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richard · Guest

John Larkin wrote:
[quote]On 28 Jul 2008 22:47:18 GMT, Jim Yanik <jyanik@abuse.gov> wrote:

Jim Thompson <To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@My-Web-Site.com> wrote in
news:9ugs841e0afa1138mqpdmodd2lbiqkvg41@4ax.com:

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:36:29 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:01:10 -0700 (PDT), "Ken S. Tucker"
dynamics@vianet.on.ca> wrote:

In Public School I decided to try to build a carbon
carbon arc lamp using 2 pencils, and it worked.
1st I screwed in to the pencils the leads, and
that worked but the wood started to smoulder.
Later I removed the graphite and wire wrapped
around the naked leads, that worked too.
My Old Boy got a little testy when I blew a few
fuses per day (in the 60>s they were 25 cents a
piece), so he advised a series resistance, like
a heater or light bulb. BINGO!

Fortunately no permanent retinal damage.
Ken

Lots of playing with high voltages... TV power transformers, neon sign
transformers, big oil caps, flashtubes.

A buddy and I were prowling an empty house and found a shopping bag
full of shotgun shells. We spent the summer peeling them open, and
using the powder for insane things.

I once made a Kerr cell using nitrobenzene, and got the stuff all over
me. I later read a Nero Wolfe mystery where a small dish of the stuff
was placed to spill on someone and killed them.

Huge lead exposure, of course.

John

I made bombs with my chemistry set, "bang" and smoke...

Smoked out (emptied) a restaurant across the alley from my junior high
school ;-)

...Jim Thompson

I decided to make a Jacob>s ladder,using a 12V auto ignition coil...

Sunday morning at the breakfast table,have two copper wires screwed onto a
board,arranged as the 'ladder',connected to the coil secondary,have an
extension cord running past my mom who>s reading the Sunday paper,NO idea
of what I>m doing....
connected 120VAC across the coil primary(the 12v primary...),BIG snap and
flash,giant spark,room goes dark.

Mom leapt about two feet in the air,screaming at me,scared nearly to death.
Blew a fuse in the mains panel,cutting off power to half the kitchen.
It was awhile before I learned why it didn>t work as planned.

I got a car ignition coil from a junkyard, one of the old oil-filled
metal can types. I charged a few uF of oil cap to about 600 volts and
dumped it into the coil with a surplus thyratron. The spark crawled up
out of the insulator and hit the low-voltage terminals. Next step was
to make a tube out of paper and electrical tape, extend the hv wire
up, and fill the tube with motor oil. I eventually got 4" sparks.

I use to make huge banks of motley electrolytic caps, charge them up,
and short. Bang. A 4-turn coil of #12 wire would magnetize anything to
saturation.

Surplus runway landing-light xenon flashtubes used to be cheap. So
were big oil caps. The tubes fire themselves at 7 or 8 KV, no trigger
needed.

I used to play with propane a lot too, both as a cryogenic cooler and
as an explosive. Nitrogen tri-iodide was fun too.

I knew a guy who was into nitroglycerine. He made small batches and
blew them up in empty lots. The batches got bigger. One day he made a
quart, and then realized what he did, panicked, and called the fire
department.

At a place of higher education I attended, there was a chemist with a glass eye - a victim of KClO3 and red phosphorus mixed in[/quote]
a plastic spoon.
He had grown cautious and limited himself to stoneware jars of ammonium perchlorate and aluminium powder.

These had a 1 minute fuse and would be ignited at 3am, causing lights to go on around the quadrangle.
It was the sixties and not something to get paranoid about.

Dirk Bruere at NeoPax · Guest

Ken S. Tucker wrote:
[quote]In Public School I decided to try to build a carbon
carbon arc lamp using 2 pencils, and it worked.
1st I screwed in to the pencils the leads, and
that worked but the wood started to smoulder.
Later I removed the graphite and wire wrapped
around the naked leads, that worked too.
My Old Boy got a little testy when I blew a few
fuses per day (in the 60>s they were 25 cents a
piece), so he advised a series resistance, like
a heater or light bulb. BINGO!

