Originally posted by 99obw

Not exactly. Of the common conductors silver is the most conductive by a small margin over copper.

 

I forgot about this. You're right. Copper is the best conductive metal that you can get in a spark plug. Yes, silver does conduct better, but it's not exactly cheap

answers many questions:

 

http://www.strappe.com/plugs.html

 

mike

FYI: Firestone made or at least sold plugs in the '50s with a radioactive Polonium electrode.

Yea I know. I used four of them in my engine last year. Did'nt need a single once of fuel for the whole 52 weeks of the experiment.

Now, if only my wife would stop glowing in the dark. It keeps me awake for C_ _ _ _ _ sake!

IIRC polonium is an alpha emitter and, while your lungs definitely don't need dust from an alpha emitter in them, that shouldn't be a big problem for a spark plug. A couple shhets of paper will stop alpha particles. I don't know why they think they NEEDED polonium, but it wouldn't particulary frighten me. Of course, a lot of smoke detectors have a polonium strip in them. If you have a survey meter, test Coleman lantern mantles sometime.

Smoke detectors use Americium, the half-life decay time for Polonium is 138.4 days.

My mistake, sorry, - when I had a B&W darkroom we had some type of anti-static brush dealie for dusting off negatives and optics with a polonium strip in it. I got confused. Must be the radiation exposure.

 

Didn't know about the half-life - wonder what they thought the advatage was for spark plugs? Or were they just unable to eliminate polonium from some alloy or coating on the plug?

 

Radon is one reason why, it MAY be beneficial to occasionally hang upside-down. It is a very dense gas that emits alpha particles and can potentially be inhaled in a basement area in some parts of the country or while showering.

They did make them!

http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Elements/084/

Originally posted by subyluvr2212

I forgot about this. You're right. Copper is the best conductive metal that you can get in a spark plug.

 

Not true...there ARE spark plugs with silver electrodes out there that are made to take advantage of silver's conductivity properties. The most well-known example is the Beru Silverstone (http://www.nology.com/silver.html).

Why do people always talk about the conductivity of the material? An earlier post pointed out that the spark plug wires are in the order of 7 to 15 kohms. That's "kilo", or 1000's of ohms! So what if the spark plug (all 3 inches of it) is 10 ohms or 100 ohms (or whatever the values are)? And what is the resistance of the air gap over which the spark must bridge?

 

Is there something I don't understand here?

 

Just wondering.

 

Commuter

Originally posted by Warp3

Not true...there ARE spark plugs with silver electrodes out there that are made to take advantage of silver's conductivity properties. The most well-known example is the Beru Silverstone (http://www.nology.com/silver.html).

 

Cool! Good price too! But how long do they last?