Dumb / Fun electrical stuff you did as a kid. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2013, 08:08:37 pm
content: I was just thinking about the stuff I used to do as a kid some of which may have been dangerous.1. Welding with a car battery charger.I pulled pencil leads out and used them to "weld" using my father's 12v battery charger. More so I liked striking an arc and keeping it going.2. Turning a 9VAC power supply into 900VACI had a 9VAC power supply that for whatever reason I decided to run into some transformers. The first transformer was one I made myself by wrapping about 10 turns of wire around a magneto from a lawn mower, and then feeding that in to a transformer of unknown specs. When it was all done I connected the volt meter to the output and showed 900 volts. I got spooked and quickly dismantled it.3. That 9 volt AC power supply could handle up to 1 Amp, so it was good for burning up parts. Germanium diodes make good LEDs for short periods of time. 1/4 watt resistors couldn't stand a chance.4. Purposely touching an outletYeah I did it. I was testing a set of Christmas lights and when unplugging it thought "I wonder what it feels like?" Well it feels like your whole body is a subwoofer for a few seconds.5. Poking around a live power supplyI had my old Tandy Color Computer 2 turned on and reached across something and my hand rested on top of a live transformer... That got my attention6. Live power supply part 2Same computer was poking around and shorted the transformer with a screwdriver. Fortunately there was a protection circuit in the computer that cut the power and didn't trip the breaker in the house.7. Christmas lights part 2Hanging Christmas lights outside in a light rain, with predictable results!8. Throwing a quarter at a motherboardDon't know why I did this, I was working at a small computer shop at the time and one guy who stresses out easily was working on a computer and for some dumb reason, I tossed a quarter on the motherboard. Well that caused an immediate power down of the computer. He freaked but we cycled the power and it came back up. To this day I don't know why I did that.9. Shocking people with a disposable cameraA friend was over and we were watching TV, I was taking apart a disposable flash camera. When he wasn't looking I touched it to his leg and pressed the shutter button. He jumped a few feet in the air.Any more stories?

author: McMonster
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2013, 08:15:35 pm
content: I can only remember one thing, sticking a screwdriver into lighting fitting. Boom, darkness, fortunately just the lights, not me. I am and I always was a bit paranoid about doing unsafe things, you wouldn't see me crossing the street at a red light even in the UK.

author: ftransform
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2013, 08:17:08 pm
content: Quote from: Stonent on January 05, 2013, 08:08:37 pmVery kinky.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_wandget one of these to play with him

author: 8086
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2013, 08:22:18 pm
content: According to my mother, when I was quite young, I tried to replace a blown lightbulb in a lamp.Unfortunately I replaced it with one of these soaps:I'm not sure what happened afterwards.When I was a teenager, we had lots of fun in design & technology class, putting LEDs in the place of fuses in the plugs of mains powered tools, so that whenever somebody attempted to use them, a large spark shower would display and the RCD would trip and the whole protected supply would go down.Not very mature, I know, but what do you really expect? Teenagers are dumb.

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2013, 08:28:28 pm
content: Not something I did, but something I saw..Was working at a company and heard a loud bang, like a gunshot from the other room. I went in and smelled burned electronics.There was a computer in that room and it was off, the monitor was still on. I slid the computer back and found some brown fluff stuck to the wall behind it. I unplugged it an opened it up. There was a deformed electrolytic capacitor can rolling around inside the case and more fluff. I opened the power supply and found about 4 or 5 electrolytics had blown their tops, more tan fluff all over inside it.

author: TheWelly888
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2013, 08:43:18 pm
content: Bored at boarding school - I had a handful of cheap rectifier diodes, decided to stick some across the mains socket contacts and ( relatively sensibly ) operated the socket switch using a wooden snooker cue! I tripped the sockets breaker and welded the switch contacts! Luckily the school authorites never knew that there had been mischief so I quietly reset the breaker and a mate stole a spare socket from the workshop for me to replace.Also my mate stuck my soldering iron on a mercury hearing aid battery to make it swell then stabbed it with a compass!

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2013, 08:54:56 pm
content: Wired a sheet of metal to a megger where the cleaners were prone to use the wall as an impromptu toilet. Other lead attached to the steel structure. They went to the lavatory after the first use................Another was the electrified van seat, where the coil was wired to a wire threaded through the seat cushion. Would really light up your day.

author: M. András
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2013, 09:50:16 pm
content: Quote from: SeanB on January 05, 2013, 08:54:56 pmthat must have hurt there a lot!

