One of the problems of being 83 years old and having had twice that many "adventures," is that I usually have an incident related to other peoples' incidents.
I remember describing my experiments on APS with a 10kV oil burner ignition transformerwhen I was a teener:
"Wood, especially live wood, is not a non-conductor at those high voltages. I had occasion once to watch a 10KV (14,000 peak Voltage)) oil burner ignition transformer start to burn a carbonized trace from a connection to its HV terminal through the seasoned wood bench top toward ground. I shut it off right quick."
https://www.armedpolitesociety.com/index.php?topic=45377.msg924936;topicseen#msg924936That carbonized trace looked exactly like the "fractal" traces in OP's article.
I didn't mention it in that particular post, but I did get an "educational" shock by touching the trace as it formed on my workbench while touching the transformer body.
I experimented a lot with that transformer, especially for rigging it up for spark photography.
Remember, a "10,000 Volts" rating (or whatever output voltage rating) means a peak voltage 1.414 times that amount. With a 10kV oil burner ignition transformer, that means peak voltage is actually 14,140 volts.
Terry, 230RN, peaking at 325.27RNs
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