you be interested in building one to experiment with? How about the single-wire currents?

It's sad to think we know everything about electricity. We don't even know a single atom in it's entirety. Why the hubris? Isn't science about exploring and investigating?

[T3sl4co1l]

But we know all atoms to the utmost degree that is currently knowable...

Whether there is finer structure than QCD is very hard to say at this time; suffice it to say, QCD, and even moreso for everyday purposes, QED, are perfect descriptors of the world as we see it, to as many decimal places as our instruments are able to measure (hence, perfect in this sense).  There is not, and cannot be, any finer structure that affects these bounds -- only to further refine them.

If you're just going to "ohh we know so little about the world IT'S SO MYSTERIOUS ISN'T IT", I'm not interested in continuing that conversation.

It's a shame that Tesla attracted that crowd, but also not without his fault, later in life.

Tim

[Dejan567]

You speak so confidently of QCD and QED...Do you know about "quantum renormalization"? Does that seem perfect to you? Can you speak confidently on why we can make infinities that come out of these equations disappear and call them "perfect"?

Tesla worked and invented much of our modern day technology yet you can find fault in his work, great job.

I asked if you would be interested in building this set up and others like them to experiment and see for yourself or would prefer to just conclude you know everything and there will never be anything new in the research world of electricity? Do we even know how magnetism is created? The fundamental mechanism? Feynman himself had a hard time explaining the "why".

But we know everything "perfectly"....

[D Straney]

Not this kind of bullshit attitude again...  I know I shouldn't be responding, but was attracted by the possibility of interesting high-frequency stuff, and need to blow off some steam anyways.

Dejan567:
From an outside perspective, this is how the conversation went...
You: isn't this phenomenon weird?
Tim: yes, here's roughly how it works though with conventional electromagnetics, which makes sense
You: BUT WHAT IF IT DIDN'T?

You seem to be assuming that everything that isn't obvious with a highschool-physics level of understanding of electricity must be mysterious uncharted territory.  You're also conflating "certain well-defined areas of physics are extremely well-explored and understood" (which is true) with "we know everything that there is to know about everything ever" (which is not true, and any good scientist or engineer would agree it's not true).  However, the fact that you don't understand how wave propagation, non-linear resistances, and high-frequency material properties work doesn't mean that those things aren't well understood up to the 10s-of-Ghz range - there's such an incredible amount of supporting work at this point, that if you want to try and show that the existing theories are invalid in this area, then you'll have to show exactly why existing theories don't explain it correctly (and pointing to a random video, with no detailed measurements or simulations, doesn't cut it).
You also don't have to be smarter than Tesla to use the knowledge gained during the century (!) of intensive electromagnetics research that's been done since his time, and the amazing test equipment that we have now that can accurately measure what's going on, in ways that people of Tesla's time could only dream about.  It would be pretty dumb to intentionally ignore that last 100 years of knowledge.

[MK14]

but most of this seems new to me...

As others have said/hinted/implied/etc.  That doesn't mean, you can say, therefore Tesla was 159.637% right, Tesla was a MegaSuperBeing, there is masses of new science here, free energy is possible and demonstrated, Quantumy word salad is yummy, especially with salad cream.

I very strongly suspect, that if you froze that youtube video, at any given point.  Then carefully recreated the 'experiment', and professionally examined (measuring things, where necessary).  I'm confident, it could be 99.99%+, explained, using conventional, already known and established scientific and engineering principles etc.

There are some people, who believe in things like, the existence of very easy free energy, e.g. by using spinning magnets, the Earth is flat, and other possible things.  But such people, have yet to (scientifically/properly) demonstrate such concepts.

E.g. An ever lasting battery (free energy), with something inside of it, such as a small free energy gyrating magnetic mechanism, inside a small box.

Or a place we can go to on Earth, where we would fall off, if we went any further (if the Earth was flat).  Etc.

[Dejan567]

Ok, let's say I buy your explanation for the above experiment sure.

Can you please comment on the below at around 28 minute mark? Feel free to watch the entire video.



Don't worry, I'll wait...

It'll be fun to hear the "there must be a air draft current causing all this" explanation...

[ch_scr]

Ok, let's say I buy your explanation for the above experiment sure.

Can you please comment on the below at around 20 minute mark? Feel free to watch the entire video.
[...]

You mean what he (correctly) describes as "broadband electromagnetic radiation from spark gaps" causing resets in electronic devices? (More commonly called "EMP pulse" nowadays.) Would you deem this a mysterious manifestation of Tesla's energy transfer?

[MK14]

One of Dave's videos, with my explanation (in real terms):

More exact starting point in video, here:
https://youtu.be/CuGNOP0Ubvo?t=84

Originally came from here:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevrant-refuting-bullshit/msg1106673/#msg1106673

Edit:
One of the important, messages apparently conveyed in the video, above.  Is that it can take considerably more time, work and effort (perhaps one or more, orders of magnitude more), to refute unfortunate mistakes/misunderstandings and hence false beliefs in some things, some people are able to generate.

