How do i completely discharge a capacitors entire load in a fraction of a second

capacitorstoragetesla-coil

I'm trying to build a tesla coil, and it seems like the capacitors in tesla coils drop their entire load quickly. I tried researching, but i could only find how to safely discharge capacitors. I want to store up the electricity in the capacitor, and then release it all in a very short period of time. Could somebody tell me how I would wire it to do that?

Best Answer

They don't discharge that quickly in TC, they rather charge quickly in original design of Tesla. The caps do charge trough a rotating spark gap at the time where a peak voltage (regarding the mains sine wave) is present. The spark gap rotates synchronously with the mains voltage, a synchronous motor spins the rotating gap.
Once the capacitor is full it begins to dischrage into a primary coil, and resonating phenomena occurs, in LC circuit the current flows back and forth until the energy vanishes.
Therfore no ultra short pulse discharge is present in TC, indeed you need high quality capacitors, Tesla used cups filled with oil.

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