tzoom84
Newbie level 5
Another question on RF interference.
I understand sparks cause serious RF interference. But I'm trying to understand the physics. From my understanding, an arc of several thousand volts causes ionization. But why does ionization generate rather powerful electromagnetic waves?
To add to my confusion, I found this site that states "The frequencies are random and come and go in fractions of a second". Mathematically speaking, I'm uncertain about the term "random".
Is it truly "random", and if so, across which frequencies?
Alternately I considered the problem from a Fourier perspective. A spark causes a rapid voltage change in a very short time. I considered essentially a very short pulse. A very short pulse in the time domain is correlary to a sinc function in the frequency domain. Or in other terms, that pulse includes MANY sine/cosine harmonics to generate. These harmonics are what cause interference?
I understand sparks cause serious RF interference. But I'm trying to understand the physics. From my understanding, an arc of several thousand volts causes ionization. But why does ionization generate rather powerful electromagnetic waves?
To add to my confusion, I found this site that states "The frequencies are random and come and go in fractions of a second". Mathematically speaking, I'm uncertain about the term "random".
Is it truly "random", and if so, across which frequencies?
Alternately I considered the problem from a Fourier perspective. A spark causes a rapid voltage change in a very short time. I considered essentially a very short pulse. A very short pulse in the time domain is correlary to a sinc function in the frequency domain. Or in other terms, that pulse includes MANY sine/cosine harmonics to generate. These harmonics are what cause interference?
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