"Now I am really interested," admitted Channing. "Oil switches in a spaceship are a definite drawback."
"I know. So—here we are."
"What's the rest of this stuff?" asked Channing, laying a hand on the glassware.
"Be careful!" said Farrell in concern. "That's hot stuff."
"Oh?"
"In order to get some real voltages and currents to break without running the main station bus through here, I cooked this stuff up. The plate-grilleworks in the large tubes exhibit a capacity between them of one microfarad. Empty, that is, or I should say precisely point nine eight microfarads in vacuuo. The fluid is of my own devising, concocted for the occasion, and has a dielectric constant of thirteen times ten to the sixth power. It—"
"Great Howling Rockets!" exploded Channing. "That makes the overall capacity equal to thirteen farads!"
"Just about. Well, I have the condenser charged to three kilovolts, and then I discharge it through this switch made of the non-arcing alloy. Watch! No, Don, from back there, please, behind this safety glass."
Channing made some discomforting calculations about thirteen farads at three thousand volts and decided that there was definitely something unlucky about the number thirteen.
"The switch, now," continued Farrell, as though thirteen farads was just a mere drop in the bucket, "is opened four milliseconds after it is closed. The time-constant of the discharging resistance is such that the voltage is zero point eight three of its peak three thousand volts, giving a good check of the alloy."