Fortunately no permanent retinal damage.
Ken
[/quote]
Just explosives, bombs and rockets, although I did once try to make a
binary poison gas device. Fortunately it didn>t work. Also invented the
electric motor when I was 10, and thought that if I connected output to
input I could generate excess energy.

--
Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff

Jim Thompson · Guest

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:04:49 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

[snip]
[quote]
I knew a guy who was into nitroglycerine. He made small batches and
blew them up in empty lots. The batches got bigger. One day he made a
quart, and then realized what he did, panicked, and called the fire
department.

John

[/quote]
That happened in the Baker House dormitory at MIT while I was a
student. Two jerks made a quart, then panicked. Panicked most of
Cambridge also... you should have seen the fire department turn-out
;-)

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC>s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

Liberals are so cute. Stupid as bricks, but cute.

John Larkin · Guest

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:07:59 -0700, Jim Thompson
<To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

[quote]
On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:31:46 +0100, "TT_Man" <Someone@ntlworld.com
wrote:

I made bombs with my chemistry set, "bang" and smoke...

Smoked out (emptied) a restaurant across the alley from my junior high
school ;-)

I made bombs too- steel tubes + 2 chemicals. I was 16 at the time.
Eventually I did myself serious injury and spent 3 weeks in hospital and 6
months recovering. God said it was my lucky day so he let me live.

I once was heating a test tube containing a concoction of sulfur,
powered magnesium, and (IIRC) potassium nitrate over a Bunsen
burner... never mind the comments... I was like 10 years old.

It began to glow oddly. I jumped back and turned to run up the
basement stairs... ka-boom... my back was filled with glass fragments.

It always amazes me that males make it to 20 years old ;-)
[/quote]
And we haven>t even got to motorcycles.

John

Guest

On Jul 28, 2:01 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" <dynam...@vianet.on.ca> wrote:
[quote]In Public School I decided to try to build a carbon
carbon arc lamp using 2 pencils, and it worked.
1st I screwed in to the pencils the leads, and
that worked but the wood started to smoulder.
Later I removed the graphite and wire wrapped
around the naked leads, that worked too.
My Old Boy got a little testy when I blew a few
fuses per day (in the 60>s they were 25 cents a
piece), so he advised a series resistance, like
a heater or light bulb. BINGO!

Fortunately no permanent retinal damage.
Ken
[/quote]

Not so much as a brat, but ~ 10 years ago I tried to build an
electrostatic precipitator to electrically grab smoke from the air.
(I was hoping to have it grab diesel exhaust.) I built resembling a
Leyden jar, had a cigarette inside generate the smoke, and used a
250,000-volt stun gun I bought from eBay to generate the potential
difference.

Didn>t work, so I tried adjusting the electrodes... BAM! I jumped.
(Dad was laughing.) I forgot that at those high voltages, my jar
still held a charge...

Michael

ZACK. · Guest

my brother tried to get the lead out of
a 22 bullit with a hammer, and it fired.

i plugged a tv speaker in to a radiograms
240v line for the turntable moter.
the 4 pin plug matched the 240 line.
i held the speaker in my hands, my freind
turned on the radio, no sound came out
of the speaker but sparks did, and a lot
of sound came out of me.

"Ken S. Tucker" <dynamics@vianet.on.ca> wrote in message
news:7acec3a2-f820-4cc7-a6e6-d36ec2d21303@b2g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
[quote]In Public School I decided to try to build a carbon
carbon arc lamp using 2 pencils, and it worked.
1st I screwed in to the pencils the leads, and
that worked but the wood started to smoulder.
Later I removed the graphite and wire wrapped
around the naked leads, that worked too.
My Old Boy got a little testy when I blew a few
fuses per day (in the 60>s they were 25 cents a
piece), so he advised a series resistance, like
a heater or light bulb. BINGO!

