styropyro

new video!

here's the new video i've been working on! i added a music track to it that i have mixed feelings about, so i'd like to hear your opinions on whether i should keep it or get rid of it. i'll probably make a couple minor tweaks to the vid before i end up making it public on YT.

vid is nearly completed

i'm trying to voice over clips in my vid right now but my cat is purring too loudly lol 

making progress on the vid

it's hilarious how cursed the drive circuit is on this thing. it's probably the worst functional laser diode driver in existence. the laser sure is a lot of fun though. the video is getting close to being done. i have probably a few more days of filming left and then some editing after that. stay tuned!

air force solar laser

I recently bought some equipment in an auction from a small photonics company in St. Louis that was closing doors. The company owners were three physicists in their late 80s that were super smart and a lot of fun to talk with. I bought a bunch of useful stuff there, but the most interesting item I won was definitely this solar pumped laser that was built for the US Air Force in 1976.

The work that went into designing this was crazy and I don't even want to know how much it cost to devel...

giant green laser pointer

i've been waiting for years for huge green laser diodes arrays to become available, and I finally got one in the middle of my move to my new lab. I ended up using it to build a giant version of the classic cheap green laser pointer. Output power is nearly 30W which makes it 6000 times more powerful than a 5mW laser pointer. The circuit driving it is the most cursed thing I've ever made, but at least it works.

Unfortunately these green laser diodes are not very efficient, and in fact th...

upcoming video

after some hiccups and distractions i'm finally wrapping up my next project. i'm building a giant green laser pointer using one of the newly available green laser diode arrays and i'm using a transformer from an inverter microwave oven to power it. It'll be the brightest portable laser I've built yet.

I originally started this project since it seemed easy to knock out quickly and make a video about it, but I ran into problems. 😅 I wanted to drive it in flyback mode like how the micro...

short on indium metal

I said I was going to make a youtube short about the crazy indigo plasma from indium metal, so here it is :P

also, see the attached frame grab of a hard startup with an indium tipped electrode. absolutely terrifying 

indium metal on the soviet fire death machine

indium got its name from the strong indigo lines in its atomic emission spectrum. sure enough, when some little bits of indium metal were fed to my soviet fire death machine, it made an incredible indigo plasma. it's even more impressive than zinc and lithium, which were my favorite metals to burn on that thing. i'm sure i'll make a short vid about indium at some point.

building a huge scale version of this circuit is high on my list of projects to tackle. first i'm going for some easie...

some silly video clips

sorry for the lack of posts recently. i've been working on the next video which should be ready in a few weeks, as well as some other smaller projects and continued upgrades and repairs to my shop and house.

a friend of mine visited last week and we played around with some various flavors of chemistry and electricity, which included some pyrotechnic removal of invasive shrubs 

a couple chemical formulary outtakes

here's a couple recipes that weren't included in the vid I posted on youtube 

new short-ish video! hydrochloric acid lemonade

i decided to take a break from making microwave parts do unholy things and shoot this silly video. there's been this recipe for "hydrochloric acid lemonade" floating around on the internet for some time so I figured I should finally give it a go.

some day soon I'll edit the outtakes from the chemical formulary to post here as well, and i've already started filming the next main channel vid. stay tuned! 

NEW VIDEO!! Patreon exclusive early viewing!

My most requested video of all time is here: chemical formulary part 3! It's probably risky of me to return from a YouTube hiatus with a sequel to what nearly got my channel deleted, but I didn't use cannons or explosives in this one so it should be fine. For the record, it was a lot harder to come up with good demos when I had to omit most of the gems in the pyro&explosives chapters, but I still think this video turned out well. 

There are a few recipes I tried that are not in...

sore throat remedy

slow mo of mixing the most terrifying sore throat remedy of all time

list of experiments

try to guess which one came closest to burning down my lab 😅

lab and video progress

in the past couple weeks i've been organizing and filming a bunch of chemical formulary experiments. i also have the frame for the Faraday cage built, but it still needs to get its copper covering and roof. 

the chemical formulary vid is going well. i'm testing more of the formulas this time than the first two vids combined. there will be quite a few outtakes as well as ones that are too dangerous for YT, so you'll get to see those too at some point.

pictured:
1. uranyl ni...

lab construction finished!

The main upgrades to my shop space are now completed! HVAC was just put in, and the painting was done in the weeks prior to that. Now I've been taking on the painstaking process of moving everything so I can clean the filthy floors, and then organize. It's too bad most of my cool stuff weighs so much, because moving 300lb+ transformers and lasers back and forth is not fun lol.

I could spend months cleaning and organizing if I wanted to, but I'm just going to get to a point where I have ...

FBI visit

A couple days ago I was playing with the kitties in my back shed when a big SUV pulled up and a couple guys came out. They pulled out their badges and told me they were with the FBI. Apparently, I had ordered enough suspicious stuff online to warrant a visit.

