Hey, when I was about 10, I remember playing around with liquid mercury.
The kids at school said if you rubbed it on a dime, it would make it real shiny and new looking.
And ya know what?
I remember doing that, and it worked!
I also remember being bathed by my granny in her kitchen sink with Ivory Soap when I was only 2 years old.
Also at 2 years old, remember my grandfather saying "sonovabitch" which made me laugh and spill my root beer all over my clothes.
As for lead, I've been handling solder since I was 13, when I made my first tube amp.
So.... my memory and disposition isn't too bad for an old codger. 😉
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I remember soldering in shorts since I was a kid - still have scars all over my legs.
And my little sister saying “dammashittabitch” was priceless. Even though she once threw a brick at me so her dad would get mad at me and throw me into the side of the trailer, leaving a huge dent that was still there when it was hauled off for scrap 30 years later. I don’t hold it against her.
And my little sister saying “dammashittabitch” was priceless. Even though she once threw a brick at me so her dad would get mad at me and throw me into the side of the trailer, leaving a huge dent that was still there when it was hauled off for scrap 30 years later. I don’t hold it against her.
If it is the youtube channel I found they have over 2 million subscribers, so raking in the money. Even if what they are doing is technically wrong, who cares, clearly they are smart enough to get rich from it, so just keep doing it, why wouldn't you.
You go and look at how many views some of the flat earth bull videos have (sorry I mean clearly completely accurate science). Do these people really believe that, or are they smart enough to understand that is not important if it brings in money if you can sell the lie...
Like people dropping pennies/coins in sockets, film it, you might get rich...
My father did some stupid stuff when I was a kid.
At dinner once, mom put asparagus on the plate.
I hate it, I refuse to eat it, even today.
My father took out a hammer and slammed it down on the kitchen table, screaming EAT IT!
I refused.
But that circular dent in the formica was there as a reminder forever.
Shame, it was a cool oval 1950's chrome and formica with matching chairs.
Like this one....
Attachments
I guess we had smarter kids in our school. We rubbed mercury on pennies and passed them as dimes in the school cafeteria.....where else can you earn 10X on your money.
I grew up in Miami during a time when only rich people had air conditioning. Usually a pair of shorts was all I wore.
One of my early experiments got me banished from the house for anything line powered. A wrong, bad, or backwards "top hat" diode in a DIY power supply had caused one of those cardboard electrolytics from a 1950's AA5 to spew fire out the side burning my new workbench made from a old door I dragged home from someone's trash.
Imagine playing with hot solder and electricity provided by a 2 wire extension cord inside a steel storage shed with a bare dirt floor during the days of hot chassis radios and TV's. I somehow survived my youth.
Many lessons about how you got zapped and where to position cardboard and plywood to protect yourself from shock, burns, and shrapnel were learned the hard way.
Today's youngers have the internet to learn from (good and bad) and it's rather hard to get hurt from an Arduino and a solderless breadboard......Even I can't make one explode.
Pretty sure that everything up to date could be considered stupid
Here's a couple
I once made my own light using an incandescent and some stripped wire. I used those cardboard boxes that they came in as the fixture on the floor and taped the exposed wires to the bulb. Lots of pops and sparks. I ditched the prototype and went outside in stark fear
Another wonderful experience was one night outside by the garage, I decided to unscrew a blown smaller incandescent that was neighbored by a working bulb. Since it was dark, I decided to leave the lights on and unscrew it this way so I could see what I was doing. As I was unscrewing, and these you had to reach in from under the glass shroud, the bulb broke in my hand and instantly gave me 120vac, causing me to instinctively yank my hand away, causing shards of glass to shred up my thumb. Ahh yes. That scar is slowly fading.
Used to do donuts in areas with friends in cars and a friend once had so stop from smoke in his cabin from his throttle rod wearing through his amp wire. The wire laid down across everything else under the hood causing it to melt through and short over everything else metal that it found. Not sure why no fuse that day.
