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 lead to a short-ish video that I'd post on my second channel, but instead it made for my longest video ever lol. The video was fun to make and relatively easy to put together, but it's certainly not my best work. I've opted to post it on my main chan...

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 started the burning experiments, it melted the aluminum reflector I was using to direct the light! Pretty wild for a light bulb. I ended up spacing it further from the next reflector I stuck in there and it held up long enough to finish the set up experim...

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 time zapping bright burning metals like magnesium, titanium, and zirconium in this video. The coolest metal shots have been dim metals like iron and zinc, mostly because the extreme powers balance them out. Tungsten is the one exception of the bright m...

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 shots that do work out though are legendary. I've been focusing on magnetic effects this week, and something about watching a straight piece of copper act as an incredibly strong magnet just never gets old.

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, especially because there are huge variations between tests. In this shot, I zapped a bunch of modern US pennies (97.5% zinc) and measured a peak of 140,000 amps. If I get time, I'll try this one again since this was a bit overexposed.

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 welding on the live circuit has been unpleasant to say the least. I started by adding some huge springs that my 1600lb winch could barely pull back, but this had basically no effect on stopping the switch bounce.

I ended up buying another log spl...

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 basically zero at these timescales. This failure still made for some spectacular slow mo footage though.

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 the max current I'll be able to pull is in fact around 150,000 amps with normal summer temps. Needless to say, I'm quickly running out of time to do my experiments, but the coming week will be hot and I have lots of experiments planned for it.

F...

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'm considering keeping this configuration for a bit and blowing up weird metals on the switch itself.

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 is stranded cable. The reason is that the ends are spread out to the point where they are cooled on the block, and the part that explodes is outside of the grip of the clamp. Using c-clamped 4/0 copper cable as the load, I finally got the switch to ...

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 issues I suspected. I started by exploding 4 gauge copper wire, then 2, then 0, 2/0, and finally 4/0, and the switch worked perfectly every time! That being said, the current was clearly oscillating and capped around 50,000 amps. For my last trial w...

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 the switch spring force is overcome by presumably a magnetic force, which limits the current to 55,000 amps. I did some napkin math on the expected forces a while back, and got some huge numbers that I didn't believe, mostly due to the major approxima...

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 waiting on the new order to arrive is the only thing holding me up now. So, this is a good time to talk about the switch.

It took me a lot longer to build than expected, but it was my first welding project and it seems like it is solid enough...

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 far the worst part of this has been drilling the 2" thick copper. It is horribly tedious and my poor little drill press can barely do it. I've also had to learn to weld, but that has actually been fun. The log splitter switch rebuild has been going ...

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 the car battery video though. I've said it before that I'm expecting the footage to give an unprecedented look at extreme current discharges. I've only briefly been able to play with it and it sure needs a lot of light to take a good image. Thankfully...

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 of business is constructing the switch, which will likely be the highest current switch ever made for a youtube video.

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 negate much or all of what I'd save in copper. Thus, I decided to lay them all flat like the first time. An all flat arrangement does give more cable resistance, but this is small compared to the battery resistance, and the fact that the batteries cook i...

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 switch contacts, which are even bigger than the blocks in the clip shown, are 4 weeks out according to the seller. I've also heard nothing from the seller of the bus bars I ordered, and those were supposed to ship a week ago. It's quite annoying how I...

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 the same as the new ones. It seems that the old ones are only 5~10% worse, and some of that may just be due to corrosion on the terminals. I honestly expected the old ones to test much worse than that! They've been exposed to the elements outside for...

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 fact, its resistance when firing was far less than 0.001 ohms!

The 400 car battery project is going to require much bigger switch contacts. For one, the higher currents will wear them down faster, but I also need to have more space to attach ...

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 longer run times without having to find a big heatsink or add fans.

it's funny how the bulk of many of my projects is just building power supplies.

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 400x car battery project hard and have ordered an enormous amount of copper to make all the connections. I plan to spend a month working full time simply assembling this bank. Every connection has to be perfect and spotless! I want every single amp I c...

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 stopped by a couple weeks ago asking if everything was ok because it looked like the place was abandoned based on the condition of the yard lol. I've gotten things tidied up since then, and tomorrow I fly out to William Osman's place to shoot a show for...