SCIENCE AND CREATIVENESS FAIR PROJECT

Tesla Coil

1. Physical Principle

Electromagnetic wave generation.

Large potential differencies
Mutual induction

2. Description
This experience tries to explain the way a Tesla Coil works, it is a transformer
consisting of two electric circuits. It can reach high potential differences.

3. Theoretical Foundation

Nikola Tesla designed this high voltage generator at the end of the century XIX.
Tesla created many variations of this design and lately some new variations have
been done, but all of them are constituted by two assembled circuits that form the
transformer.
Here we have an alternating current battery, followed by a transformer that
increases the voltage. This current is converted into continuous current through a
rectifier circuit constituted by a diode bridge and a capacitor to reduce as possible,
the curl. The rectifier increases the voltage, thats why it is called amplifier circuit.
As regards the Tesla coil circuit is formed by the primary circuit, constituted by the
capacitor, of capacity C1, the disruptor and the self-induction primary coil L1 and a
secondary circuit, formed by a self-induction coil L2, that unless it has no tied any
capacitor, it has parasite capacity distributed on it (C2).

When inserting the disruptor into the primary circuit what were doing is to open
and close the primary circuit constantly, interrupting and allowing, this way, the
current movement through the circuit. As the current circulates in the capacitor a
charge and discharge process is produced that allows that the current intensity that
is circulating into the coil change with time. The fact that the current passing
through the coil depends on time makes that the magnetic field, that such as
current generates inside the coil, vary with time too.

Since the coils are wound in such a way that the primary coil winds on the
secondary coil. The lines of the magnetic fields generated in the coil of the primary
circuit, flows through the secondary coil. As we have said the generated magnetic
field in the primary coil is a time dependent field, so, in the secondary circuit coil its
produced a variation of the flow that, according to the Faraday Law, it makes that
an electromotive force appeared which in turns makes that an induced current
appeared in the secondary circuit.

As the number of spirals is larger in the secondary coil than in the primary one, you
get a voltage, with the same frequency, but much higher which makes that the air
ionizes and produces spectacular discharges that are a characteristic of Teslas
coil.