Alternating Current vs. Direct Current
This type of current, championed by Tesla, periodically reverses direction and is used in power grids worldwide.
What is alternating current (AC)?
The Tesla coil is best known today for creating these dramatic, branching electrical discharges.
What are lightning-like sparks?” (accept “What are electrical arcs?)
Wardenclyffe Tower was built in this U.S. state, not far from New York City.
What is New York?
In Colorado Springs, Tesla became known for creating indoor versions of this weather phenomenon, complete with thunderous sounds.
What is lightning?
Tesla invented an early version of this household device that lets you control a machine from across the room—or across a pond.
What is the remote control?
Tesla’s AC system was pitted against this inventor’s preferred DC system in the “War of Currents.
Who is Thomas Edison?
Tesla coils are often used in modern science museums and shows to demonstrate this invisible phenomenon that powers our devices.
What is electricity?
Wardenclyffe Tower was designed mainly to send signals and power using this wireless technology.
What is radio?(accept “What is wireless transmission?”)
Tesla lit up bulbs in Colorado Springs without wires in a famous demonstration of this type of power transmission.
What is wireless power?
Tesla demonstrated a boat controlled by invisible signals, a concept that today underlies this everyday wireless technology.
What is radio control? (accept “What is Bluetooth or Wi‑Fi?” in a looser game)
Tesla worked with this industrialist and his company to build AC power plants at Niagara Falls.
Who is George Westinghouse? (or “What is Westinghouse Electric?”)
Tesla coils helped pave the way for this type of communication, which sends signals without wires through the air.
What is wireless communication?” (accept “What is radio?”)
This wealthy financier, famous for investing in railroads and industry, helped fund the Wardenclyffe project—until he pulled his support.
Who is J. P. Morgan?
Tesla believed he had received signals from this planetary neighbor while experimenting with radio waves.
What is Mars?
Tesla’s work helped improve both neon signs and this type of low-pressure tube used in store and office lighting.
What is fluorescent lighting?
This famous New York City landmark was lit using Tesla’s AC system at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
What is the World’s Fair? (accept “What is the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition?”)
Tesla’s original goal for the coil included transmitting this without wires, not just signals.
What is electrical power?(accept “What is energy?”)
Wardenclyffe Tower was eventually dismantled during this global conflict to sell its metal as scrap.
What is World War I?
Tesla’s Colorado Springs lab needed so much of this that he sometimes caused local power outages.
What is electricity? (accept “What is electrical power?”)
Tesla developed bladeless versions of these machines that spin to convert steam or fluid energy into mechanical work.
What are turbines?
This term describes the voltage-raising and voltage-lowering devices that made AC transmission over long distances practical.
What are transformers?
In some labs and performances, people can safely touch a metal sphere connected to a Tesla coil thanks to this insulating layer around the body.
What is the layer of air acting as an insulator? (accept “What is insulation from the air?”)
Tesla hoped Wardenclyffe would let people around the globe receive information and power using this common natural medium.
What is the Earth (or the ground) itself? (accept “What is the Earth’s atmosphere?”)
In Colorado, Tesla experimented with resonant circuits, pushing energy back and forth between these two electrical components.
What are capacitors and inductors? (accept “What are coils and capacitors?”)
Many of Tesla’s inventions relied on rotating magnetic fields, which are created in this key household machine that turns electricity into motion.
What is an electric motor?