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2013, 10:09:42 pm
content: Sounds like the stories of homeless people accidentally urinating on electrified train tracks.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2013, 10:26:54 pm
content: Built a very large 48 volt dynamo set from an old milk float motor and decided to see how fast it would charge a large 12 volt truck battery. About 12 seconds from cold to boiling and 20 seconds to detonation. Moved on to rockets had to give that up when they started to fall onto the local RAF base a mile away, blew up a pill box I have also put a finger into a light socket on a dare.

author: Kibi
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 05, 2013, 10:54:44 pm
content: Trying to use 16V electrolytics wired up to the mains as detonators for fertiliser / diesel mix. The caps went bang, but there was no detonation - fortunately.

author: ftransform
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2013, 11:13:21 pm
content: Quote from: Kibi on January 05, 2013, 10:54:44 pmwhy the hell are kids incapable of reading catoe? I was dogearing that thing when I was 12.that's a pathetic cap. Do you understand what I am saying padawan?at least your not playing with AP I suppose.

author: Sionyn
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2013, 11:36:24 pm
content: none of you could touch the microwave idiots

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2013, 11:42:37 pm
content: Probably the Carbon-Rod Electric Arc driven via AC Mains power through a "Salt Water Rheostat." (hey, it was in a book...)And the mini Van de Graaff generator was very cool, but that wasn't at all dangerous.My local library had a "Young Adult" section full of electronics/electricity/science/chemistry books that were a decade or two old, and thus reflected a rather lower standard of "safety" than the up-to-date versions. (and MUCH less safe than today's books. Sigh.)

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 12:50:04 am
content: Quote from: Sionyn on January 05, 2013, 11:36:24 pmYes I can. Unfortunately no photos.About 20 years ago a friend was having a birthday party. Large gathering, and improvised fireworks, dry ice soft drink bottle bombs and such were part of the entertainments. My friend had a largish quantity of aluminium flash powder, and I had an old microwave oven suitable for sacrifice to the gods of LOL. The experiments went like this:Place microwave on a rock outcrop some distance away, with an extension cord and remote power switch.First trial: A pile of flash powder on a dish in the oven. Turn on, nothing happens. The powder isn't conductive enough to begin an arc and ignite itself.Second trial: A clump of steel wool in the oven. Makes a nice sparkly show, as arc form between the strands of steel wool, and ignite the clump. (You did know that steel wool burns spectacularly, didn't you? Especially if you're holding it, and blow on it. Most satisfying! Careful of the falling drops of white hot molten slag and your feet.)Third trial: Mix some flash powder into a clump of steel wool, put in oven. Yes! The oven acts much like a very large flash gun. Much mirth among the partygoers. But no _real_ damage to the oven. Yet...Fourth to sixth trials: increasing amount of flash powder. Results getting better, but hey, this oven sucker is still functional, and that's not what we want AT ALL.So, getting bored, we just put the entire remaining amount of flash powder in, with a steel wool 'wick'. It was quite a lot.It's pretty hard to get a somewhat drunken crowd to 'stand back'. Anyway... power on.There was a an enormous flash, with about the only thing visible besides the white-out being the microwave oven door spinning towards us. Fortunately it missed.The oven was somewhat spherical, a bit like that 'airbag' one, but moreso.The party was overall a great success.

author: w2aew
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 02:29:10 am
content: As a kid in the 70's playing with electronics, I had a little 'excitement'. Before LEDs were popular, indicator lamps in TVs etc. were either incandescent or neon. I remember playing with a neon bulb and knowing that it needed a series resistor to limit the current. But, I didn't know how to figure out what value. I soldered 8 or 10 resistors in series with the bulb. Then, I took my trusty lamp cord with alligator clips on the ends, and clipped it across the assembly. While watching the intensity of the neon glow, I systematically moved one of the clips down the resistor change. Carelessly, I went past the last resistor and put 120VAC across the neon bulb. A loud pop, a bright flash, and scattered pieces of molten glass immediately ensued, followed by darkness as the fuse for the bedroom side of the house blew. I remember quickly running to the basement to replace the fuse before my Mom knew what was happening.I learned a lot about current limiting that day.

author: peter.mitchell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 03:04:51 am
content: I feel like I lived a safe, deprived childhood, learning mainly from reading then trying, rather than trying then cleaning.

