Music for the Geek in us — Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
Well, I’ve managed to blow most of my day watching YouTube videos of musical tesla coils. I mean how geeky can you get. This one was my favorite — not because you can see it best but because of the tune (it is November and Nutcracker season).
Megavoltmeister posted this explanation of the video:
Twin Solid State Musical Tesla coils playing Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy at the 2007 Lightning on the Lawn Teslathon sponsored by DC Cox (Resonance Research Corp) in Baraboo WI. The music that you hear is coming from the sparks that these two identical high power solid state Tesla coils are generating. There are no speakers involved. The Tesla coils stand 7 feet tall and are each capable of putting out over 12 foot of spark. They are spaced about 18 feet apart. The coils are controlled over a fiber optic link by a single laptop computer. Each coil is assigned to a midi channel which it responds to by playing notes that are programed into the computer software. These coils were constructed by Steve Ward and Jeff Larson. Video was captured by Terry Blake. What is not obvious is how loud the coils are. They are well over 110dB.
Here’s the YouTube link if you want to go there directly — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opf5jIukSBM
Hey, I wasted my day so why shouldn’t you.
I also learned from reading the descriptions with the videos that there are yearly teslathons where folks gather with their electronic equipment and play around — these videos are some of the results. I’ve always found Tesla to be an interesting scientist and believe that it’s time to look again at some of his work — but without the scientific prejudice he fought against — after all, some of his ‘hair-brained’ schemes do seem to work. I really should dig out those two Tesla biographies and move them closer to the top of my To Be Read piles but then my Must Read Pile is so huge it could take a while to get to the bios.