Tesla coil facts for kids

A Tesla coil is a machine invented by Nikola Tesla in 1891 that makes lightning bolts. It can also, when connected to a MIDI device, create music. They are commonly used nowadays to entertain.It is used to produce high-voltage,low-current,high frequency alternating-current electricity.

Images for kids

Homemade Tesla coil in operation, showing brush discharges from the toroid. The high electric field causes the air around the high voltage terminal to ionize and conduct electricity, allowing electricity to leak into the air in colorful corona discharges, brush discharges and streamer arcs. Tesla coils are used for entertainment at science museums and public events, and for special effects in movies and television.
Many resonances are observed on the secondary coil
Large coil producing 3.5 meter (10 foot) streamer arcs, indicating a potential of millions of volts.
Solid state DRSSTC Tesla coil with pointed wire attached to toroid to produce brush discharge
Tesla demonstrating wireless lighting at his 1891 lecture at Columbia College. The two metal sheets are connected to a Tesla coil oscillator, which applies a high radio frequency oscillating voltage. The oscillating electric field between the sheets ionizes the low pressure gas in the two long Geissler tubes he is holding, causing them to glow by fluorescence, similar to neon lights, without wires.
The three circuits used in electrotherapy apparatus in the early 20th century: (1) Tesla coil, (2) D'Arsonval coil, (3) Oudin coil. In medical coils for safety two capacitors (Leyden jars) were used, one in each branch of the primary circuit, to completely isolate the patient's body from the potentially lethal currents of the supply transformer, in case of an electrical fault.
Small educational Tesla coil kit, 1918
Breit and Tuve's 5 MV Tesla coil used as particle accelerator, 1928
Electric discharge showing the lightning-like plasma filaments from a 'Tesla coil'
Tesla coil (discharge).
Tesla coil in terrarium (I)
Student conducting Tesla coil streamers through his body, 1909
One of Tesla's early coils at his New York lab in 1892, with a conical secondary.
Prototype "magnifying transmitter" in Tesla's New York lab around 1898 producing 2.5 million volts. The round "spiderweb" secondary coil is visible in background
Compact coil designed by Tesla for use as an ozone generator for water treatment