author: cwalex
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 03:12:12 am
content: I'm glad I got all the life threatening dumb mistakes out of the way when I was young, fit and healthy. Doing the same things now could have been much worse outcome!

author: Pentium100
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 03:21:22 am
content: Heard somewhere that if you connect a fluorescent lap starter to an incandescent lightbulb, you get blinking light. Tried that, but for whavever reason I connected the starter in parallel with the bulb... boom. Connected the second one in series and it worked.I also had a TV flyback transformer and played around with it - at first I touched the output while connecting 12VDC to the primary (felt like I was punched in the head) after that I got my friend to hold the wire while I rapidly connected/disconnected the 12V battery (NiCd from a laptop, so lots of current). Later I built a couple of circuits to provide AC to the transformer and played with the sparks.Oh and I made my own lamps by connecting graphite from a pencil to the 12V battery. Or I could make smoke if I did not take the graphite out of the pencil first...

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 04:55:48 am
content: Quote from: peter.mitchell on January 06, 2013, 03:04:51 amIt's never too late for fun!Try putting a full dozen carton of eggs in the microwave and turning the oven on, full power, 30 minutes.Safety tip: leave the room immediately. In fact you may as well head down to the supermarket right away and buy a bootload of cleaning gear. You're going to need it.Do you want me to spoil it for you and tell you what happens?

author: david77
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 05:01:40 am
content: The microwave oven is an unresistible device. I remember a mate and I putting eggs in it after they showed what happens to them on TV. They should have exploded.Unfortunately ours wouldn't, we microwaved for minutes and they wouldn't pop.In our frustration we opened the door and started prodding the eggs with a large and pointy knife. The eggs went boooom now, spilling cooking hot egg yolk on our stupid faces and the kitchen wall behind us. We got a very well deserved bollocking that dayA bar of soap in the microwave is interesting - not exciting but looks pretty.

author: akcoder
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 05:08:40 am
content: I bought a 9v DC to 200v+ inverter when I was 14 or 15 from a surplus house advertised in the back of "All Electronics" mag. I would catch daddy long leg spiders (Huntsman spiders) and touch them in apposing ends and fry them. Got them to smoke even :-)Not so long ago, I was running a new 120 outlet. I turned off the mains when doing most of the work, but turned it back on near the end so I could see. With the lights now on, I saw I had about 3 ft (1 meter) of excess romex sticking out of the wall. So i grabbed my side cutters and cut through all three conductors in one whack. Taking a good chunk out of my side cutters, throwing sparks all over, scorched the wall, and thankfully tripping the breaker.When we bought out house, I had to fix some of the ghetto wiring the previous guy did. Lets just say that duct tape isn't mains rated :-)

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 05:22:22 am
content: When young did try a starter in the mains, just had the base left after the bang, plus a vanishing dog.Coin on the railway line and find it afterwards long and flat.Chlorine bomb..................... Poor frog.Going down to the river to play in the bush.Made a ball bearing motor and it worked, even when running red hot while connected to the arc welder leads. Stopped when it melted into slag.Making throwing stars with arc welder and scrap 6mm steel. Must still be in the tree, could not get the one out of the trunk.

author: cwalex
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 05:28:34 am
content: daddy longlegs and huntsman are not the same, at least in australia anyway. Huntsman are really nice spiders. They wander around your house and eat the other bugs.I really like spiders and they are unfairly killed and treated with fear. Huntsman spiders can be hard to catch, they are great at hiding in crevices. I always try to relocate spiders that are in inconvenient places around the house. They are lovely little guysmuch more afraid of you than you are of them. I usually just leave them in peace unless there are people in the house that are terrified of them!

author: akcoder
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 05:30:20 am
content: I also discovered 2 years ago the wrong way that Honda was kind enough to put a crowbar circuit in. I was putting the charger on the battery, and in my frustration and haste swapped and leads. I heard a bang and then crapped my pants :-) I tried the ignition and nothing came on. I thought for sure I had smoked the ECU. A few minutes later I discovered it was just a $7 100 amp fuse, thankfully!-dan

author: akcoder
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 05:47:36 am
content: Quote from: cwalex on January 06, 2013, 05:28:34 amI meant to say a harvestman spider, which us yanks call daddy long legs. I have no issues with spiders now (or even then), I'm trying to teach my kids (5 and 3) not to squish them, and teach them that spiders eat the "yucky" bugs.-dan

author: gxti
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 05:50:16 am
content: When I was roughly 12, for some inexplicable reason I tapped the exposed contacts of a 240V well pump relay with a hammer. Dimmed the lights and took a 1mm chunk out of the hammer's face.