Fortunately no permanent retinal damage.
Ken[/quote]

Eeyore · Guest

"Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

[quote]In Public School I decided to try to build a carbon
carbon arc lamp using 2 pencils, and it worked.
[/quote]
2 pencils ? You should have seen what we had !

Never mind the 3kV 8uF oil filled cap pulse discharged PSU designed for
a dye laser.

I forgot bleed Rs the first time round ! We knew kiddies used to visit
that lab so I had to discharge it with a large screwdriver. The large
screwdriver took a 'bite' and a member of staff ran upstairs thinking
we>d had an explosion. My ears were ringing still 15 mins later.

We later estimated a 1 MW pulse.

Graham

AndyS · Guest

Andy writes:

At my first job out of college, I ran a piece of small plastic
tubing from
my bench to another bench, out of sight. The far end of the tube was
hidden in a piece of equipment that a friend of mine was putting
together.

When he turned it on for the first time, I blew cigarette smoke thru
the plastic tube...

Such a commotion !!!!

My bad !!!

Andy in Eureka, Texas

Paul E. Schoen · Guest

"Ken S. Tucker" <dynamics@vianet.on.ca> wrote in message
news:7acec3a2-f820-4cc7-a6e6-d36ec2d21303@b2g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
[quote]In Public School I decided to try to build a carbon
carbon arc lamp using 2 pencils, and it worked.
1st I screwed in to the pencils the leads, and
that worked but the wood started to smoulder.
Later I removed the graphite and wire wrapped
around the naked leads, that worked too.
My Old Boy got a little testy when I blew a few
fuses per day (in the 60>s they were 25 cents a
piece), so he advised a series resistance, like
a heater or light bulb. BINGO!

Fortunately no permanent retinal damage.
Ken
[/quote]
When I was a rug rat, I stuck the blades of a pair of scissors in an
electric socket and burned a chunk off the tip and popped a fuse. I vaguely
remember it - I was probably 3 or 4.

Around the same time, my father and GF were replacing a gas stove, and had
disconnected the gas line at the floor. I dropped a penny into the pipe.
When they installed the new stove, the pilot lights lit OK, but when they
turned on the burners, the flame at first burned high, and then died. Hey,
I was just trying to pay the gas company!

My cousin, who was a teen at the time, was visiting. We had a kitchen chair
with a torn plastic seat cover, and I hid a pin in the cushion, point up. I
anxiously waited until he sat down. Wow! I never heard so many cuss words!

I always played with a magnifying glass in the sun, burning holes in
leaves, incinerating ants, and popping caps. When I tried to burn a hole in
a leaf at school, it set a whole pile on fire, but luckily I was able to
stomp it out before I got into big trouble.

Other kids brought lunches in their lunch boxes. I packed mine with pieces
from my chemistry set, and I can remember making a piece of chalk bubble
with a mild acid, and chasing girls with it.

I always thought a 1.5 volt doorbell battery could not give you a shock. I
hooked one up to a big electromagnet, and then disconnected the wire while
holding both ends. What a shock!

In high school, there were some old TV sets in a storage room, and I was
given the job to remove any parts I wanted and then smash the picture tubes
so they could be more safely disposed of. I put some of them in a box at
the bottom of a stairwell, went up the stairs, and heaved a cinderblock
down to smash them. Maybe a second after I did, the vice-principal opened
the door!

I found a box of old fluorescent bulbs and some round steel electrical box
covers. My friend and I tossed the bulbs into a stream, and as they floated
by, we threw the covers at the tubes. If they hit just right, they made an
impressive splash. I>m a lot more of an environmentalist now!

