Ionized CO2

[death11284]

Ok, so I was checking out a thread on RogueSci on microwave rayguns. This thread got me a little bit interested way back, so I've been looking into it.

Earlier today I was bored so I looked on youtube and saw the match in a glass bowl in the microwave. From what I've gathered (most the people that do this are fucking retarded) the carbon dioxide from the match is trapped in the glass and it's ionized by the microwaves.

This little combination got me thinking..hardcore..say you produce one of these microwave ray guns, if you had a pressurized bottle of CO2 (of which I have around 10) could you not just hit it with microwaves and produce plasma?

Imagine the possibilities of this, a plasma fire lance, maybe even applicable in welding etc?

What I imagine is a heat-resistant glass tube or maybe even a suspension system akin to a tokamak reactor. Basically when you hit the trigger it would emit microwaves and CO2 in sync so that it would ionize it on it's way out.

For welding I could see this being useful in more of a pen form, it would have a constant flow of carbon dioxide and a separate microwave transmitter clamped on (kind of like the ground on a standard welding machine (mig arc heliarc tig etc). So basically it would be spraying plasma into it, with some work it could be another kind of plasma cutter.

I just was hoping for you guys' input and suggestions, thanks.

[Maestro]

Well you better not be hoping to pull microwaving a CO2 canister, they tend to be metal. You could do it with a different container if this theory works though. Making high-heat plasma by just microwaving CO2 seems a bit far-fetched to me though. Why don't you try it and tell us how it works out...

[death11284]

Yeah I'm not dumb enough to microwave a metal container, it would have to hit the stream on the way out. Anyways I'm going to go up to goodwill in a couple of days and grab a few old microwaves, so I'll keep you all posted on the results.