Gas Discharge Experiments

The complete vacuum setup including fridge compressor, 3/8" vinyl tubing spool, and spaghetti sauce jar with a hose barb JB-Welded in.	Closeup of the fridge compressor and oil recovery / flowmeter (piece of pipet taped to the side)	Sauce jar as recloseable vacuum chamber	Closeup of hose barb fitting	The high voltage supply, capable of delivering about 5-10kV (guesstimating). The active ingredient is a flyback transformer pulled from an old TV set (white donut at far left), operated in a self-resonant (Hartley) configuration.	(Almost-)First trial showing the neon-like effect from the Home Despot vinyl tubing. The barb also glowed brightly, so I stuck the remaining barb piece into the jar.
Same thing with differetn frequency and pressure, note this causes the neon tube effect to disappear. It's hard to take a picture that accurately represents its actual brightness (on your monitor!), but this looks about right on mine.		More experimenting; raising the pressure a bit causes the downward streamers from the lid to be a little more focused.	It also seems to narrow the stream inside the tubing.	Some small Neon bulbs; these used to be used a lot in old electrical test equipment.	Plasma jar running with a big pile of neon bulbs inside. The jar is 3/4 full with them, but pretty much only the ones near the outside are lit.
Same thing, higher pressure (more diffuse glow and crawling up the tubing again)

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