jeffj@sfsup.UUCP (09/17/87)
[buzz buzz]
At Azuma (a chain of oriental stores), there's a neon flower
that slowly lights up from the bottom to top.
The bottom of the tube is attached to the base with the transformer, but
THERE IS NO CONNECTION TO THE TOP.
How is the gas excited? It's obviously not by high voltage.
RF excitation?
Jeffrey Jonas
{ihnp4 | allegra | most_backbone_sites} attunix ! jeffjtomb@hplsla.HP.COM (Tom Bruhns) (10/15/87)
Related, but not a direct answer to the question: Quite a while ago, I played around lighting a neon light (little NE-2 type) by putting it in the tank circuit of an RF power amplifier. Acutally, it was a frequency multiplier chain, so you could get something like 10 MHz, 20 MHz, 40 MHz, 80 MHz and 160 MHz. As I recall, at the lower frequencies, it glowed the usual orange. As you put it into higher-frequency tanks, it glowed more and more purple! Very pretty. Never looked at the optical spectrum, even though I was in a chemical spectroscopy lab at the time. (Yes, it's easy to excite neon by putting it in a moderatly strong RF field.) Tom Bruhns uucp: !hplabs!hplsla!tomb