Opening Switch

last updated:03 May 2003

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Opening Switch

Opening Switch (03 May 03)

You may ask, Why opening switch...or Ever further more, what is an opening switch.. An opening switch is a switch that is designed for the sole purpose of interupting a current flow. It may not seem like such a difficult thing, since ordinary light switches seem to have no problems turing off the lights. This is true, but then again they are switching 60Hz power, not D.C. The difference is that there is a zero current 120 time a second. If that zero current did not exist, it would be much more difficult to open the circuit. Not lets put a huge inductor in the circuit along with the D.C. current. Now trying to stop the current is like trying to stop a speeding locomotive. It's not so easy now. An inductor (coil) can store an order of magnitude larger amount of energy compared to a capacitor for the same volume. (see the book "Opening Switches" by A. Guenther et.al.) Where a cap can store 0.01-1 MJ/m^3, an inductor can store 3-40 MJ/m^3 (energy density). When building a compact pulse power machine, a factor of 10 in energy density can be very useful, but this power can only be useful when switched by an opening switch.

Here is the general idea of how the switch works. This is illustrated in the above sequence recored using a Sony Night Vision Camera. I take two pieces of (copper) electrodes. I touch them together to charge the inductor (see frame 1). Then I quickly slide them apart (frame two shows sparks generated from the sliding motion of one electrode past the other). Now notice what happens, the current continues to flow, right throught the air (by forming a plasma arc if need be, see frame 3). Even though the circuit is 'opened' and the copper conductors are no longer in contact, the current still flows. The inductor really does not like to have the current stop so abruptly. This causes the magnetic field to start to collapse in the coil, which in turn drives the voltage up and up. No matter what tries to impede the flow of current in the coil, the voltage will rise to overcome any obstacle. This above process ends up waisting a large portion of the energy heating up the air. This switch needs to switch off (the current flow) much more quickly to be useful. Compare this to a closing switch, such as a spark gap used on a capacitor. The closing switch (spark gap) is much easier to get to work, since it does not need to overcome (and stop) the tremendous inertia developed by the flow of current. It is interesting to note that in frame 4 that there is a residual 'plasma ball' that persists a fraction of a second after the discharge is gone (which starts to rise) Finally frame 5 shows no plasma remaining. So now, how do we make an opening switch, switch fast enough to be useful?

One way is to 'blow out' the plasma arc formed between the two contacts. It is commonly used in industrial switches used for electrical power production. The result is a very rapidly rising, high energy voltage pulse. Now put a load in parallel with either the switch or the coil and you can drive some serious power through it! Believe me, one time when I wasn't thinking, I put a volt meter in parallal with the opening switch. And when I blew that baby out, the volt meter caught on fire inside! Bad bad bad.. be very careful.. this guy is very DANGEROUS. Above is the resulting plasma formed by the opening switch. Notice there are two different types of sparks present here. One set is the usual run of the mill metal hitting metal type of spark (top). The second, which extends downward in kind of an eatheric yellowish/white rainbow like streamer, is the second type. This is the current trying to find its way out to complete the circuit (to the left), but it can't quite get there because the flowing air pushes it in a direction perpendicular (downward) to where it wants to go. Now no matter how high the voltage rises, it can't complete the circuit, because its going in the wrong direction! This is a very fast opening switch, and can be used to drive massive amounts of power through a load of your choice.

Ok, and here is the load of my choice. This is a 40 Watt florescent light (4' in length). In the top frame, the light is so bright that it is saturating the camera. In the second frame the brightness has decreased enough to see the shape of the light. This is a nice load, because once the light breaks down, the coil is able to drive a good amount of power through the it.

OK, now that we have the mundane stuff out of the way, I'll talk a little more about this eatheric streamer formed at the non-moving contact of the blow out switch. In the book "Secrets of the Cold War Technology, project Haarp and Beyond" by Gerry Vassilatos, it mentions that Tesla's later work was not A.C. electricity, but was with impulse currents. That there is a stange energy/force associted with the rapid opening and closing of High Voltage circuits, which is associted with the Eather field. In the book, "The Free Energy Secrets of Cold Electricity" by Peter A. Lindemann, goes on to draw a parallel between this rapid switching of High Voltage circuits to the Radiant Energy conversion tube created by Ed V. Grey. Could these strange discharges I have been able to produce, be associted with Tesla's Radiant Energy, as discussed above? In closing, for those of you who object to the usage of the word Eather, it should be poind out that Eistein, in a famous speach said "The special theory of relativity forbids us to assume the ether to consist of particles observable through time, but the hypothesis of ether in itself is not in conflict with the special theory of relativity." Then he goes on to conclude.. "Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; ..." Furthmore, P.A.M. Dirac is quoted as saying.. "The aetherless basis of physical theory may have reached the end of its capabilities and we see in the aether a new hope for the future." Remember, they did not know of the existance of the Zero Point Energy of Quantum Mechanic in Tesla's time (which basically is the modern fomalization of the aether of old). If Einstein and Dirac say we can not dismiss this idea of eather, then why does modern science use Einstein Theory of Relativity as "proof" of the non-existance of eather?

Here are a few more cool pictrues of sparks I have created. The top two are of discharged created by the metal contacts striking each other. The bottom two are of plasma balls that form in the arc and exist a fraction of a second after the arc has vanished. These are different than the 'Real Ball Lightning' I have produced, but they still are interesting.

Above is the coil and power supply I used to created these fascinating discharges. It is an Iron Core, High Voltage Inductor (Very Heavy). There is a monster Auto-Transformer (not in picture) driving a full wave bridge rectifer and some big Electrolytic capacitors.

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