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Physics Related Equipment

This page is here to give you an idea what sort of equipment is good to have laying around to do these sorts of things. Note that all media can be found in the Images directory as seen on the navigation bar.

Power Supplies

This is an AC regulated power supply. Although this exact same model regularly sells on Ebay for over several hundred dollars plush a hundred dollars shipping, I was lucky enough to pick it up at a garage sale with some other stuff(like the DC power supply and a spool of magnet wire) for around twenty dollars.
This is a DC regulated power supply. It goes up to 50V. Had to replace a switch on the front cover that was broken.
A neon sign transformer. This is used to power high voltage experiments like a jacob's ladder and the tesla coil. They are HEAVY as they are very large transformers.
Close up of the transformer

Capacitors

Mepco capacitors. 9300uF @ 50V. There are now 12 of them plus the two larger ones which vary in capacity but energywise can hold a lot more than the smaller ones. Note that the silver one was a 25V capacitor. I learned the somewhat hard way that it was a bad idea to put 50V across it. It leaked a bit and was removed, eventually I found another Mepco capacitor and could fill its empty space in my 3 X 4 grid.
Close up of a Mepco capacitor.
These are some of the older capacitors I was trying to use. They really don't do anything as they are higher voltage and can't store much power. They are also poorly soldered as the metal was hard to solder to for some reason, which causes some interesting things during charging(sparks from contacts shifting).

Home-made Equipment

A rotary spark gap. Used to time high voltage pulses, designed for the Tesla coil. The electrodes are bolts with their tips sheered off. The wheel is plexiglass.
High voltage capacitor designed for the Tesla coil. Designed to operate at 15kV. Has very low capacitance though, maybe .01uF at most I would say but probably much lower in the order of picofarads. It is filled with mineral oil, two alluminum sheets, and two plastic sheets that where our old table cloth protector.
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