Does compressing air reduce its resistance to electricity?

Question

I was thinking that one of the main reasons why air has such a high resistance to electric flow is because its molecules are so far apart (gas), but what if you were to compress it with alot of pressure?

Also while still on the topic of current running through air, once you get arcing to occur through the air, does the resistance dramatically decrease?...like if it takes 1kV to get an electric arc over an inch of air, once you get the arc, could you lower the voltage and still have the arc exist. If yes, by how much?

Answer 1

compressing air does not reduce its resistance to electricity. However in depressing the air between two electrodes if you thus changed the distance you would decrease the resistance.

It usually takes electricity a large jump to produced ions in the air to allow the electricity to flow. It is possible that once the ions had been formed you could reduce the voltage but I am not sure how much and for how long

Answer 2

It depends on whether you want to know about the resistance or the "breakdown stength". The resistance is basically infinite for small DC fields. Not perfectly infinite, but so high that it's very difficult to measure - I would guess it tends to go down slightly as it's compressed since the ion partial pressure will be higher, but it probably depends a lot on the exact composition and the level of residual ionization. For conduction through gases, it's usually more important to know the breakdown strength, which is the electric field strength at which arcing occurs and the resistance goes down so much that the gas effectively becomes a conductor. For most gases, including air, there's a certain pressure at which this breakdown strength is a minimum, and for air it's at around 1/1,000 to1/10,000 of an atmosphere. If you compress air above atmospheric pressure the breakdown strength increases and it becomes harder to get an arc. The pressure range where the minimum occurs is often called the "glow discharge" region, because even very small voltages on conventional electronic devices tend to cause a glowing arc. It's very hazardous to operate most electronic devices at that pressure since they tend to short out a lot.

With the arc current, yes you can decrease the voltage a lot after it arcs (which is what happens in arc lamps), but exactly how much would be a difficult quantity to predict. I know it can be as much as a factor of 1000, and I assume the manufacturers work that out empirically, since plasma streams and breakdown effects have very complex behavior.

Answer 3

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Answer 4

I would say yes, since the atoms are closer together.

And yes, I think this explains why lightning often flashes several times over exactly the same path. Even tho the initial charge is drained, a lower charge can then use the same, easier path.

How much lower I don't know.

Answer 5

I'm not sure, but compressed packing peanuts conduct electricity and uncompressed ones do not. I kept shorting out pins on a 50 pin connector when I seated a circuit board.

Answer 6

you ask many questions, grasshopper, but you are on the right track.