Personal Activity: Tesla Coil

Prompt: Identify a question that you'd ask the patron if this were a f2f or chat interview. Identify at least 2 different answers to the question; find the information indicated by each of those 2 different answers. Characterize the difference in your search and/or the kind of information you found and/or the kind of sources you used. NOTE: there's a simple but potentially tricky problem with this question.

The Question: I heard that a Tesler coil radiates electricity for over 20 miles. Is that true? Why don't we use them instead of having electricity run through wires and come out of outlets?

My Thoughts: I knew a little bit about this question because I have seen The Prestige, which is a pretty good movie. In it, a guy named Telsa makes an electric coil similar to this patron's question. Knowing that, I recognized right away that "Tesler" wasn't the right person. The first question I would ask the patron would be if they meant "Tesla" instead of "Tesler," who performed lots of experiments with electricity and also created a Tesla Coil.

Once that was sorted out, I would start researching. I went first to the Internet Public Library's website, where it has lots of valuable, authoritative searches, since this question wasn't quite an academic one. I searched the IPL for "Tesla Coil," and was linked to a website on PBS's server that was a thorough, layman's approach to Tesla, which was perfect for me, because I wasn't going to be able to understand anything too complicated. It succinctly explains that "The Tesla coil transforms an input voltage into brief pulses of extremely high voltages. Tesla's largest coil, built at his Colorado Springs lab in 1899, was 52 feet in diameter and generated pulses as high as 12Mv. This invention was patented as part of a high frequency lighting system" (PBS).

On this PBS site, it states that "Though he kept a day-to-day diary that was rich in detail, the results of his experiments are not clear. One question has never been definitely answered: Did Tesla actually transmit wireless power at Pikes Peak?" So we are actually not even sure if Tesla could wirelessly transmit power. So if we aren't sure whether he even ever did wirelessly transmit power, much less know the details on how we did it, then we can't use it instead of plugging things into electrical outlets.