Another fond memory of driving our cars on lake geneva in wisconsin. One day we noticed that there were people driving on the lake in the winter. Being from illinois, we didnt know about this initially, so anyways, we went out there. We were thrilled to be doing 70mph in an completely open area and then sticking the parking brake on and spinning around for a minute or so uncontrollably. We eventually decided to try pulling our friends around the lake on the spare tire, pulling like it was an inner tube. We were having a great time, driving well away from others, when once we stopped, the ice was cracking and popping like crazy. Thud thud etc. Screaming at the guy on the tire to get back quick. Later days comes along and was flying with a friend in his airplane over the same lake to notice that the entire middle of the lake was exposed water.
This may be more tupid Student Calls Cops on PragerU - YouTube
Here's a couple
I once made my own light using an incandescent and some stripped wire. I used those cardboard boxes that they came in as the fixture on the floor and taped the exposed wires to the bulb. Lots of pops and sparks. I ditched the prototype and went outside in stark fear
Another wonderful experience was one night outside by the garage, I decided to unscrew a blown smaller incandescent that was neighbored by a working bulb. Since it was dark, I decided to leave the lights on and unscrew it this way so I could see what I was doing. As I was unscrewing, and these you had to reach in from under the glass shroud, the bulb broke in my hand and instantly gave me 120vac, causing me to instinctively yank my hand away, causing shards of glass to shred up my thumb. Ahh yes. That scar is slowly fading.
Used to do donuts in areas with friends in cars and a friend once had so stop from smoke in his cabin from his throttle rod wearing through his amp wire. The wire laid down across everything else under the hood causing it to melt through and short over everything else metal that it found. Not sure why no fuse that day.
Another fond memory of driving our cars on lake geneva in wisconsin. One day we noticed that there were people driving on the lake in the winter. Being from illinois, we didnt know about this initially, so anyways, we went out there. We were thrilled to be doing 70mph in an completely open area and then sticking the parking brake on and spinning around for a minute or so uncontrollably. We eventually decided to try pulling our friends around the lake on the spare tire, pulling like it was an inner tube. We were having a great time, driving well away from others, when once we stopped, the ice was cracking and popping like crazy. Thud thud etc. Screaming at the guy on the tire to get back quick. Later days comes along and was flying with a friend in his airplane over the same lake to notice that the entire middle of the lake was exposed water.
This may be more tupid Student Calls Cops on PragerU - YouTube
20 some odd years ago, when I was living at a house in Tampa where a friend was running an ISP out of, he got a bum graphics card for one of the servers. Sent it back numerous times as defective, and the same one kept coming back as a “replacement”. Finally we got fed up with all this and applied 120 volts AC across one of the big surface mount ICs. There sparks and shrapnel. When he sent THAT one back, he got a new one that worked.
I should state that I have not actually tried to blow up an Arduino. In fact I haven't even killed one yet, but if I ever do, I'll finish it off in a proper fashion. I was not thinking of purposeful destruction when I wrote the previous post, but.....
I have done many purposefully destructive tests on electronics equipment in the past, and my exploits have convinced me that this type of testing must be done outdoors, especially now that I live in a house made of mostly wood and plastic.
Many accidental explosions at the hand of the 600 volt power supply have assured me of it's destructive nature. With a maximum of 650 volts stored in 1000 uF of output capacitance it has a bit over 210 joules of stored destructive energy. Unfortunately it's too heavy to easily move outside.
I do have a modern switch mode version which is nearly rebuilt. It is no match for the 60 pound HP in destructive force (a good thing for tube amp work), but could be with enough electrolytics wired across it's output.
There are other destructive forces that are very capable turning an Arduino to charcoal. The most common would be the microwave oven or an ordinary power cord with alligator clips on the end.
I used an old defibrillator with a few Tubelab style mods, at Motorola to create some simulated lightning to solve a problem in a SCADA product we designed.
The stock defib used a 16 uF capacitor rated for 7.5 KV. In stock form it was charged to a little over 7KV and discharged into the patient through a large air core inductor. We removed the inductor and boosted the charging voltage to around 8 KV. This boosted the stored energy to about 500 Joules.
It split a 4 layer pager board into two two layer boards when attached to the 1.2 volt battery terminals and "tested."
It also taught me one important dumm blonde lesson......
.....never connect a defib across a banana and push the test button. It takes a whole afternoon to remove the goo off the walls and ceiling and a week for the smell to fade!
The banana incident got the defib evicted from the off campus think tank where I worked at the time. I scrapped it when I moved out of Florida, but still have that monster capacitor.