author: cwalex
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 06:10:22 am
content: Quote from: akcoder on January 06, 2013, 05:47:36 amSorry for the off topicThe huntsman spiders are the ones that can get really big. I don't know if they are common in other countries. When I lived in a house in the middle of 4 acres of bushland we used to get them in the house all the time. They are just lost, they come in the house but they are supposed to live in the bush. They look scary due to the size but they are harmless. I used to have fun chasing them around the house to catch them, the other house occupants would just kill them if they saw themso I made it a priority to get them out of the houseMy most disappointing relocation was when I put one out the back yard and immediately a magpie swooped down and grabbed it in one swift motion. Oh well that is life and at least the magpie was eating it's usual diet instead of being fed bread scraps and such. My stepdad keeps a birdbath full of dry dogfood to feed the magpies. They bring their babies with them too. They get really tame and will take food from your hand. We had some kookaburras that would come in for a feed and would let you touch and stroke their feathers. Birds are another animal that I love to watch and sometimes interact with when they let me

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 06:41:00 am
content: 1) i tried to fix a fan's broken live wire by connecting them with bare hand, pzzzsst.2) same thing i disconnected a ceiling fan's condenser (fully charged capacitor) and bring it with hand having learnt from (1) that anything disconnected from mains should be safe, pzzzzsst.3) i stole a friends ringing bell desk clock and transform it into stepped down geared electric car.

author: akcoder
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 06:41:58 am
content: Quote from: cwalex on January 06, 2013, 06:10:22 amBirds, grr :-) Going way off topic, I spent all summer cleaning bird crap off my car doors, wondering why it was always in the same spot. Turns out, the magpies would swoop down, sit on the window sill and peck at their reflection in the side view mirrors. I decided to turn in my mirrors when I got home from then on out-dan

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 07:44:45 am
content: QuoteYoung'n's! I assume this has very similar results to putting some eggs on the (regular) stove to hard boil, and then going out shopping for a couple of hours?Relatively embarrassingly recently, I decided to chop the cord (for future use) off some appliance with a knife, after confirming that it was bad by plugging it in and trying it out. It would have been better if the cord that I had carefully unplugged had been the one on the bad device, and not some other random appliance in the same outlet. It ruined one of my favorite knives!

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 10:02:59 am
content: I was relatively safety conscious as a kid,but I did one seriously dumb thing after I started work!We had some old tube type "Radiogram" chassis left over from when we used to sell the made up units.The Boss decided to sell them off cheap,& I was given the job of testing them.I looked everywhere,trying to find the speaker connection,finally finding a "figure 8" lead coming out through a grommet in the chassis.I connected this up to a 12" speaker & turned on the radio.There was a sound like a rifle shot,& the mains fuse blew.It turns out that the "fig 8" was switched 240V to the record player unit!

