Kid's Corner

Welcome to Oncor's Kid's Corner, a place to learn new things about elecricity and have fun in the process. This site is also a great place for teachers to pick up new ideas and get more energized about their upcoming lessons.

Inside a plasma globe or Inert Gas Discharge Tube, as Nikola Tesla (it's inventor) first called it, is electrons traveling from an electrode to the outer surface and an ocillating electro-magnetic field. The motion of electrons is necessary to generate plasma. A plasma is simply a gas containing charged particles such as electrons and ions. When these charged particles move about within the plasma, they are changing the local characteristics of the electro-magnetic field. This combined with the oscillating electro-magnetic field from the electrode will "excite" ions, molecules, and atoms making the plasma emit it's characteristic color, and the color will depend upon gas composition.

To learn more about Plasma Globes visit www.powerlabs.org/plasmaglobes.htm.