So what does all this prove? Either that old timers can be STOOPID too, or that some of us never grow up........I'm still waffling about just how and what to blow up with electricity in a safe and creative manner to be educational and entertaining for a Youtube video or two.
Take one Van de Graff generator, a stack of transparency films made for a laser printer (not ink jet) and a roll of aluminum cooking foil. Make a capacitor from alternating layers of foil and transparency film. Run a piece of wire from the Van de Graff to the top plate of the cap. Turn on....get away.....It may take a while, but enough charge will develop in that cap for a very LOUD lightning bolt to jump around one end. The bang that ensues tells me that I wouldn't want to be hit by that bolt!
We improved the charge time by using an ESD test gun turned up all the away (30 KV) instead of the Van de Graff. Did you know that you can charge up one of the metallized Mylar ESD bags made for transporting circuit boards? You can also charge up an transparency film itself without a piece of foil on it....
We had inspectors wander through our work area randomly after hours looking for "proprietary" or "confidential" information. A violation got you in trouble, two or three got you fired. How do you fix this? You print out some random junk on transparencies stack them up (more charge) and leave them on top of a metal surface (file cabinet). When the inspector picks them up, they get zapped......eventually they learn not to look in my office.
"We had inspectors wander through our work area randomly after hours looking for "proprietary" or "confidential" information. A violation got you in trouble, two or three got you fired. How do you fix this? You print out some random junk on transparencies stack them up (more charge) and leave them on top of a metal surface (file cabinet). When the inspector picks them up, they get zapped......eventually they learn not to look in my office."
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! I wish I could have done that when I worked at the national lab.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! I wish I could have done that when I worked at the national lab.
Do it while the Arduino is streaming music
. See how that affects the noise floor. Take the door off, hotwire the microwave, and stand clear of the EM field.I saw some proper redneck fun with a microwave on Youtube. Best one was where the guys put automotive airbags in the microwave. Doors typically flew off but one microwave ended up round like a basketball.
This is all for outdoor fun only.
In 4th grade I did a class demo entitled "what happens when you connect something to the wrong voltage" This was fully cleared with the teacher and school maintenance person, by running through the demo prior to doing it in class.
I used one of the little light bulbs from an Xmas light string; yes, even back then they had the ones series connected, so each got a couple / few volts with the string across 110.
I had this big GE limit switch my father brought home, with a nice big lever on it. Contacts were fully enclosed. With everyone seated, I explained the experiment, connected the little bulb, plugged it in and counted down...
The little bulb of course exploded nicely and shot up in an arc, falling right in the middle of the arrangement of desks. My first and only standing ovation!
In 5th grade, the teacher had a 3" diameter, 2" tall jar of Mercury he kept in his desk. I remember sticking my fingers in it, to feel how weird it was to shove my fingers into molten metal. Of course, everyone had to give that a try and eventually the inevitable accident; I can remember beads of it all over the floor and how they stuck to the janitor's broom bristles as he swept it up.
For all I know, he just got what he could into the dustpan - and left the rest! These days, they probably would have shut the whole school over that. I remember at Intel, one environmental chamber manufacturer had to come onsite and replace all the Mercury wetted relays - because anything with Mercury - even a hermetically sealed unit - wasn't allowed...
I used to like to play with small gas engines. One time I got one started and it proceeded to go into a runaway condition. I actually thought - using first principles - "If I grab and yank the plug wire with just one hand, there'll be no circuit to ground and therefore no current flow". That hurt. I slammed the choke shut, which stopped it.
Had this book on how to make tesla coils, rail guns, etc. They had an EMP generator project in it. Basically charge up a bank of capacitors and discharge across a thin wire, vaporizing it into a plasma. (I forget the contact actuator design) The wire was placed inside a microwave horn, to give the pulse some directivity - so you could shoot it at something. Maybe works with an Altec 511 or a big multicell metal horn too?
I saw on YT these Russian guys using a gun they made from a microwave oven on a boom box, which caused it to stop playing and eventually burst into flames. Unsure if that could be done with the single shot EMP gun - maybe make an interesting video if it worked.
I used one of the little light bulbs from an Xmas light string; yes, even back then they had the ones series connected, so each got a couple / few volts with the string across 110.
