styropyro

new video!! 30,000 watt light bulb

Here is the finished video about the 30,000 watt light bulb! Enjoy!

I never planned on this video being a main channel upload. The goal was to see what would happen if I made a video with minimal scripting and planning. I figured this would ...

revisited big light bulb

My big light bulb video has been sitting nearly finished for months, with just the burning and outdoor tests left. I decided to finally break it out again now that it has been cold enough to keep bugs from piling on the lamp. However, when I start...

400 car batteries vs. galvanized pipe

Here's yet another example of zinc showing off its beauty in slow mo. This steel pipe had a thick zinc coating on it, and although it didn't pull a particularly crazy amount of current, it made for some amazing effects.

I spent too much ti...

magnetic insanity

My typical morning starts with charging the car batteries and setting up the experiments for the day. In the afternoon and evening, I do the shots. I average about 3 or 4 experiments a day, and only about one of those ends up as video worthy. The ...

pennies at 140,000 amps

Of all the metals I've zapped in slow mo, I think zinc is my favorite. The relatively gentle light of its flame combined with its heavy smoke generation make for some beautiful shots. Of course, exposing the scenes on the camera is difficult, espe...

college lecture about the 400 car battery project

I visited my former college to give a physics talk regarding the progress of my car battery project. Most of what I cover has already been shared here but I figured some of you might want to watch this anyway.

battery progress

It has been a while since I've updated you all on the batteries so I wanted to share what I've been doing the past couple weeks. The main theme of course has been continuing to work on the switch to get it to close all the way. Doing a bunch of we...

100,000 amp under water fusing

I've been trying to crush a pipe magnetically without melting it in the process, but this has been difficult due to the slow turn on time of the circuit. I tried dunking a pipe in water to buy some time, but as it turns out, the heat transfer is b...

6000 amp fuse

You know what must be done!

prepping more things to zap

It's been a few days since I've zapped anything, mostly because it has been relatively cold here. I tried zapping things on a chilly day and could not get past 125,000 amps. Assuming the temperature drop was to blame, this actually implies that th...

slight switch issue

I tried attaching a different configuration of copper to the plates and it made an incredibly violent oscillator, again due to plasma pinching. Peak current here was 140,000 amps, giving a peak power of nearly 10 million watts. It's so dramatic i'...

extreme currents

There have been many new problems as well as interesting discoveries this week! I've also had a big breakthrough. There is a lot to cover.

C-clamps are useless for most things on the yeet blocks, but the one thing they can (sometimes) hold...

boiling zinc

This is my best slow mo shot so far. 40,000 amps through a galvanized steel rod. The green plasma is from the zinc metal boiling off faster than the steel melts.

interesting developments

I didn't do any battery experiments over the weekend since I was at a Tesla coiler meetup in Ohio (which was awesome) however the day before I left, I ran some tests, and got some unexpected results. My goal was to simply film my switch having the...

first tests

I finally got to blowing things up with the car battery bank. This clip shows the zinc boiling off of a 3/8" galvanized steel rod, shot at 4000 frames per second.

Unfortunately I'm dealing with mostly failures so far. The biggest is that t...

the switch

I am absolutely fried after this past month. There has been so much manual labor involved in this project. I've enjoyed it, but I'm pretty worn out to put it lightly. I'm looking forward to finally doing the experiments. I ran out of 4/0 cable so ...

touching a car battery bank featuring chubbyemu

i can just barely feel a tingle from a bank of 5S10P car batteries charged to around 65V

chubbyemu visited me!

Chubbyemu stopped by my place and we filmed a video for his channel!

final days of battery prep

Since getting back from Open Sauce I have been working non-stop on finishing the battery array! I'm spending over 12 hours a day drilling, cutting, welding, crimping, and wiring. I'm expecting to have it all ready by the end of the week.

By...

high speed camera

My chronos high speed camera has arrived! It was pretty daunting shopping for high speed cameras considering their prices, and this unit is the by far the most expensive camera I've ever bought. I really felt a camera like this was necessary for t...

battery banks complete

Placing all the batteries was easy, but the shimming and wiring was quite tedious. The series connections required 640 crimps, and all 800 contact points had to be polished clean before connecting. Now that these banks are finished, the next order...

car battery progress

My first planned layout for the car batteries was to build a tower, as this would minimize the amount of copper needed. However, I realized that I'd spend an eternity building a tower that could hold 14 tons, and that its material costs would nega...

copper

The bulk of the copper has arrived, and the blocks you see in the video clip will be the main "work" blocks where items get zapped. They are heavy pieces of copper!

Unfortunately some of the copper I ordered was not actually in stock. The s...

battery testing

I bought a cheap car battery impedance meter from scamazon and its readings line up perfectly with what I calculated via measurements taken during the 100 car battery video. The most surprising part is that the 2 year old batteries measure nearly ...

chasing microohms

I awoke the log splitter switch from its slumber today to plan out its upgrades. I used this for the 100 car battery project, and although it had its quirks, it reliably switched the bank without adding much in the way of additional resistance. In...

how hard is it to turn on a light bulb?

quite hard apparently! I had to upgrade the driver on my 24kW incandescent dimmer circuit because the SCRs were getting too hot. now after I ramp the bulb on, I can short out the chopper circuit with a relay. it's clunky, but it should offer longe...

what's next?

the blue laser video is a hit! i'm glad it has been well received. I'm already thinking about when I can cross the 1kW mark with a handheld laser lol

So as for the next projects, I have quite a stacked schedule. Right now I'm hitting the 40...

new video!!! world's most powerful handheld laser

the video is FINALLY done! i hope you enjoy!

glowy flask

Here's a volumetric flask I filled up with neon and iodine. It got contaminated with something that made the discharges especially purple, and I haven't been able to recreate it.

close to firing

I got shorted on a nichrome wire roll I ordered for the laser heater and it took forever for a replacement to arrive, so in the meantime I ended up doing a lot of non science related work on my falling apart house and yard. A neighbor actually sto...