Tag: explosion

How not to test your potato gun

The funny thing about blogging is that occasionally the comments are as good as the articles. Here’s a comment from a reader named Scott who’s friend Shaun (who by Scott’s own proclamation shall remain nameless) demonstrates that the dangers of making a device like a potato gun go far beyond the obvious.

Scott writes:

(disclaimer) Do not try this at home, this test was performed by a self perclaimed perfessional tater gun tester!!!!!

My buddy Shaun who shall remain nameless for the entirety of this article, being of what he calls, sound mind and body he! he! he!, decided to make him one of those there tator guns, over the objections of his wife, who stated, you’re gonna put your eye out with that thing, to which he declared “what idiot could get hurt with a tator gun.” So from that point hopefully you all know where I am headed here, if not don’t try makin’ a tater gun without reading the rest of this story!!!

So the nameless fellow, refer to beginning of story, put all of his parts and pieces together, and perclaimed himself a perfessional tater gun maker, then atter that, nameless buddy decided to christen said tater gun, and perclaim hisself the new king of tater gun testers, by sticking his face over the soon to be designated tater launch area, and light off the former grill igniter while the PVC glue aroma was still quite fresh.

So at the unexpected report of da tater gun, all or the majority of his former eyebrows, and eyelashes perclaim his gun a success as they rushed by him!!! So the moron of this story, oops I meant the moral is, don’t be a testin’, or a lookin’ into that thar tater gun until after the put togetter stuffs has thuroly dissipated!!!

One for the record books, so please pass this around to all of your friends, so’s we can give my nameless buddy Shaun all the credit he justly deserves =), so in the words of good ol Bill Engvall, “Heres your sign Shaun ol buddy”

Thanks for sharing, er, sharin’ Scott. I’m more than happy to do my part to spread the word.

potato gun, make, funny, fun, accident, hazard, explosion

World’s Biggest Jacob’s Ladder

ArcAfter writing about this (and a couple other) insane high-voltage videos last week I’ve been wondering how this particular flaming arc of electricity came to be. Alan said it looked like a Jacob’s Ladder and, according to what I found today, he’s right! After some creative googleing I found this description on the Stoneridge Engineering website:

This video clip was captured by the maintenance foreman at the 500 kV Eldorado Substation near Boulder City, Nevada. It shows a three-phase motorized air disconnect switcher attempting to open high voltage being supplied to a large three phase shunt line reactor.
…
The arc stretches upward, driven by rising hot gases and writhing from small air currents, until it easily exceeds 100 feet in length. Switching arcs usually terminate long before reaching this size since they normally flash over to an adjacent phase or to ground.
…
As impressive as this huge arc may be, the air break switch was really NOT disconnecting a real load. This arc was “only” carrying the relatively low (about 100 amps) magnetizing current associated with the line reactor. The 94 mile long transmission line associated with the above circuit normally carries over 1,000 megawatts (MW) of power between Boulder City, Nevada (from the generators at Hoover Dam) to the Lugo substation near Los Angeles, California. A break under load conditions (~2,000 amps) would have created a MUCH hotter and extremely destructive arc.

Yikes! That’s all I can say.

SubstationCheck out the High Voltage Sparks and Arcs page for more info on this and some other amazing high voltage fun, including this video of a substation going poof! Despite its vintage design, this page has some cool footage.


electricity, electronic, lightning, tesla, tesla coil, electric, substation, explosion, explode, fire

Your Friday Evening Explosion

Battery ExplodingDon’t try this at home!

These guys took a lithium ion battery (you know, like we all have in our cell phones) and forced it so far into over-charge that it exploded!

Obviously any properly functioning charger on an undamaged battery would not cause this type of reaction. In fact, all lithium batteries have a charge limiter (either on the charger or battery) to protect the battery. For this demonstration the charge limiting was bypassed. Even with all the precautions they took it seems like it was a bigger explosion than expected.

This was set up with a radio controlled model airplane battery. Check out the video and be thankful for those charge limiter.

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