I had this big GE limit switch my father brought home, with a nice big lever on it. Contacts were fully enclosed. With everyone seated, I explained the experiment, connected the little bulb, plugged it in and counted down...
The little bulb of course exploded nicely and shot up in an arc, falling right in the middle of the arrangement of desks. My first and only standing ovation!
In 5th grade, the teacher had a 3" diameter, 2" tall jar of Mercury he kept in his desk. I remember sticking my fingers in it, to feel how weird it was to shove my fingers into molten metal. Of course, everyone had to give that a try and eventually the inevitable accident; I can remember beads of it all over the floor and how they stuck to the janitor's broom bristles as he swept it up.
For all I know, he just got what he could into the dustpan - and left the rest! These days, they probably would have shut the whole school over that. I remember at Intel, one environmental chamber manufacturer had to come onsite and replace all the Mercury wetted relays - because anything with Mercury - even a hermetically sealed unit - wasn't allowed...
I used to like to play with small gas engines. One time I got one started and it proceeded to go into a runaway condition. I actually thought - using first principles - "If I grab and yank the plug wire with just one hand, there'll be no circuit to ground and therefore no current flow". That hurt. I slammed the choke shut, which stopped it.
Had this book on how to make tesla coils, rail guns, etc. They had an EMP generator project in it. Basically charge up a bank of capacitors and discharge across a thin wire, vaporizing it into a plasma. (I forget the contact actuator design) The wire was placed inside a microwave horn, to give the pulse some directivity - so you could shoot it at something. Maybe works with an Altec 511 or a big multicell metal horn too?
I saw on YT these Russian guys using a gun they made from a microwave oven on a boom box, which caused it to stop playing and eventually burst into flames. Unsure if that could be done with the single shot EMP gun - maybe make an interesting video if it worked.
Good thinking that, I'll file that idea away for future use... 🙂
I zapped many things - and a few people - with a car ignition coil, primary fed from a power audio generator feeding over 100v into it... Good sparks!
I saw where a guy made a weapon with a few microwaves assembled into one gun. He demonstrated it on some kind of carcass, IIRC. It worked.
On Youtube, of course. 🙂
As youts, we pulled the plug wire to shut our go-kart engine off. Done quickly in one motion!
Then you need a few more details. The transparencies need to be on a metal surface like the top of a metal file cabinet. Put one down then zap all over the top of it with an ESD gun or other HV source. You probably will not see a discharge from the gun, but it is charging up the plastic. Place another sheet nearby and zap it. Drag the second sheet on top of the first with a non metallic object. Repeat. The charge will slowly dissipate depending on the humidity in the room. Our lab was cold and dry. It was good for an hour or two at least.
The Tesla Coil I built for the high school science fair resulted in myself and my cohorts being banned from the science fair "forever."
Thirty years later I helped my daughter do a high school science fair project in high school. It was titled "foods that go boom" and it involved a microwave oven.....an egg will blow the door open. A whole carton will blow the door OFF. This demonstrates the properties of "supercritical fluids." The project took first place in the school fair, then first place in the county science fair, but was not allowed to be shown in the state science fair as it was "unsafe." I'm not helping the grandkids with any science fair projects.
Is it possible to create a plasma at atmospheric pressure with ordinary equipment.......
I started with one slightly gassy vacuum tube. I decided to make it deader by nuking it. The gas will glow and heat up. Eventually the glass will melt and the fireworks start. Internals start to arc, the glass will burn and the resulting carbon will ionize into a plasma. After all was over I opened the door to see that the glass itself was still on fire!
Realizing that carbon was the key, I nuked several other possible substrates. The final choice was excellent. A small plasma ensued quickly and grew to fill the entire oven chamber. An arc started out on the floor of the oven from remnants of the dead vacuum tube and eventually breached the oven floor leading to a glow coming from beneath the oven. At this point I chose to end the experiment before things got out of hand. My neighbors grew to expect crazy electrical stunts since I lived in the same house for 37 years in Florida. In this case a loud 60 Hz buzz and a strange glow from the backyard drew some onlookers. Some previous experiments, especially those ending in a loud bang sometimes drew cops.....exploding Gatorade bottles via compressed air, feeding nitrous oxide to a lawnmower......
I did have a fail safe experiment termination plan, with a backup as I usually do, but in this case I just yanked the plug from the wall.
