New to the board and just saw a tesla coil in person last week. I'm getting interested in maybe starting this as a hobby. My biggest question is that the gentleman running the coil had me remove my contact lenses during the run. He said that the coil would effectively melt them to my eyes. Just wondering if I threw out my lenses for nothing or if there is merit to that. Thanks for any help, and so far I'm loving this site.

ahahahahahahahahaaha you got bamboozled  :P telsa coils will not do that! The only thing you have to worry about when your around tesla coils is that you don't have a pacemaker or something electronic, as tesla coil like to mess with other electronics.

What I would like to know is how he knew you had contacts on? 

That's the sad part. He didn't know, he asked before he started it. I was leary of wether or not to believe him, but decided to proceed with caution. I've read quite a bit about Tesla's work and coils and nothing that I could think of would make that possible. At least now I know not to buy parts from him. Thanks for the input. Again, love the site and the board.

As a contact lens wearer and welder I can assure you that you have nothing to worry about.
I can imagine that in the worse case scenario a spark gap might produce enough ultra violet light to cause a bit of damage to your eyes, but not enough to melt your contact lenses. It is not a good idea to look at a spark gap or electrical arc. But, it is not as bad as staring into a TIG welder.

I'm not sure if there's any merit to that, but I ran a coil I made without melting my own contacts to my eyes. I was only running 300 watts or so. I can only assume he meant the UV light could have caused that if it was bright enough. My one friend did have to leave though because his silver fillings were hurting his teeth!

I can not see a tesla coil could in any way making some ones fillings hurt. Particularly one only running at 300W.

I agree that it doesn't make much sense, but I can assure you, it happened. It would be much appreciated if anyone can explain it?

Assuming veracity, maybe a diode-like junction is rectifying the RF.  Close proximity to a nerve might explain the sensitivity.  Because, the effect would be minuscule, without some other exacerbating factor.