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 10:02:59 am
content: Quote from: westfw on January 06, 2013, 07:44:45 amUm, no. You've heard of flash-boil steam explosions?Well an uncooked egg is mostly water. In a water-tight container that is pretty strong due to its shape. So in the microwave oven the eggs just sit there, getting hotter and hotter. They get to over the boiling point of water, with the pressure going up and up and still they don't explode. Then one of them does. This detonates all the others.Of course the contents are not pure water. The oven gets exploded, and the 'omlette' spray is pretty uniform on the surrounding area.My favorite microwave oven trick is the free-floating plasma 'flame'. It's a very interesting sight, a great tutorial in high power RF behavior, and mostly harmless to the oven. Mostly...There are several ways to achieve it, though all can be finicky. The easiest:Take a standard wooden matchstick. Light it. Let it carbonize about half the matchstick then blow it out. Now you have a bit of wood with an attached piece of delicate charcoal, full of micro-cracks.With a bit of wax, bluetack or whatever, carefully stick the wood base of the matchstick to a stable base, that can be placed in the microwave. Best if it's on the rotating plate, so it travels through different zones of the field standing wave. The match should be upright, charcoal end up.Close the oven, set to full power, turn on.If it works, you'll see a plasma flame appear at the match, then separate and drift around in the oven, following a complex and pretty random path influenced by multiple factors. Including the movement of the maximum RF standing wave field nodes and convection of the air heated by the plasma. If it's an old transformer and half-wave rectified HV type of oven the 'flame' buzzes loudly at 50Hz, because the RF field is pulse modulated at mains frequency. Effectively you're looking at a crude flame audio transducer.The 'flame' wants to convect upwards with the heated air, but its energy source is the microwave standing node, which is moving unrelated to the air. Also the flame itself is conductive and absorbing field energy, therefore altering the geometry of the standing wave. It's quite a chaotic system, so can be very variable. If the plasma flame gets detached from its RF node, it just goes out instantly. And can't restart.It's interesting to consider what happens at the initiation of the flame by the matchstick. It happens too fast to follow, and afterwards the matchstick is gone. I'm guessing the charcoal has small cracks in the moderately conductive carbon. The carbon length acts as an antenna, focusing RF energy across the cracks. So an air breakdown arc starts there. But the arc itself is a conductor, and can absorb energy from the field. It does - vaporizing the carbon and getting bigger. It rapidly destroys the matchstick, and grows to the maximum size supportable by the energy being input to the RF field by the magnetron. At this point it is no longer anchored to anything physical, so it is free to drift off. It then follows the most energy-rich path in the RF field.I said it's 'mostly harmless' to the oven, because the arc is just a load, no different to a glass of water. BUT... the floating arc can end up parked against the oven wall at some point. Where it will burn the paint, or maybe even burn through the metal. That's not desirable since then you'd have a major RF power leakage, which is dangerous to you.I've seen some people claim this process is 'ball lightning'. But it most definitely isn't related at all.However it's still fascinating.The matchstick method only works once per match. Another method I found would work repeatedly, involved a small ring of graphite (it was a shaft seal in a liquids pump) with a slot cut in it. Much like the loop antenna and airgap used in the very first demonstration of radio wave transmission, but much smaller. I set the ring in a ceramic holder, gap facing upwards, put in oven. A plasma flame would reliably form at the ring's gap then break away and float around freely. As soon as it extinguished another would start at the ring gap. I presume this behavior was due to the floating arc absorbing enough of the RF energy to bring the field strength low enough so no new arc could form at the ring's gap. Extinguish the floating arc, field strength goes up, new arc forms, cycle repeats.Unfortunately the little graphite ring eroded away and stopped working, and I only had one such bearing, salvaged from a pump I'd found.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 10:33:18 am
content: When i was young i mounted two terminal bolts into the side of a 2L coke bottle with a washer on each side and silicon (to make it airtight).Then i connected the terminals up to the output of a car ignition transformer.Then a cup of water and a teaspoon of calcium carbide went into the bottle and i capped it tight.After the coke bottle had swelled up and the sides were bulging quite a bit i hit the button on the ignition transformer circuit.Well..You know what a dry ice bomb sounds like, this was worse, much much worse. (or much better, depending on your point of view).It exploded with a blinding flash and a bang that could only be described as "the end of the world".Neighbors from all sides were running around trying to figure out what had happened. hehe.

author: steve30
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 10:51:47 am
content: Can't think of anything particularly bad.I did recently connect an overhead projector transformer's secondary winding to the mains. Not remotely spectacular. But a few years earlier, the OHP itself did fall out of the loft hatch , and the glass stage hit the corner of the step ladder causing shattered glass to go all over the place. Fortunately I caught it before it fell down the stairs.At college a few years ago, we stayed behind one day with the technician, and put some capacitors in coke bottles and blew them up by connecting them the wrong way round to a bench PSU. That was cool.

author: cwalex
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 11:06:58 am
content: Quote from: TerraHertz on January 06, 2013, 10:02:59 amlike this?

author: johnwa
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 11:09:59 am
content: Quote from: Pentium100 on January 06, 2013, 03:21:22 amNow there is a clever idea! I just tried that, it works! (in series). I wonder if the starter will survive continuous operation?Quote from: david77 on January 06, 2013, 05:01:40 amI agree, a while ago I picked one up at the tip for the express purpose of 'cooking' non-food things. An interesting (although not particularly spectacular) thing to try is some black iron oxide, as used for colouring tile grout. It will go up to yellow heat, and appears to be reduced to metallic iron.

