Popularity
Tesla coils are very popular devices among certain electrical engineers and electronics enthusiasts. Builders of Tesla coils as a hobby are called "coilers". A very large Tesla coil, designed and built by Syd Klinge, is shown every year at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, in Coachella, Indio, California, USA. There are "coiling" conventions where people attend with their home-made Tesla coils and other electrical devices of interest.
Low power Tesla coils are also sometimes used as a high-voltage source for Kirlian photography.
Tesla coils can also be used to create music by modulating the system's effective "break rate" (i.e., the rate and duration of high power RF bursts) via MIDI data and a control unit. The actual MIDI data is interpreted by a microcontroller which converts the MIDI data into a PWM output which can be sent to the Tesla coil via a fiber optic interface. The YouTube video Super Mario Brothers theme in stereo and harmony on two coils shows a performance on matching solid state coils operating at 41 kHz. The coils were built and operated by designer hobbyists Jeff Larson and Steve Ward. The device has been named the Zeusaphone, after Zeus, Greek god of lightning, and as a play on words referencing the Sousaphone.
The idea of playing music on the singing Tesla coils flies around the world and a few followers continue the work of initiators.
In 2011, the Tampa Bay Lightning, an American professional hockey team debuted two Tesla coils in the St. Pete Times Forum to activate before the game during player introductions.
The most powerful conical Tesla Coil (1.5 million volts) was installed in 2002 at the Mid-America Science Museum in Hot Springs, Arkansas. This is a replica of the Griffith Observatory conical coil installed in 1936.
An extensive outdoor musical concert has demonstrated using Tesla coils during the Engineering Open House (EOH) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The Icelandic artist Björk used a Tesla coil in her song "Thunderbolt" as the main instrument in the song.
The musical group ArcAttack uses modulated Tesla coils and a man in a chain-link suit to play music.
Read more about this topic: Tesla Coil
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