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Re: Jelly Beans and more!
On Wed, 17 Apr 1996 Kenny@NeonShop.com wrote:
> Whew! Jelly Beans can get complicated sometimes.
> I just figured we had a resonant circuit causing standing waves.
> I've created jelly beans using middle audible frequencies 500hz-1khz
> and can get them to flow one way or another by varying the duty
> cycle.
Interesting! Dan mentioned that attempts have been made to produce
jellybean-based neon chase effects, but the tube characteristics drift
too much to make this reliable. Anyone have experience with this? If
there was a great demand for a neon chaser, it might not be impossible to
add some sort of feedback to a high frequency supply to stabilize the
motion effects.
"jellybeans" appear in DC Geisler tubes in the form of the "striated
column", the discharge that fills the main part of the tube. I played
with them in a 1in diameter tube. They appeared as a stack of disks, like
evenly spaced glowing quarters.
I suspect that the main discharge in any gas tube is always composed of
jellybeans, but the AC voltage sweeps them back and forth so fast that
they aren't perceptable by humans. Unless those humans sweep their eyes
rapidly back and forth, whack themselves repeatedly upside their heads, or
mount their gas tubes on motorized rotors and light them through slip ring
connections.
.....................uuuu / oo \ uuuu........,.............................
William Beaty voice:206-781-3320 bbs:206-789-0775 cserv:71241,3623
EE/Programmer/Science exhibit designer http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/
Seattle, WA 98117 billb@eskimo.com SCIENCE HOBBYIST web page
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