Stereophile's Jim Austin disagrees w Atkinson; says tubes have something that can't be measured

[mhardy6647]

And the fact that if they are pushing them that hard, it won't be long till you have a kool lightning show inside the glass.

https://www.deviantart.com/icouldbeahero/art/plasma-2-technicolor-28456036

(my son's photograph, from high school or college days - getting to be a long time ago )

 

[Sal1950]

(my son's photograph, from high school or college days - getting to be a long time ago )

Kool ! I remember building a type of Jacobs ladder for a 6th grade science fair.
I was kinda cheating using a Model T spark coil to generate the high voltage.
I remember some kid jerking off passing his pen back and forth thru the lightning until
he let the spark hit the metal point of the pen and it ran up the metal shaft to the thumb
button and knocked him on his ass right there in the school hallway with everyone laughing at him. LOL

 

[mhardy6647]

Using the spark coil's not cheating at all!

We did some stuff in high school that would probably have gotten our (best) science teacher jailed nowadays... but he was a huge influence on me and I have no doubt his antics (i.e., some involving electricity) reinforced my lifelong love of the "hard' sciences.

 

[egellings]

But it also provides a heat source in the winter. Who needs a fireplace when you have class A. :-D

Expensive fire, though.