Second Place - Contrived Category

Title: The Fire of Physics
Student: Lydia Tyler
School: Tom C. Clark High School, San Antonio, TX
Teacher: Ray Gonzales

This photograph shows an electrical discharge created by a device called a Tesla Coil. A Tesla Coil is a type of tuned resonant transformer. The machine used for this photo was constructed by students in my Physics II Advanced Placement C class. The construction was fairly straightforward. The device consists of a 12-kV neon sign transformer, a capacitor made from Coke bottles and a pair of coils. The voltage present at the output of the secondary coil is estimated to be around 500 kV and oscillating at radio frequencies. The arcs shown in the photo are around 16-in long.