They had a whole list of my recent purchases and they were most concerned about a recent order of nearly 100lbs of spicy chemicals that can be used to make explosives. I told them I've been ordering sketchy stuff for most of my lif...

lab progress and more critters

i'm getting closer to finally being able to work in my lab! insulation is in, and drywall should be finished next week. after that it's painting and HVAC. i'm kinda losing my sanity not being able to work on projects. i have so much to catch up on.

in the meantime i've found more critters on the property. i found a family of cats living in my back shed, and now that they trust me they are super friendly. i've seen the mama cat around for months, but she wouldn't let me get close to her ...

new video! penny alchemy

I managed to put together this short-ish video between construction projects! There are actually several videos on this experiment on YouTube, and there's a good chance some of you have already done this in a high school chemistry class. However, explanations of the surprisingly cursed chemistry behind it are lacking, so I felt like this was a good opportunity to change that.

It's funny because I learned a lot of chemistry when I was younger by doing silly experiments like this, but thi...

lab progress

I hired a crew to insulate my shop and they've been here intermittently the past couple weeks. assuming they finish by friday, next week will be drywall. i've been trying to film some stuff in the meantime but it's so difficult with all of my tools being under plastic wrap! i've ended up doing some cleanup and yard work during this down time, as well as some project planning.

here are some random pics from the past couple weeks

pic 1: my lab under plastic
pic 2: low pressure ...

unlisted short video dump

i've managed to make some short vids in the evenings after working on the lab. yeah i'd rather be making long vids, but even after all this time, i still don't have a working setup to do big projects yet. so, enjoy some vertical cringe for the time being:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR9FUlhMbBI
https://www.youtube.com...

progress

progress is slow and steady on the new lab, and framing is nearly complete. if I didn't have to keep moving around every single thing in this place to have room to work, things would be going faster. i've also had to redo a lot of the wiring to bypass the original owner's cursed work, as well as have everything in the right place for when insulation and drywall is put in. i'm going to hire out the insulation and drywall so those will hopefully go faster. i would have hired out the HVAC too bu...

storm chasing highlights

here's a vid I made a while ago of some of my highlights while storm chasing over the years. i never posted it because the YT copyright bot somehow didn't detect the song I used, so I need to get licensing or at least permission to use it from the artists before I can post it. normally the YT bot will detect the song and then give the artist (or really the record company) the revenue from the vid, so if I post it without attribution, I'd be stealing it! 

lab updates

for most of the past couple weeks i've been stuck working in the house doing even more cleaning and tear out since I wanted to get as much stuff thrown out as a I could before my dumpster rental was up. I did find a few more treasures along with the trash, and I have been able to do a little foraging out in the woods here too.

the lights in the lab are finished now, using over 2kW of LEDs for maximum brightness. this week I begin the framing, then after that comes the insulation and the...

cursed home wiring

i've been pretending to be an electrician the past few days. here's a short clip of some of the nightmare lighting wiring i've encountered from the previous owner 

squirrel story

So the craziest thing happened. I've been working on my lab and house 6 days a week with my dad. One day we took a break and went to explore the woods a bit, when this friendly squirrel came out and followed us all the way back home. I made this short vid with clips I've taken this past week with her.

She is quite young, roughly 12 weeks old, which is right around the age where she should be leaving the nest. Even at this age, I wonder if the reason she was so eager for human interactio...

Selected treasures I've found on the property

I've mentioned multiple times now that there is a lot of junk here. Thankfully, not all of it is trash, and here are a few interesting things I've came across while cleaning:

pic 1: huge amount of fluorescent bulbs, including a big box of UV tanning bulbs. i'm sure there is some crazy tesla coil art to be made with these!
pic 2: a bunch of booze
pic 3: 10lbs of potassium permanganate
pic 4: ocean themed pink toilet
pic 5: antique matches (many more than shown here)
pic 6...

More progress on the lab

I've been needing to wear a respirator these past few weeks much more often than I used to, and I'm not even doing science now! So many areas in this house were filled with mouse poop and mold, and in the basement, I found nearly 50 dead mice in the drop ceiling!!! I cannot believe how gross it was, and I'm sooo sick of cleaning. At least at this point it is clean enough to live in, and I've returned my focus to the lab.

I've nearly filled a dumpster with junk left from the previous own...

progress on the new lab

I’m making progress on the new lab! Soon after closing on the property, I had the 400 amp service put in. It certainly helps having half of my family in construction, because my dad was able to dig the trench while my uncle and cousin ran the big power cables and put in the panel. I’ve moved most of my stuff into the new place, but I’m still waiting on the previous owner to remove an enormous amount of stuff.

Most of what I’ve done since the power upgrade has been cleaning. The ...

cool failed project part 2

here's a slow mo clip of the coil in the previous post. I was quite shocked on its appearance here honestly. It only looks like a flame at normal speed due to persistence of vision!