Paul

Barry Lennox · Guest

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:01:10 -0700 (PDT), "Ken S. Tucker"
<dynamics@vianet.on.ca> wrote:

[quote]In Public School I decided to try to build a carbon
carbon arc lamp using 2 pencils, and it worked.
1st I screwed in to the pencils the leads, and
[/quote]
Gunpowder in ever-increasing quantities until we got burnt, badly.
It was easy, the old man had bags of saltpetre for curing ham or
bacon, sulphur was for the taking at the local fertiliser depot, and
charcoal was from a little DIY bonfire down on the river bank, away
from prying adult eyes.

Electro caps across the mains (230vac)

Placing .22 rounds in the vyce and whacking them with a large hammer.

Trying to make chloroform per "The Golden Book of Chemistry" Probably
one of the reasons why it got pulled from most school libraries !

Making Nitrogen Triiodide in larger and larger amounts until we scared
the bejesus out of ourselves one day.

Geo · Guest

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:01:10 -0700 (PDT), "Ken S. Tucker"
<dynamics@vianet.on.ca> wrote:

[quote]In Public School I decided to try to build a carbon
carbon arc lamp using 2 pencils,
[/quote]
I boiled the zinc-carbon cells on the gas stove - after a bit the carbon rods
got ejected by the pressure. Made fairly decent arc rods.
Also melted scrap lead (soldiers) in same saucepan and poured into still-damp
plaster mould for of a penny. Spat all over the back of my hand.
Worst one was (under parental supervision this time) wiring transformer to mains
expecting to get a low voltage supply to power something - it was a 2:1
intervalve tranny and produced nice smoke...

Geo

Tim Williams · Guest

"AndyS" <andysharpe@juno.com> wrote in message
news:42c30ccf-8747-4359-b80a-4f68b83fd692@p31g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
[quote]When he turned it on for the first time, I blew cigarette smoke thru
the plastic tube...

Such a commotion !!!!
[/quote]
The other way to do that is to stick a resistor in the power cord receptacle
(IEC or cheater cord, etc.).

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

FatBytestard · Guest

On Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:16:41 +1000, "ZACK." <youwillfindme@home.com.au>
wrote:

[quote]my brother tried to get the lead out of
a 22 bullit with a hammer, and it fired.
[/quote]
Why are you a top posting retard? Oh yeah... the bullet hit you in the
head.

We used to fire boxes of .22s with a flat rock and a hammer.

I modified my .22 pellet pistol to accept a .22 short cartridge.

Getting it to fire was the interesting part.

Mike Harrison · Guest

On Tue, 29 Jul 2008 07:46:26 -0500, "Tim Williams" <tmoranwms@charter.net> wrote:

[quote]"AndyS" <andysharpe@juno.com> wrote in message
news:42c30ccf-8747-4359-b80a-4f68b83fd692@p31g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
When he turned it on for the first time, I blew cigarette smoke thru
the plastic tube...

Such a commotion !!!!

The other way to do that is to stick a resistor in the power cord receptacle
(IEC or cheater cord, etc.).

Tim
[/quote]
A favorite where I used to work was a 10uf 10v electrolytic inside the mains plug ( UK plugs have
plenty of room inside!) .

Probably the best one though was when I put a 1N4007 diode inside the body of the mains fuse of a
colleague>s Safeblock - took him ages to figure that one out..!

Jim Yanik · Guest

"Tim Williams" <tmoranwms@charter.net> wrote in
news:xkEjk.883$3l5.714@newsfe06.iad:

[quote]"AndyS" <andysharpe@juno.com> wrote in message
news:42c30ccf-8747-4359-b80a-4f68b83fd692@p31g2000prf.googlegroups.com.
..
When he turned it on for the first time, I blew cigarette smoke thru
the plastic tube...

Such a commotion !!!!

The other way to do that is to stick a resistor in the power cord
receptacle (IEC or cheater cord, etc.).

Tim

[/quote]
that>s like twisting a piece of bubble wrap when a tech turns on a repair.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net


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