E.g. A person can take a 10 second video and place it on youtube, of a lamp erratically flashing, on the top of an elevators outside door control display panel.  Where they can say it is caused by ghosts in the skyscraper, using quantum waa waa time dilation freaking, related to Tesla.

So, it takes 10 seconds to make these false claims, plus some upload to youtube time.

But might take massively longer, to measure the possibly faulty flickering lamp and find out exactly what is wrong with it.  Such as, a loose connection.

So, if you spend all day, investigating the flickering lamp and explaining why their explanation is completely wrong.

They then spend another 10 seconds, watching rain splashing on a window, which they upload onto youtube.  Saying it is caused by poltergeists, being annoyed by the lack of religious symbols in the building, hence the totally unholy watery rain patterns, they just filmed.

It could then take weeks or months, investigating rain fall patterns on windows.  To give the proper explanation on why the rain may appear to fall in a strange way.

[Dejan567]

Two replies and still no "conventional" explanation of the effect shown in this video (28 minute mark):

[CatalinaWOW]

Dejan567, I know that many people worship Tesla.  And indeed he was a very bright individual who contributed greatly to the technology of his day.  But he was also limited by the tools and knowledge of the day, and he did in a very real sense go crazy in his later years.  It is certainly no great leap to assume that this mental problem developed gradually and affected some of his earlier work.

I think this is what happened with his power transmission experiments.  Tools to measure input/output relationships were crude.  He may or may not have understood the losses involved in his theater demonstrations of remotely powering light bulbs.  But he needed money and his audiences had no such understanding so he sold it to the hilt.  And when he went full scale in his Colorado Springs experiments he consumed all the power available in the area (admittedly it was probably measured in the dozens or hundreds of kilowatts in that era) with no significant transmission.  That isn't the kind of thing that is fixed by some fine tuning.

With regards to the hairpin experiment.  It appears to me you have found an interesting video and are now asking other people to go do the work of finding out what is going on.  Not just explaining it as T3sl4co1l did, but building the circuit and testing it for you.  Why not do it yourself.  And as a hint, once you have built it, a few tests using an RF spectrum analyzer should provide a lot of evidence that T3sl4co1l gave a substantially correct explanation.

My advice, go learn what we do know about electronics.  If you learn at the average rate it will take you few years to go through all of the math and physics background so that you can read and understand one of the standard texts like "Plonsey and Collins" or "Ramo, Whinnery and Van Duzer".  You will also have to spend some time understanding the properties of each of the light sources used in the experiment.  They are all complex, non-linear devices.  You will then be in a position to make informed experiments with the hairpin device and find if there is something going on that isn't explained by "our" current understanding of electromagnetism.  "Our" is quoted because the human race in general has no concept of what is going on.  Only fraction of a percent who have gone through the education I recommend have that understanding to any degree, and only a fraction of that community has an in depth understanding. 

At the very minimum, after doing this study you will understand why I suggest that an RF spectrum analyzer would be illuminating.

[Dejan567]

Dejan567, I know that many people worship Tesla.  And indeed he was a very bright individual who contributed greatly to the technology of his day.  But he was also limited by the tools and knowledge of the day, and he did in a very real sense go crazy in his later years.  It is certainly no great leap to assume that this mental problem developed gradually and affected some of his earlier work.

I think this is what happened with his power transmission experiments.  Tools to measure input/output relationships were crude.  He may or may not have understood the losses involved in his theater demonstrations of remotely powering light bulbs.  But he needed money and his audiences had no such understanding so he sold it to the hilt.  And when he went full scale in his Colorado Springs experiments he consumed all the power available in the area (admittedly it was probably measured in the dozens or hundreds of kilowatts in that era) with no significant transmission.  That isn't the kind of thing that is fixed by some fine tuning.

With regards to the hairpin experiment.  It appears to me you have found an interesting video and are now asking other people to go do the work of finding out what is going on.  Not just explaining it as T3sl4co1l did, but building the circuit and testing it for you.  Why not do it yourself.  And as a hint, once you have built it, a few tests using an RF spectrum analyzer should provide a lot of evidence that T3sl4co1l gave a substantially correct explanation.

My advice, go learn what we do know about electronics.  If you learn at the average rate it will take you few years to go through all of the math and physics background so that you can read and understand one of the standard texts like "Plonsey and Collins" or "Ramo, Whinnery and Van Duzer".  You will also have to spend some time understanding the properties of each of the light sources used in the experiment.  They are all complex, non-linear devices.  You will then be in a position to make informed experiments with the hairpin device and find if there is something going on that isn't explained by "our" current understanding of electromagnetism.  "Our" is quoted because the human race in general has no concept of what is going on.  Only fraction of a percent who have gone through the education I recommend have that understanding to any degree, and only a fraction of that community has an in depth understanding.

