Plasma Tube Experiments

High Explosives Generated Plasma Waves

These pictures, taken from a modern fast framing camera, briefly illustrate the plasma tube effect. In this particular case a one inch pellet of high explosive was placed on top of a piece of Lexan rod that had a 20° cone milled out of the center. The high explosive was detonated with a standard detonator in the downward direction.

The bright wave, in this case traveling down the tube at a surprisingly fast speed of ~ 22 km/s, exhibits uniquely useful characteristics, and exposes some excellent physics questions for future study. Research into underlying properties of such waves are currently being investigated, as are several potential application spaces.

Plasma Tube Experiments (pdf)