Tom Vales Talk

Tom Vales talk was very quick, only about fifteen minutes, but within that fifteen minutes he did talk a lot. He began talking about Thomas Edison and Tesla. What was first talked about was alternating current versus direct current. At some points of this talk it was a bit difficult to follow along because he was talking quite fast, but he did explain these.

He first explained that alternating current can go up and down, and transformers are used to feed this current into houses. Direct current goes directly to the source of power. He did try to explain that there was something that had to do with these types of currents and Edison verses Tesla. Edison was promoting direct current, and Tesla was for alternating current. Edison’s idea was costly, where Tesla’s idea had a lower cost. He said they had done tests with these currents on animals, although I am not positive how.

One thing that was quite interesting that he had brought along with him was a Tesla coil. This coil could only reach to about a seven inch spark, but he said that he has seen some that can reach up to 50 feet! He first showed us what the spark looked like when he lit it alone:

Next, he would hold two fluorescent lights next to it, not even incredibly close, and this spark was causing them to light:

He did the same thing with a light that had multiple colors on it. It would not light up past where he was holding it, because his had would stop the current of the electricity running through the light:

Fourthly, he took another rod that had a lightbulb in the middle of it. When he touched this rod to the spark, the light bulb in the middle of the rod lit:

Lastly, he was showing that as he brings the rod closer to the spark, it tried to reach out to the rod as it comes closer. In the photo below, the current has reached out to start to touch the rod:

It was difficult to see in most photos, but once he was done demonstrating how the spark current can light these bulbs and rods, he made the spark spin, and it formed a circle. It almost looked like a small ring of fire. He completed his talk by saying that Tesla had out shown Edison within their current competition, and that without him there would not be alternating current. I thought that this talk was quite interesting, but it was a lot faster than I had thought it was going to be.