# measuring ?? from a Tesla coil

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-from-a-tesla-coil/390962>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 5, 2007, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-from-a-tesla-coil/390962 "2007-02-05T18:46:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Sigene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df788c/32.png) [@Sigene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigene)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2007, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-from-a-tesla-coil/390962/1 "2007-02-05T18:46:06Z")

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I’ve got a tesla coil bought from a scientific equipment company. I want to reproducibly measure the intensity (amount?? flux??)of the ionized particles produced. Could it be as easy as setting up a multimeter? I could put one lead to ground and the other in the air space where I want to measure the intensity. Would this work? will I fry my meter if I get an arc to the lead? Is there some other way to measure this reproducibly?

I basically want to make sure the measure of ionized particles is consistent from day to day and time to time.

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**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2007, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-from-a-tesla-coil/390962/2 "2007-02-05T19:46:43Z")

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I dunno. Perhaps #133 or #239 on [this](http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/demonstrations.html) page might work.