At the very minimum, after doing this study you will understand why I suggest that an RF spectrum analyzer would be illuminating.

I am an RF engineer by trade and plan on building this experiment and others as well, thanks for the encouragement. I do not presume to know all that we currently know conventionally. However, thankfully, I do not assume that we already know all that there is to know about electricity and electrical phenomenon. How boring and depressing it would be to think that!

Still waiting to hear one "conventional" explanation of the phenomenon shown at 28 minutes in this video:

[T3sl4co1l]

That's even less encouraging.

Either:
- you're an RF engineer, and you asked for an explanation that you already know, as a means to spark discussion on a fringe topic that you know would otherwise be rejected; or
- you're the worst RF engineer ever, and you've been wasting (or defrauding) employers all your career; or
- that's a bald faced lie.

I strongly urge everyone to leave this thread now.  Do not feed the troll.

Tim

[CatalinaWOW]

Dejan567, I know that many people worship Tesla.  And indeed he was a very bright individual who contributed greatly to the technology of his day.  But he was also limited by the tools and knowledge of the day, and he did in a very real sense go crazy in his later years.  It is certainly no great leap to assume that this mental problem developed gradually and affected some of his earlier work.

I think this is what happened with his power transmission experiments.  Tools to measure input/output relationships were crude.  He may or may not have understood the losses involved in his theater demonstrations of remotely powering light bulbs.  But he needed money and his audiences had no such understanding so he sold it to the hilt.  And when he went full scale in his Colorado Springs experiments he consumed all the power available in the area (admittedly it was probably measured in the dozens or hundreds of kilowatts in that era) with no significant transmission.  That isn't the kind of thing that is fixed by some fine tuning.

With regards to the hairpin experiment.  It appears to me you have found an interesting video and are now asking other people to go do the work of finding out what is going on.  Not just explaining it as T3sl4co1l did, but building the circuit and testing it for you.  Why not do it yourself.  And as a hint, once you have built it, a few tests using an RF spectrum analyzer should provide a lot of evidence that T3sl4co1l gave a substantially correct explanation.

My advice, go learn what we do know about electronics.  If you learn at the average rate it will take you few years to go through all of the math and physics background so that you can read and understand one of the standard texts like "Plonsey and Collins" or "Ramo, Whinnery and Van Duzer".  You will also have to spend some time understanding the properties of each of the light sources used in the experiment.  They are all complex, non-linear devices.  You will then be in a position to make informed experiments with the hairpin device and find if there is something going on that isn't explained by "our" current understanding of electromagnetism.  "Our" is quoted because the human race in general has no concept of what is going on.  Only fraction of a percent who have gone through the education I recommend have that understanding to any degree, and only a fraction of that community has an in depth understanding.

At the very minimum, after doing this study you will understand why I suggest that an RF spectrum analyzer would be illuminating.

I am an RF engineer by trade and plan on building this experiment and others as well, thanks for the encouragement. I do not presume to know all that we currently know conventionally. However, thankfully, I do not assume that we already know all that there is to know about electricity and electrical phenomenon. How boring and depressing it would be to think that!

Still waiting to hear one "conventional" explanation of the phenomenon shown at 28 minutes in this video:

It would take some simple experiments to confirm, but I would suggest that there are two things going on here, with a bit of simple Newtonian physics on top.  The three insulating materials clearly react as they would to a charge.  The different behaviors of those three materials correlate well with their mass.  Whence the charge?  Thermionic emission from the filament generates an electron cloud, which then induces a charge on the outside of the glass bulb.

Tests for this part of the experiment include verifying the inverse square relationship of the force, and assuming that the induced charge is the same in all three cases correlating the lateral deflection with the effect of gravity.

Eddy currents are involved in the metallic conductors movement in addition to the electrostatic forces.  There is an oscillating magnetic field not perfectly aligned with the metal foils.  The copper foil is much heavier than the aluminum explaining the difference in behavior.   More tests, mostly involving bulb orientation would confirm this.  The oscillating behavior seems consistent with charge being transferred to the plates and then leaking off through the hanger, but this element does require more explanation. 

[MK14]

I strongly urge everyone to leave this thread now.  Do not feed the troll.

+1

[CatalinaWOW]

That's even less encouraging.

Either:
- you're an RF engineer, and you asked for an explanation that you already know, as a means to spark discussion on a fringe topic that you know would otherwise be rejected; or
- you're the worst RF engineer ever, and you've been wasting (or defrauding) employers all your career; or
- that's a bald faced lie.

I strongly urge everyone to leave this thread now.  Do not feed the troll.

