Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/367

Rh found that if a certain voltage between metal surfaces would yield a spark four inches in length, at the ordinary pressure of the air, if the spark balls were enclosed in a cylinder, the air round them compressed at 50 lbs. per square inch, the spark length for the same potential difference of the balls was only one quarter of an inch, or one sixteenth of its former value.

The writer has also made experiments with an apparatus designed to study the effect of compressed air round the spark gap. The experimental arrangements are as follows: A ten-inch induction coil has one of its terminals connected to the internal coating of a battery of Leyden jars. The external coating is connected through the primary coil of an oscillation transformer with the other secondary terminal of the coil, and these secondary terminals are also connected to a spark gap consisting of two brass balls enclosed in a glass vessel into which air can be forced by a pump, the air pressure being measured by a gauge. The balls in the glass vessel are set at a distance of about three millimeters apart. The secondary circuit of the oscillation transformer is connected to another pair of spark balls, the distance of which can be varied.

Suppose we begin with the air in the glass vessel containing the balls connected to the secondary terminals of the induction coil, which may be called the secondary balls, at atmospheric pressure, and create oscillatory discharges in the primary coil of the oscillation transformer, we have a spark between the balls, which may be called the tertiary balls, connected to the secondary terminals of the oscillation transformer. If the secondary balls are placed, say three millimeters apart, the air in the glass vessel enclosing them being at the ordinary atmospheric pressure, then with one particular arrangement of jars used, a spark twenty-five or twenty-six millimeters long between the tertiary balls will take place. Suppose then we increase the pressure of the air round the secondary balls, pumping it up by degrees to 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 lbs., per square inch, above the atmospheric pressure. We find that the spark between the tertiary balls will gradually leap a greater and greater distance, and when the pressure of the air is 50 lbs. per square inch, we can obtain a fifty-millimeter spark between the tertiary balls, whereas when the air in the glass vessel is at atmospheric pressure, we can only obtain a spark between the tertiary balls of half that length.

This experiment demonstrates that the effect of compressing the air round the secondary terminals of the induction coil is to greatly increase the difference of potential between these balls before the spark passes. In fact, it requires about double the voltage to force a spark of the same length through air compressed at 50 lbs. on the square inch that it does to make a spark of identical length between the