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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (30135)	6/26/1999 11:10:00 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Absolutely- the job is yours. You'll probably have to let Mr. X play with some of the weapons too- but I am sure you'll share.

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (30135)	6/27/1999 1:14:00 AM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Ooooo, Lather, are you going to do some spud gun test launches when you get to be Minister? What kind? Hairspray-powered? Pneumatic? Gattling? Can I watch? Or maybe you should do something really experimental, something that has never been tried before...like Lex Luthor's.... GIGANTIC DEATH-RAY PROJECTOR!!! Big Tesla coils produce arcs many feet in length. These arcs take on a sort of crawling fractal shape. What if they could be shaped into perfectly straight lines? Then we would have a "death ray" generatorwhich resembles those found in hundreds of SF movies. Here's a possible way for tesla coil hobbyists to accomplish just this feat in the real world. Build yourself a squirt gun. Power it with a couple hundred PSI air compressor. An old CO2 fire extinguisher would make a good water resevoir. Drive the tilt/pan motion remotely with cables and pulleys. Give it a mechanical valve, controlled by another cable. Install the entire thing in the main terminal of a large Tesla Coil. Use nonconductive materials for the control cables and air hose, of course. When the TC runs and the squirt gun squirts, the arc discharge will follow the row of conductive water droplets! Looks just like a Phaser weapon from Trek! (maybe put some metal salt copper chloride in the water to give the arc's plasma a green color.) If you REALLY wanted to get ridiculous, you could install the squirt gun with its aim fixed axially upwards, then TILT AND PAN THE ENTIRE TESLA COIL SECONDARY! Here's where a "magnifier" Tesla Coil might work better than a standard TC. Remember those truck-mounted beam weapons used in the first Godzilla movie? Go for it! The above is totally a thought experiment. Perhaps the arc won't even follow the water jet for very long distances. Perhaps the steam will cool things down and quench the arc. Perhaps you'll have to use WD-40 and magnesium powder instead of water. Prototyping test: poke a hole in a can bottom, suspend it from insulators, hook it to a neon sign transformer, fill it with various liquids, let it dribble into a grounded sink. Turn it on and see what kind of arcing effects are obtained. Other ideas: put various salts in the water to color the arc. Sodium gives yellow/orange, strontium red, copper blue/green, etc. Use several water tanks with various salts, and switch between them with a high-speed valve to get a multicolored tracer-bullet effect. Also, I've heard that there are particular salts which one can inject into flames in order to cause conductivity. If these materials were placed into the water jet, perhaps much longer "death beams" could be attained. Obtain a 100hp gasoline generator, mount the whole affair on a flatbed truck, shave your head, wear a white lab coat, put some copper sulphate in the water to get a nice green effect, then go hold up a bank while screaming: I HAVE NO USE FOR YOUR PITIFUL CURRENCY, I SIMPLY WISH TO ATTRACT THE ATTENTION OF... *SUPERMAN*!!! YOUR PUNY MENTAL-WARDS AND EXCESSIVELY SMALL PROJECTILE WEAPONS ARE USELESS AGAINST THE POWER OF MY PLASMA BEAM GENERATOR! SUPERMAN! WHERE ARE YOU! LEX LUTHOR SAYS COME TASTE KRYPTONITE DEATH!!!!! amasci.com