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 11:21:21 am
content: Back when fireworks were legal here, and I started making my own, I was fascinated by double bangers.My new design was more a mortar - I made 6 launchers, bolted to my front wheel forks - had 6 switches on the handle-bars,and powered by the light generator. I'd roam the streets launching smoke / stink / flash / etc "grenades" at anyone whodared be in front of me :-) I was soooo cool.One day there was a church fair next to a friends house. It was a very large property and the shared fence was quite high.I made up the biggest mortar I'd ever attempted. He had grapes, so I gathered hundreds of caterpillars and loaded them intothe det chamber - remote trigger naturally.It was an awesome success !! They exploded way above all the food and trading stalls - shredded caterpillars rained all over.What I didn't count on was the sheer panic / screaming / stampede that followed - there was no exit plan at this age.I bolted out of there and laid low for a week, didn't even dare to watch TV or listen to the news. Man, I was sh***ing myself !!

author: AlfBaz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 12:02:06 pm
content: When I was really young (about 7yo) my parents had one of those old bed heads that had like a book shelf in it with a light bulb either end. One of the lights bulbs was missing and I could see the 2 spring loaded prongs and decided to push them with my finger... I was doing this under the lighting provided by the light bulb on the other side... OUCH.Later that day I told my Mum about it and that apart from the body buzzing my finger felt hot and that I was going to try it again but wet my finger so that it wouldn't burn. Thank god for Parents!!A little older now, 11 or 12, heading home with a couple of friends from the bush up the road. One of my mates had found a length of 3/4" water pipe which we had been playing with. Just up the road from our houses a bright idea entered my head. I borrowed the pipe from my friend and suggested we may see some sparks if we through it up at the power lines."What a great idea!!" they all said.I swung the the pipe upward holding it from one end. It turned end over end, and in what seemed like slow motion it followed a beautiful parabolic arc, up and over the power lines landing perfectly perpendicular to two of the conductors.The massive arcs/sparks it produced looked exactly like the pattern iron filings make when sprinkled on paper over a bar magnet, and the sound....It stopped when one of the lines melted through. As this was close to one of the power poles the long length of power line fell to the road, landing in the gutter just in front of me.We all stood there frozen, completely in shock, staring at each other, a shade of white I will never forget."Psst, Psst", I heard. I turned around and a man from the house in front of where it happened said "Quick quick, piss off home". No arguments or words exchanged, we ran home.Shortly after the electrical truck arrived and spliced the cable, the join is still there today! I remember when they remade the air brake switches nearly across from my parents, there was a pretty big arc when they made contact. The guy said "Jesus, must be a lot of stoves on". Well it was around tea time.The police went knocking door to door. When they got to my parents place, they were out, the officer said does xxx live hear. I fessed up immediately, telling him exactly what happened. He said that I may be asked to visit the local police station for a stern talking to by his boss, but I never heard from them again.He must of seen the complete look of fear in me and just left it at that.Who would of thought I would follow up in an electrical career

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 01:15:04 pm
content: Quote from: peter.mitchell on January 06, 2013, 03:04:51 amExperience is learning from one's mistakes. Wisdom is learning from other peoples'.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 01:49:19 pm
content: Quote from: cwalex on January 06, 2013, 11:06:58 amHa ha ha... no, without the histrionics, wussy 'contain it in a glass', and dumb surprise that a kilowatt plasma flame might crack a glass. Not like that at all!It's much more fun to pick up an old street toss microwave oven, fix whatever simple thing is wrong with it, then use it without a care for damaging it. Dust to dust, broken to broken...Also, he didn't have to burn the match in the oven. It barely started, because he didn't get enough length of charcoal match stick to work well as an antenna.

author: JuiceKing
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 03:33:05 pm
content: Shorting car batteries connected in series was incredibly foolhardy.Playing with spark gaps generated by a photocopier transformer connected to mains was pretty dumb.Confining mixtures of powderized potassium permanganate and glycerine to small glass bottles is another.I could go on.We lived a charmed existence.