Tim

A little harsh.  The troll title only applies to the first and third alternative.  RF engineer covers a lot of ground.  And just as in all the other engineering specialties there are people who meet the requirements of the employer without much in the way of depth of understanding.  You see comments scattered all through this thread from people who haven't had to use any math since graduation.   As long as the book of recipes is there they get what their employer expects done.

I would also point out that he correctly self assesses.  He does not know everything there is to know.

[Dejan567]

A ot of ad hominem attacks and still no explanation of the effects seen in this video:



I'll keep waiting for the experts to tell me what is going on "conventionally".

Funny how the first video got multiple explanations quickly, but when I ask for an explanation to the above video it shifts to ad hominem attacks. Coincidence?

I think not.... 

[Dejan567]

Eddy currents are involved in the metallic conductors movement in addition to the electrostatic forces.  There is an oscillating magnetic field not perfectly aligned with the metal foils.  The copper foil is much heavier than the aluminum explaining the difference in behavior.   More tests, mostly involving bulb orientation would confirm this.  The oscillating behavior seems consistent with charge being transferred to the plates and then leaking off through the hanger, but this element does require more explanation.

Thank you for at least having the guts to try and explain this and admit that there could be something more here. The Thermionic explanation may seem valid but this apparently runs cool. The difference between the copper and aluminum is not just in weight, you can see the copper oscillates back and forth, not just in one direction and gets stuck to the glass temporarily after the bulb is turned off...

Interesting, nonetheless. I would think engineers would be curious and excited to see some of these things, not just heave ad hominem attacks...

[RoGeorge]

That's a very nice experiment. 

Not very mysterious, I am tempted to say.  At the beginning, seems normal to me for the bulb to light up with a single wire.  When we were kids, we used to tune a wire antenna by connecting a miniature incandescent lightbulb in series with the antenna, and adjust the impedance matching for maximum filament heat.  The energy flows "through one wire" because it is radiated by the telescopic antenna, radiated as electromagnetic waves.


About the attracted foils at minute 28, my guess is that's the photoelectric effect at work.  There might be some ultraviolet light produced, maybe some X rays, too, and those will hit the metal foil, and bump away electrons from the foils, thus making the foil to become positively charged.  The rest is electrostatic.  Accumulated charges on the suspended foils are making the foil stick to the bulb's glass.

Same thing (photoelectric effect) is what charges the HV capacitor at the end of the video.  Note how the spark is bigger when you hold the other end with the hand, providing something equivalent with wiring the other end of the HV capacitor to the earth.

Sure, this can be verified by more experiments, so to eliminate possibly wrong hypotheses.  Keep all the variables the same, except the one you want to test for.  For example, add extra weight so to make all the foils the same, except the type of metal.


I expect the spectrum from a spark-gap to be very, very broad, much broader than the oscilloscope's (or the probe) bandwidth.  Also, 300W is a lot.

Bulb filaments are usually very thin coils (with small capacitance between turns.  That might produce huge resonant voltages along the filament.  That might pull filament atoms away entirely.  Note how the bulb near the foils got darker.  Most probably because filament atoms were pulled away and deposited on the interior of the glass.


Another thing is that sparks and/or very high intensity fields make electrons to escape from the wires.  Another thing is any acceleration/deceleration of particles produces X rays (Bremsstrahlung Radiation) this includes particles hitting something, turning direction or "jumping away" from a wire (e.g. Corona Discharges) and so on.

In general, electrons don't like spikes, or sharp edges, they tend to fly away from a material with spikes, because other electrons crowds on only one side, and the electrostatic force pushes out the electrons at the tip of a spike (or else said the electric field is much stronger at the sharp points)


I'm no expert in very strong and broadband EM fields, just that it doesn't look like something outside of the known (mainstream) physics.

[CatalinaWOW]

Eddy currents are involved in the metallic conductors movement in addition to the electrostatic forces.  There is an oscillating magnetic field not perfectly aligned with the metal foils.  The copper foil is much heavier than the aluminum explaining the difference in behavior.   More tests, mostly involving bulb orientation would confirm this.  The oscillating behavior seems consistent with charge being transferred to the plates and then leaking off through the hanger, but this element does require more explanation.

Thank you for at least having the guts to try and explain this and admit that there could be something more here. The Thermionic explanation may seem valid but this apparently runs cool. The difference between the copper and aluminum is not just in weight, you can see the copper oscillates back and forth, not just in one direction and gets stuck to the glass temporarily after the bulb is turned off...

Interesting, nonetheless. I would think engineers would be curious and excited to see some of these things, not just heave ad hominem attacks...

A white hot filament is not running cool.  It is something above 4500K.

[Dejan567]

I am just curious I guess, as a genuine question how photoelectric effect and electrostatics can explained both conductive material and an insulator to be attracted? In the case of the insulator, what mechanism is causing it to gain an electric charge?

[boB]