Playing the music with the spark gap
I posted an article <Play the music with your DAQ card> some days ago. It saves you when you have no sound card but only a data acquisition card to play the music (and you’re welcome:)). Now what if you have no speaker but only a Jacob’s Ladder? We borrowed a Jacob’s Ladder from the physics department and had a play with it. Using the electric arc we are able to play the tunes!
This is the video I uploaded in youtube, please help yourself:)
For the people who are not convinient to browse youtube, you can also find it in this link (tudou.com, a video server in China).
Sorry I didn’t edit this phone recorded video, and you have to rotate your head to the left to view it. So we converted the sound file to a sequence of train pulses in LabVIEW, which triggers the Jacob’s Ladder to genenrate sparks. By changing the duty cycle and the frequency of the pulses, we are able to change the volumes and tunes.
P.S. We are not playing all the music, for the tune and pace range of the Jacob’s Ladder is very limited. It only makes the sound when the electric arc appears.