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 04:53:45 pm
content: Quote from: Psi on January 06, 2013, 10:33:18 amAcetylene bomb?I remember one particular 4th of July on the lake near my Uncle's house, people were filling trash bags with acetylene and lighting them.I took a coke bottle before and filled it with salt water about 3/4 of the way and stuck carbon electrodes in an glued them air tight and let it run off a battery charger for about 10 minutes. I poked another hole and lit it. It sounded like a gun firing and fortunately the bottle didn't explode in my face.

author: Kremmen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 06:39:44 pm
content: When i was a teenager the world was a different place. For example potassium chlorate was freely available in the form of a popular brand of weed killer. Our secret basement chemistry lab was in full swing producing rockets and bombs using sugar and powdered aluminium as fuel and p. chlorate as the oxidizer. The only drawback to this mix was the intense persisting white smoke produced by the combustion. That provided too easy beacons for the local police to locate our launch sites. Nevertheless we never got caught. The dumb part wasn't that we did it because even then we knew what we were messing with. We always used electric ignition using pieces or resistor wire from a stove plate, long cables and motorcycle batteries. The dumb part happened when we prepared to detonate our magnum opus, a bomb with some 2.5 kilos of the mix. This was in a reinforced container to ensure pressure development, but for the same reason we didn't want to blow it under free sky due to risk of shrapnel. Luckily the suburbs of Helsinki were and are riddled with old WW 1 era fortifications with gun emplacements and bunkers. All the doors have been blown away to discourage squatters so there was free entry into the bunkers. We stuffed the bomb into a convenient ventilation shaft in the wall of one, clambered on the roof and started ignition sequence. It didn't cross anyone's mind to think exactly where said ventilations shaft would emerge. When the bomb went off it became quite evident though, as not a meter behing our asses compacted debris from the shaft shot into low orbit, accompanied with a huge boom and a cloud of white smoke the density of foam rubber. Again we ran rather fast.Later we did a few tests with a mortar system for a rocket first stage, using a tram axle as barrel and shotgun charges as drivers. We stopped that quickly after the test firings because the solid steel test "vehicles" achieved peak altitudes of roughly a kilometer or more, comparable to a standard 81mm light mortar. You could just see the day-glo orange projectile on and off in zenith as it tumbled in bright sunlight. None of the small number of test projectiles were ever recovered even when we dug into the re-entry craters more than a meter and a half. Decided that it wasn't worth it since causing real damage to life or property was just a matter of time. But it sure was fun. Nowadays of course they would lock you up and throw away the key for something like that.

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 09:36:31 pm
content: I've always wanted to play with this stuff.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 11:27:40 pm
content: Quote from: Stonent on January 06, 2013, 04:53:45 pmyeah, acetylene bomb.I tried it again a few times a year later, well away from houses/people. I set it up on a empty beach but i could never get it to explode like that again. I think it was just a pure fluke that the gases was at perfect explosive levels and under extreme pressure when i hit the button.

author: MetraCollector
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2013, 11:47:09 pm
content: I started with electronics too lateI built this when I was 17:

author: smashedProton
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2013, 06:09:20 am
content: I'm still a kid...But a year ago, I made a coilgun from a large 300 v DC bus capacitor.I had a really fun time shooting chunks of iron out of my window and onto the steet!Also, I made a high voltage flyback driver from junkbox parts. I was even able to reuse the project in my psuedo-science classby claiming that i made the model just for the class, and that it is a model of the chemical and electrical synapses of neurons!

author: peter.mitchell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2013, 06:40:52 am
content: All the talk of microwaving stuff seemed so interesting, so this morning i went the cheap shop and bought a $25 microwave, the first and last thing i microwaved was a full beer bottle.

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 07, 2013, 06:44:07 am
content: Quote from: peter.mitchell... and? You just can't leave it at that ...

author: peter.mitchell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2013, 07:57:22 am
content: well, there wasn't much left, it took about 14min~ to blow, but when it did the microwaves u shaped piece of sheet metal cover was a rounded u, in the opposite direction, the door was no where to be found and for some reason it tripped the breaker in the power board i had it plugged into.

author: Alana
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2013, 11:46:32 am
content: My earliest childhood adventure with electricity was to go into bundle of wires my folks used as extension cords and get electricuted. I was no older than 4.This tought me a lesson that lasted until i was about 10.Then i started playing around - making electrocal detonators for fireworks out of xmas light blubs, blowing up electrolitics or charging them up to 200-300 volts with inverter and then discharging on a metal school bench or some poor child hand. Once i even dared to discharge 300V 800uF cap during class test. And there was some chemistry experiments mostly involving potasium nitrade and shugar but not only. There is a cool trick to show to your friends involving starting a fire with a drop of water but without using metalic sodium or potassium

author: tesla500
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2013, 07:00:16 pm
content: My favorite way of scrapping microwaves: Sealed Kahlua bottle full of water. Probably similar to peter.mitchell's beer bottle. High speed video included! Don't try this at home kids!I want to try this again but with popcorn in the bottle with the water.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2013, 07:13:10 pm
content: Normally I just take them apart, keeping the magnetron and the capacitor and diode if still good. Rest goes as scrap meta, and is about $15 at the scrapyard. If I cut the copper out I will get $25. Worth it especially if I accumulate more scrap metal in the cavity before going, then I have a convenient carry bucket that does not need to come back.

