Tesla Coil Draft

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In Greek mythology, Zeus is the Father of Gods and men. He rules Mount Olympus with his remarkable control over lightning. I sought out to harness the same power possessed by Zeus by following in the footsteps of Nikola Tesla, arguably the most influential and underrated scientist and engineer in modern history. One of the inventions he created was a resonate transformer that converts low-frequency energy to high-frequency energy in hopes of one day having wireless energy for all. This sparked my interest in building a Tesla Coil.
At the genesis of the idea, I did not have any experience with electricity or engineering. Aside from a public school education, I knew nothing about the theories, methods, or applications behind Tesla Coil’s or electricity in general. All I knew is that they looked cool, I wanted to build one, and learning would be the vehicle to reach my goal. I did not know it at the beginning, but I would soon learn about the nature of electricity, AC/DC power, circuits, high and low-frequency energies, magnetic fields, transformers, woodworking, soldering, electrical engineering, creating and reading design plans/ blueprints, budget management, improvising materials, modifying existing structures to make a better system, and high voltage safety. This helped broaden my knowledge with electrical circuits and stimulated creativity that will in turn enhance my knowledge with the physical aspects of computers, which is valuable for the computer science major I am pursuing. It also will be of great help if I choose to double major in electrical engineering. This project was a fun yet challenging approach to learning about electrical engineering.
Research was a long and arduous journey that took an ample amount of time in ...

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... of a coil by the diameter of the secondary and have created a rule of thumb to follow when designing a Tesla Coil. A 3-4 inches coil is considered small and needs a 5:1 height to diameter ratio, 5-6 inches is medium size with a 4:1 aspect ratio, and 7+ inches is deemed a large coil with a ratio of 3:1. I decided on a 3.3-inch coil since I have a lower powered transformer and it would be more manageable. The next thing I had to research was winding the coil. I wanted between 800-1,000 turns of magnet wire within 16.5 inches to keep my aspect ratio in check. I decided on a 1280-foot spool of 26 AWG enameled copper wire that gave me approximately 904 turns. After winding the thin wire around a pipe and adding several coats of varnish, it was time to move onto the center of attention.
The top load of a Tesla Coil in the secondary LC tank circuit behaves as a capacitor.

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