Re: Ball Lightning

["Emigh, David" <DEmigh@QVCC.COMMNET.EDU>]

Hi,

Thanks for the response.  Actually you helped clarify my questions.  The
first is "is it ok to do this to a microwave". I mean if I take our popcorn
microwave at work to do this are my collegues going to kill me. The second
is I am wondering about the use of the word "stable".  Are these "driven" by
the micorwave and once the power is turned off the plasmoid falls apart, or
is it stable for some reasonable time frame after the power is turned off.
When I was at the University of Illinois a speaker from Los Alamos (a
retired gentleman whose name escapes me) came to talk about his attempts to
make ball lightning and the last film he showed seemed to show a relatively
stable plasmoid after the creation event was through.  Although I am
interested in plasmas, it is not my field and I no longer read the
literature.

Thanks

David Emigh

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel L. MacIsaac [mailto:Dan.MacIsaac@NAU.EDU]
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 1:15 PM
To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
Subject: Re: Ball Lightning


> I have not seen this discussed recently but I wonder what your reactions
are
> to the following link, it is at worst very interesting:
>
> http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/oa_plasmoid.htm

David:

Microwaves are a legit and widely used method to create plasma.

There are peer-reviewed physics journal articles on microwave-driven plasma
research; see http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/tesla/ballgtn.html
for a partial list.   A more formal set of articles can be found in a
search of the AIP OJPS

http://ojps.aip.org/vsearch/servlet/VerityServlet?KEY=ALL&smode=strresults&C
URRENT=&ONLINE=&SMODE=&possible1=microwave+plasma&possible1zone=article&bool
1=and&possible2=&possible2zone=article&sort=rel&maxdisp=25&threshold=0&%5Bse
arch%5D.x=0&%5Bsearch%5D.y=0&frommonth=&fromday=&fromyear=&tomonth=&today=&t
oyear=&fromvolume=&fromissue=&tovolume=&toissue=&page=1&origquery=&vdk_query
=&chapter=0&docdisp=0&WriteToLog=YES

...which turned up 695 articles published by AIP on the keywords
"microwave plasma"

Or were you concerned about the many safety issues?

Dan, who has a bias in this case (my students just published a student
project on microwave demos; wait for it in TPT).

Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Northern AZ Univ
danmac@nau.edu          http://purcell.phy.nau.edu         PHYS-L list owner