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Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 09:33:18 -0400
From: Ernest Christley <echristley@nc.rr.com>
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To: Rotary motors in aircraft <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Subject: Re: [FlyRotary] Re: Another great flying day = another day of troubleshooting
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Finn Lassen wrote:

> Hmm... and here I thought that vacumn was a better insulator than air ...
> Why is the air pumped out of lightbulbs?
>
This had me confused for a long time to, Finn.  The way it was explained 
to me is that a VACUUM would be a better insulator. But you don't have a 
vacuum, you have a thin atmosphere.  To basically short out, enough air 
molecules have to get ionized to form an alternate path to ground.  In 
thick sea-level air, there are so many molecules competing for the 
limited ionizing energy and so many non-ionized molecules getting in the 
way that the charge is released in the cylinder before an alternate path 
can be formed.  In the rarified air at altitudes, the fewer molecules 
take charge quicker and  are much nimbler so that the alternate path 
beats the spark plug.

If anyone has a better story, I'm willing to listen.

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