Hey it's me Destin, welcome back to Smarter Every Day.
There's only few times in your
life when you look at something and
you're like: 'You know, this can't be a thing,'
But it is a thing!
This video is just like that. We're going
to look at an invention today by Nikola
Tesla, but the thing is, it looks just
like a video game, but I assure you this
video is real. Before we check that out I
want to go look at a couple of
contributions he made to society as
soon as he emigrated to the U.S. in the
1880s. If you've ever done a
patent search on Nikola Tesla you'll be
amazed. It's all there! Pumps, guidance,
power distribution, fluid propulsion,
wireless energy, and a super important
one: motors. Tesla created a multi-phase
AC generator system that first proved it
could work at the Ames Hydroelectric
Power Plant in Colorado. This led to Tesla
teaming up with George Westinghouse and
creating the first large-scale AC power
plant at Niagara Falls, which was a huge
deal. If you haven't seen, it this really
cool statue of Tesla overlooks the
Canadian side of Niagara Falls. My
favorite part of the statue tells how
it came up with the idea of AC power.
He said he was walking in a park in
Budapest with a friend when suddenly the
idea of rotating magnetic fields
came to him like lightning so, he drew it in the dust.
Speaking of lightning, Tesla carried out
incredible experiments with high voltage
arcs in Colorado Springs. One such
experiment involved making this circuit.
There's a power supply which charges a
capacitor and when the capacitor fills
up in arcs across a spark gap, which
dumps that energy into a primary coil.
A secondary coil is tuned to the same
frequency for resonance, and then boosts
that voltage, and there you have it. Lightning.
There's a company called One Tesla
that makes do-it-yourself
Tesla coils that you can buy and assemble
all by yourself as long as you know how to solder.
My buddy Philip works at a
nuclear plant, so since we're dealing
with high-voltage, I got him to come over
and help me out. These things are super
cool and a great place to start if you
want to build your own coil. Instead of
using a spark gap like Tesla did, this
thing uses a really fancy inhibitor
circuit that lets you do really cool
stuff. You can load MIDI files onto an
onboard SD card and it will play
whatever song you want.
I wanted to hear it play O Fortuna
(buzzing in the tune of 'O Fortuna') Whoa!
(astonished noise)
Obviously, the next step was to try to impress the kids.
(buzzing to the tune of 'Super Mario Bros. - Main Theme')
(laughter)
(tune continues)
That is so cool
(tune continues)
(laughter)
after this we started trying to
methodically probe the limits of the
system to see what it was really capable of,
but I got a little too confident, and in my
excitement I started to do things with
the manual tells you not to do.
Looking back at it this is kind of funny,
because you can see the exact second
when i go from pure geek joy, to instant regret.
(rapid, high pitched buzzing)
Are you seein' this?
Oh it broke!
I broke it and I feel bad about that,
because I knew what I was doing, I over
drove it I probably broke the rectifier
or the igbt and I'm sad. It's a DIY
coil, though. We can fix it quickly, but
instead of working on it why don't we go
visit a guy in my hometown, who has a
website dedicated to Tesla coils. I
found him today, have never met the dude,
about to go be best friends with this
guy. he's got a little bit larger coil.
Let's go get Smarter Every Day.
This is Cameron Prince. He runs the number one
Tesla resource website on the
Internet called teslauniverse.com. He
provides tesla coil performances, and he
also happens to live directly across the
street from my aunt and uncle.
This is a little bit bigger than mine.
"How big is this thing?" Prince: "Oh it stands about nine foot-tall." Destin: "Nine foot-tall? "Did you build it?"
Prince: "I did. It's as big as I could make
it and fit in the garage."
"Really." "Yeah." "So that was the design requirement?"
"Yeah that was the design limitation there."
Destin: "Is that a capacitor bank down there?"
Prince: "Yeah, that's a big capacitor bank."
"Dude! That's not a joke!"
Prince: "Those came out of an MRI machine."
"Really. Is that the most expensive part of the
whole device?" Uhm probably." "And do the cats walk
around when you're doing it?"
Destin: "That would- It would bake a cat, man!"
Destin, narrating: Cameron is the real deal. When I was a
kid I collected baseball cards and rode
my bike. Not Cameron. His life changed
forever the first time he saw a picture
of Nikola Tesla." Cameron: "when I saw those pictures
of him in colorado springs, in his
experiments, sittin' in front of his coil,
that lightning going around him
and then I was hooked. You know most people were...
when they were kids, were throwing baseballs
and stuff. I had a box of light bulbs and wires and
batteries" Destin: "That's awesome. I like
it when people are excited about things.
This makes it so much more fun."
okay here we go
(indistinct speech, snapping switches)
(loud buzzing, rising in intensity)
Destin: "Holy Cow!"
(buzzing continues)
'Ok, I got it! I got it!"
(buzzing falls off, Destin laughs) "That is ridiculous!
(still laughing) Alright. Alright. That's unnerving!
Time out. There are some experiences you
cannot convey via internet video, and
this is one of those. We're talking
20-foot lightning bolts hitting the
ground constantly in front of you.