author: Sionyn
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2013, 07:42:48 pm
content: the stories in this thread are awesomei came across this story this morning this must be dumbest generation ever Justin Bieber fans tricked to cut them selves because he smoked some weedhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2258778/Cut-Bieber-Miley-Cyrus-weighs-sick-Twitter-trend.html

author: Nirios
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2013, 08:18:12 pm
content: When I was very young, around 8-9, I found a trolling motor in a trash pile on the side of the road. It had nice big alligator clips on it so I thought I would try to run it by clamping it to the house wiring in the junction box on the side of my house. I remember the prop turned a few times, hummed really loud, and then I got scared when smoke and flame came out of the motor. Thinking back, I pulled the wires out of the junction box and removed the wire nuts all without turning the power off. Amazingly, the fire did not cause the breakers to trip, which at that time I knew nothing about.Around the same age, a friend and I had a FM/AM/Weather radio with a manual tuner and external antenna. For whatever reason we figured that if the extended antenna would receive a station then a really, really long one would do even better. We set the radio on the floor and proceeded to connect every metal object we could find to the antenna. We used aluminum foil to wrap the edges were to objects connected. I remember the antenna length ended up wrapping around the entire room. When we turned the radio on and tuned it to the lowest frequency (this radio allowed below 87.8 by just keep turning the knob past the "stop") strange sounds were heard and then a few seconds later the power in the house went out. I remember it was the whole house cause we interrupted my dad watching a game on the TV. I am still not sure why that "experiment" tripped the 150A main breaker.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2013, 05:12:00 am
content: Quote from: tesla500 on January 08, 2013, 07:00:16 pmThat's really excellent! The spray of sparks in the slo-mo were a very nice touch, bonus points for numerous fragments embedded in surroundings, and wrecking your nice long bar G-clamps in the name of LOLs was really going the extra mile.Five stars!You know, if you used several bottles packed in there at once, you could probably take your garage door out too.

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2013, 07:35:11 am
content: QuoteWell, yes. And this is about the same thing that happens on the regular stove. Judging by the pieces of egg that were on the ceiling...(No, I'm not going to try it again to see if the same thing happens.)(BTW, our microwave broke this NYE, about 2 hours before our very food-centric NYE party started. The magnetron started arcing over, and the whole thing sounded like a Jacob's Ladder. Very impressive! I didn't DO anything to it; I swear. But I had fun showing it off to other engineering-minded folk throughout the party...) (Thanks be that it's possible to go out 2 hours before a NYE party and buy a new microwave. Twice (when the first doesn't fit.))

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2013, 12:13:39 pm
content: If I were to do that I would use a PET bottle and wire the top on with a lot of wire. they have a much higher bursting pressure, possible it will get to 130C before the blast.

author: Ferroto
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2013, 01:04:39 pm
content: I once shorted a lithium laptop battery. Didn't explode like I hoped it just burned white hot.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2013, 12:06:35 am
content: Not sure if it's worth resurrecting this thread for, but since microwave ovens featured so highly, here's something related:Microwave Warfare - Barrie TrowerCue everyone with Normalcy Bias yelling 'oh it can't be so!' plus the inevitable tin foil hat jokes.Definitely time to start a thread here on Smart Meters. I really must find re-find that video where someone is walking an RF field strength meter around near a Smart Meter, with the RF envelope output as audio. Since we're speaking of microwave pulse rates, and how specific pulse rates have specific physiological and psychological effects.Then I'd like to hear someone explain why a wireless mesh-network node such as a smart meter, would be continually linear-sweeping its transmit pulse rate across a wide range, from under one pulse a second to several hundred pulses a second. As it clearly is in that video.And it would be very interesting to see if there's a way the operators of a future ubiquitous Smart Meter mesh network, could manage to control and synchronize the transmit pulse rate of all the nodes in the network.Because, gee, if you could do that, and by some pretext every home had been forced to install Smart Meters, you could send an entire city (or country) literally insane quite quickly. Or just kill them all.

author: AlfBaz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2013, 06:50:10 am
content: Can we get this as an emoticon