Powers of Ten

The webinar is inspired by the film Powers of Ten from 1977 and applied in our IEEE domain. We talk about electrical phenomena in a High Power High Voltage laboratory. After an introduction about how Maxwell, his laws are 151 years old now, manifests in the lab we talk about the ranges in magnitude of voltage, current and time phenomena. Millions of Volts occur while hundreds of thousands of Amperes must be interrupted in a circuit-breaker. But the measurements take place with mV, mA, μs and smaller. It is fascinating to see how many decades all what happens encompasses. Yet any deviation of Maxwell has to be discovered, whether it is in the testing of a varistor or in a vacuum circuit breaker the transition from field emission currents to full breakdown of the gap. We will end with some remarks about the profession of testing and experimenting. They are less objective and scientific, but based on many years of experience as true and useful.