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Registered Member #59110
Joined: Mon Apr 11 2016, 04:35PM
Location: Camarillo, California
Posts: 74
I though t that I would throw out this kind of random question to see if anyone has promising ideas.
I have been doing a lot of plasma tube work and have had a lot of great results. I was wondering if putting metal salts in a tube would cause color changes ie like a flame test. I know the temperature inside a plasma tube is much lower but hey, why not try.
Today I tried my first experiment with sodium specifically NaOH. I decided on sodium since it give such dramatic colors in flame tests. The result (in a neon/nitrogen/krypton mix) was null. Which isn't surprising.
Can anyone here think of a metal compound that might work in this application? Strontium, sodium and copper are all salt that give good bright colors.
From what I know about gas discharge lights, salts and metals are unlikely to be useful in a plasma globe due to their melting points.
Take for example a typical metal halide streetlight. When if first lights up, a small amount of argon (?) has a plasma glow as you are working with. Then, a small amount of mercury evaporates, then after that the various salts that make the characteristic glow. The thing at play here is temperature; in order for the salts to emit light, they must evaporate first. Thus, salts aren't going to be much use in a plasma tube.
That said, if you're willing to do some playing around, you might try using a low melting alloy of whatever elements you want to try out, or play with lowering tube pressures to lower the melting point of your salts. The other answer is the risky one; you might try adding a bit of mercury and working from there, but that would require the utmost of caution.
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Plasma Colors
