Is this electrically possible?

[ViperMagic]

I'm not to good with electricity past ohm's law, so bear with me. Say I have a power source, 12v and about 400A. Is there anything I can run the current through, so I get really low amperage (~.5A) and a rediculous amount of voltage (300,000v or thereabouts)? Thanks

 

[shekondar]

For DC, a DC-DC converter. For AC, a transformer.

 

[dighn]

^ sure. it's done all the time.

 

[Eli]

Of course it's possible.

At 300,000v I would recommend a little lower than 0.5A, though. 😉

 

[Johnnie]

not too economical though 🙂

 

[ClueLis]

Originally posted by: Eli
Of course it's possible.

At 300,000v I would recommend a little lower than 0.5A, though. 😉

Wohoo! 150,000 watts!!!

 

[Calin]

Yes, you could use a really big solenoid. When you connect it to the power source (not AC but DC), the current thru it will increase slowly. When you disconnect it, you will obtain a shock of very high voltage. This will probably make a spark to reconnect the circuit.
By the way, this is the way a DC-DC voltage amplifier works (conceptually). One uses a solenoid to store power in low voltage-higher current, and release it as higher voltage and lower amperage.

Calin

 

[NogginBoink]

Yes, you can use a transformer for AC.

However, I wanna know where you're getting 400 amps of 12V.

 

[Mday]

Originally posted by: ViperMagic
I'm not to good with electricity past ohm's law, so bear with me. Say I have a power source, 12v and about 400A. Is there anything I can run the current through, so I get really low amperage (~.5A) and a rediculous amount of voltage (300,000v or thereabouts)? Thanks

no you cannot. it is physically IMPOSSIBLE to do what you are doing since it violates the laws of thermaldynamics.

Power = Current * Voltage
(watts = amps * volts)

your source: P = 12V * 400A = 4800 W
your goal: P = 300,000V * 0.5A = 150,000 W

you need a source that can generate at least 150,00 Watts of power. that's a lot of power btw. and some considerations have to be made if you're doing AC or DC current.

note: high amp (400A is high) requires very thick wires. high voltage (300,000 V is very high) requires very thick\expensive insulation.

what you are attempting should not even be done unless you're an electrical (power) engineer and an experienced electrician.

--

if your voltages and currents were more reasonable, you can use a transformer (step up to increase voltage relative to source, step down to decrease voltage relative to source).

 

[GermyBoy]

Originally posted by: NogginBoink
Yes, you can use a transformer for AC. However, I wanna know where you're getting 400 amps of 12V.

He probably has 400mA.

 

[beer]

Originally posted by: GermyBoy

Originally posted by: NogginBoink
Yes, you can use a transformer for AC. However, I wanna know where you're getting 400 amps of 12V.

He probably has 400mA.

His numbers are off considerably. At a potential of hundreds of thousands of volts you really just need a few microamps of current for most applications that would require that much potential.

Like mday said, you're going to need a huge ass wire for 400A of current (huge magnetic field too). When you drop the current, you'll need a lot of shielding to contain the electric fields.

 

[ViperMagic]

To be honest, I dont know where the electricty is coming from. A teacher I'm not too familer with asked me to find out how to turn a 400A 12v DC current into a 300kV .5A DC curernt. I belive he said the amperage wasn't importaint, so if I adjusted Mday's calculations correctly, I'd have .016A? I think that should be ok, ill talk to him. From what I understand, he's trying an experiment where, from what I understand, you run a rediculous amount of voltage through a tin-foil triangle, and it floats.

 

[thawolfman]

Back to the Future? :Q

Edit: Aw damn that was jiggawatts 😀

 

[Analog]

What your asking for is not that challenging (except for the fact that you have the amperage wrong for the high voltage part, you probably mean 0.5mA).

12V @ 400A is available from most any car battery, albiet for a short period of time. A car's spark coil produces 15,000 to 25,000 volts (depending on the application). Bumping that up to 300KV isn't that bad, you'd have to buy another transformer that is turned at the correct ratio, and has insulation that can handle that voltage.

My advice: As an electrical engineer in the business for over 20 years, I would be extremely careful on the high voltage side.

If you're interested in making sparks and having fun, I would recommend some of the online tutorials and sites dedicated to Tesla Coils.

HTH.