your channel is growing!!1

Incidentally, this unintentionally a superb demonstration of why lightning bolts striking the ground appear as they do in particularly high quality or slow motion video of very close strikes. The presence of Na in the environment and soil is so ubiquitous, and the efficiency of its conversion of electrical and heat forms of energy into yellow light at the 589 doublet lines is so high that this phenomenon is seen almost all the time when video of cloud to ground lightning is of high enough quality. I think the suspicions about why "dark lightning" was not achieved here are quite right and the high temperature and electric field in the sparks may even be causing Doppler broadening and Stark effect of the lines respectively to become relevant in some part as well.

Two things you need to do: a) overpower the light of the spark by putting the lamp closer - you want to drown the ionized sodium emission in the camera - they are in the way and the spark makes them a lot brighter than the flame. You only want nonglowing vapor action. b) close, white background reflecting the lamp strongly - you can't see black stuff in front of black shadow; you need white background's illumination which will get gobbled up by sodium ion vapor

Coil Labs I love you videos!!!

Another idea, instead of using sodium bicarbonate in the electrode tip you could try potassium bitartrate or cream of tartar, this is supposed to produce purple flames but it could be more pink, you could also try epsom salts (magnesium Sulfate) too.

I have another idea that could work, since the plasma coming off of the Tesla coil is ultraviolet you could use a mercury vapor lamp instead of the low-pressure sodium vapor lamp

Possibly relates to why two running sodium lamps don’t noticeably absorb each other’s light. It’s the sodium vapour that absorbs the sodium light, not the ionised sodium. If you have two hot sodium lamps running and switch one out you will see it absorbing the light. Well actually its weirder than that, it will absorb and then re-emit slightly in resonance and look foggy. Good demonstration though, I would have tried that if I had though of it.

@CoilLabs

2 жыл бұрын

Makes sense. I've been trying to think of ways to modify this and get a better effect. Hopefully get back to this some day. Thanks for the info!

These are some really quality videos , i still wonder why your channel gets this little amount of attention , i think it would deserve at least 100k subscribers by now . Keep making these interesting experiments and maybe in the future ! I'm no chemist though so i can't figure out either why it doesn't work with the tesla coil , all though it would be probably possible in some way .

@CoilLabs

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you, I really appreciate that! Hopefully someday!

Ive never clicked so fast

You deserve way more subs!

That was a pretty cool experiment! I personally cannot explain exactly why, I could hypothesize that perhaps the light from the spark, is enough to wash out the black? Other than that, I'm at a loss. But that was still really cool to watch. Cheers

@fungusenthusiast8249

3 жыл бұрын

I think what's happening is the arc produced from the coil is enough to excite the atoms in the air to produce light that the fire isn't able to, and so the light from the atoms in the ambient air is enough to wash out the black coloration any sodium ions are making.

You used normal camera with fixed sodium lamp lighting right? Maybe use the filter that only passes that narrow frequency, and then you can eliminate the plasma interfering the absorption. If that filter even exists.

@CoilLabs

3 жыл бұрын

That's right, yes. That's an interesting suggestion. Yeah, I have no idea if that kind of filter even exists, but would be cool to try if it does. I'll have to take a look. Thanks!

Try it with an mot arc

Interesting experiment. You could use a HFVTTC (aka PLasma flame generator) like Styropyro. Maybe becaus the plasma flame is mutch more similar to fire it would work. It still looks pretty cool tho.

@vdekjEE

3 жыл бұрын

Styro said he didn't have success on his large plasma flame, sadly.

@firefox1136

3 жыл бұрын

Hmmm... Maybe it would work with an electric arc from like a mot stack.

@CoilLabs

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah I'm very interested in trying that, actually. After I already filmed all this, I discovered The Action Lab posted a video, just a week before I posted this one, where he does this with a small HFSSTC plasma flame and it does work.

@CoilLabs

3 жыл бұрын

MOT arc is another interesting idea too! I'm curious what characteristics of flame vs Tesla coil spark vs hot MOT arc affect what's going on here.

@vdekjEE

3 жыл бұрын

@@firefox1136 I think he tried that as well, but I'm not sure. If a SS plasma flame worked, than perhaps an NST or low-current flyback would work better since lower temp.