August 28, 2012
"Sweet Home Alabama" -- Musical Tesla Coils
From the description at YouTube:
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.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 08:51 AM | Permalink
Comments
It's entertaining but it's fake.
If you watch the objects on the ground - particularly at the left - you'll see them come and go and otherwise move around. This is a video stitched together from several takes.
In any case there is no way to deterministically control the spark emissions from a Tesla coil. It's too, too random. There is therefore no way to "modulate" the emission in the way described.
I suspect what they've done is dubbed spark noises over the top of the backing track. You could do this with an auto tune type device - the thing that allows Brittany Spears to sing in tune.
That's the "modulation". Otherwise it's a loop of two Tesla coils free running for a while.
Posted by: JM | Aug 28, 2012 11:56:57 AM
I can't speak to the authenticity of this particular video, but singing Tesla Coils are a real thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_Tesla_Coil
Posted by: DJA | Aug 28, 2012 5:02:41 PM
Here are additional technical details from Eric Goodchild's website:
http://www.goodchildengineering.net/tesla-synth
Posted by: DJA | Aug 28, 2012 5:06:23 PM
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