Phil, Nobody, Clifford?

Neither of those links work for me. Probably because I have JavaScript disabled (and that isn't going to change).

Look, I'd appreciate if you got my name right. It's pronounced Throatwarbler Mangrove.

Look, it's very simple. Where is the current flowing when you interrupt the RL circuit? Kitchoff's law, my friend. Where. is. the. current? Answer that FIRST, then we can talk. And if you don't believe it, BUILD a monster coil, charge it with a 9V battery, AND HOLD IT WITH BOTH HANDS WHEN YOU OPEN THE SWITCH.

THEN come back here.

Oh yeah:

Very interesting. Are you familiar with the phenomenon known as "contact arcing"?

Mark L. Fergerson

Most importantly, capture the event on video.

How dare you suggest he's wrong? Do you want to be mentioned in a rambling multi-page PDF?

He has a personality disorder of some kind.

I don't think he knows how; I'm still waiting for the home-made 4 layer PCB video.

Very interesting. Are you familiar with the phenomenon known as "contact arcing"?

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Um, Yep... your Point. Are you familiar with 32kV/cm?

Do you realize that the arcing can be modeled by a resistive element?

R = K*d If V_switch > d*32kV/cm else infinity

approximately models an arcing switch. The only reason I didn't include a model of such a thing is because conceptually it was already done. Note R is linear with respect to d. The only thing is the function has the conditional that depends on the voltage across the switch. Slightly modified form of the DE is required. (R now depends on the voltage through it)

I setup the mechanisms to conceptually understand such a switch on general(obviously in reality there are many complex phenomenea going on). If you want to model such a switch specifically then you can modify the code to do such a thing.

Essentially though the switch will have a resistance proportional to how much it is opened. (at least to a first approximation) You'll find that was already demponstrated with the ramp function in the first figure. The only different is that when the voltage is approximately around 32kV/cm the switch might behave a bit chaotic as the ionization changes(probably non-linearly) and then will almost immediately cut off.

Conceptually you should realize that it's no problem. (Althogh I don't know much about gas physics but it makes sense that the the "resistance" for such an arcing switch is linearly while the voltage is well above the 32kV/cm(for air of course) and I could be wrong one would then just have to add more terms.)

The point here is the model is actually much more complex(because it depends on the voltage across the switch) but it can simply be problem up into pieces of which are simple and of which I've done the work.

For example:

Suppose you have

y' = R*y

The solution is R is K*exp(Int(R)).

But what if we have

y' = R(y,y')*y?

In general this is much more difficult to solve(I don't know of any method except numerics that would solve it).

But if R depends on y in a simple way such as how I modeled the arcing switch then we actually have

y' = R1*y for some contraint(when y > K say)

and

y' = R2*y for some contraint(when y < K say)

Piecing these solutions together gives the overall solution.

In any case it doesn't take much of a leap of faith to get a good first order model for an arching switch.

If you actually thought about it you would realize that as the switch is opening it arcs... this changes the resistance because now the arc is going through the air. It isn't necessarily linear as it depends on the ionization of the air which depends on the voltage but it should be approximately linear when the voltage is large enough. When it is too low there is no longer any arc and hence the switch can be thought of as completely opened. Both parts are modeled seperated already.