Extreme High Voltage: Water Drop Spark Gap Piezo Acoustic Transducer Output

Warning: Flickering bright lights, don’t watch if you are sensitive to flicker or have epilepsy.
Warning2: Professional Idiot in Closed Room. The voltages involved here are Dangerous, probably Lethal. Do Not Attempt unless you really think you know what you are doing…. in which case I am not responsible for cleaning up after your fried, grease-dripping corpse.

Seriously…. here’s the scope trace from the Piezo elements glued to the side of the plastic mayo jar. Presumably, something like this kind of measurement, when used in comparison to control measurements (arcs without water, perhaps) one could arrive at some qualitative ranking, at least, of released energy, if any.

The thing is very loud, I’m starting to look for my hearing protectors. My right ear is ringing after making this video.

Grrr….. it appears that just after I shot this video, while setting up for another measurement, the #1 channel of the Tek 2213a scope has developed a fault. I can’t bring the trace onto the screen, although it’s there when I depress the beam-find button. Maybe I blew the input preamp somehow, although I can’t imagine how, it’s been fine through my Tesla coil experiments at much higher local field gradients, and I don’t think I hit anything bad with the probe while setting up. Channel 2 is still fine, although I haven’t fully checked the trigger out yet.
The venerable HP180a is still working fine, thanks Bert and Ernie.

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