This was unreal. My heart has never gone from
zero to a hundred in this short amount
of time. It was... whatever. I can't explain it,
I'm not gonna try." "I can't explain that!"
After I calmed down a bit, Cameron asked me if
I wanted to see a real-life Tesla gun,
which I didn't even know was a thing!
He built this thing from a kit designed by
his two friends Steve Ward and Phillip
Slowinski. Only a few of these things exist
in the world, and I apologize for the
laughing here, but I was really, really
excited.
It doesn't look real; it feels like
you're in some kind of video game.
"How do you control the power output?"
"The display right here." "Dude! This is full-on
Ghostbusters stuff" "Oh yeah. Totally." "Where do I need
to stand?" "Uh, anywhere. I need help with a breaker,
that pin there, pull up."
(pin clicks) Destin: "Holy Moly! Okay." "Alright."
(Destin laughs)
Destin: "Where do I need to stand?" "Anywhere." "Oh, dude."
(Tesla coil buzzes)
"Wow."
(continued buzzing) Cameron: "That's super low,"
(buzzing stops) "but I can bring the intensity up."
Destin: "You know that that feeling when"
somebody has a loaded gun around you,
only the gun could point anywhere.
So I'm going to step back here. (laughs)
(deeper buzzing)
"Wow. So what's it arcing to? Why is it not
coming back to ground?
So, that's the primary coil.
No you do not have air-cooling on that!"
Cameron: "It's water cooled." "It's water cooled?!"
Destin: "You know what's unreal to me? I wanted to study Tesla coils, and I
started googling, and you live where I live."
"Yeah." "That's unreal." "It is." (Destin laughs) "Oh dude.
"One more time please." (buzzing and maniacal laughter)
ok ok, Let's get ready to do the
high-speed. let's do high speed."
(narrating) "After capturing several videos with the
Phantom, I decided I didn't like the
lighting. The problem was it was too dark
to see the gun, but I needed the darkness
to be able to see the arc. Cameron agreed
to bring the gun over my house the
following day at sundown, so that I could
use the sunlight to illuminate the gun,
and I used a black backdrop so I could
record the lightning bolt coming out of it
at 28,000 frames per second.
(buzzing)
Destin: "Got it. Got it!"
(whooshing background noise)
(crackling noise echoing)
(sudden buzzing)
(crackling continues)
(noises fade)
(sudden buzzing)
(echoed crackling)
(buzzing and continued crackling)
Ok. After watching this slow-mo, and seeing
that arc curve back towards Cameron, the
obvious next question to ask is: what
happens if you get hit?" "He's just
casually cleaning his Tesla coil."
(buzzing)
"WHAT?!"
"It's hittin' your hand!" (Cameron chuckles)
Destin: "What? Can that go through your heart?" "I mean yeah, but it's so low current."
The primary coil on a Tesla coil circuit? Fatal, no questions asked.
But on the secondary coil the
output is in microamps, which is
generally accepted to be safe, but some
people still say it's dangerous.
Here's the deal.
DO NOT do this. A lot of people say this
is safe a lot of people say it's dangerous,
I just really wanted to touch it.
"Ok, ready, ready to trigger the high-speed?"
"Ok, Oh God, I'm good, I'm good.
it just scared me
Okay, go ahead.
Okay. Wow, okay. All right. Yeah, it's thing."
(guitar music and crackling buzzing)
"So after I took that hit, Cameron asked me
if I wanted to shoot it myself. I don't know
if that was a rite of passage or what,
but, um, yes, I would like to throw
lightning bolts from my fingertips!"
"You turnin' my breaker on? Oh! good grief!
This Is like a video game!"
Destin: "I can't thank you enough for lettin' me do this.
I mean, this is like... the little boy in me is just..."
"Wow!"
"Okay. I need to give you your gun back".
I had so much fun making this video
I mean I just wanted to learn about Tesla
coils and, all this happened; I'm very
excited about this video. Anyway if you
enjoyed this video, and you want to
support Smarter Every Day then support
the people that support Smarter Every Day!
there's Audrey from 1 Tesla; I'll
leave a link in the video description.
there's Cameron at Tesla Universe;
leave his link down there, and then the
sponsor is Audible.com.
Audible has audio books that you can get
download for free if you go to
audible.com/smarter. I do this every day.
I listen to audiobooks on my way back
and forth to work. Special treat today,
Mark Cipher is a guy that I talked to
through Cameron; he's a Tesla
historian. He wrote the definitive book
on Tesla's life.
It's called Wizard, the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla.
When I told him I was going
to talk about his book in this video, he
got so excited he filmed a little clip for me.
Hello, my name is Mark Cipher, and I'm the
author of Wizard: the Life and Times of
Nikola Tesla. When I first learned about
Tesla, he was a very obscure figure, but
now his name has resurfaced, and he has
become kind of pop science icon.
Find Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla
at audible.com/smarter.
I'm really excited about that. Thank you
very much, Mark. And if you want to support Mark Cipher,
go get Wizard at audible.com/smarter.
that will support Mark and support
Smarter Every Day. You should be
listening to audiobooks anyway; it makes you smarter.
Anyway I'm Destin. I really hope you
enjoyed this half as much as I did.
I hope this video earned your subscription;
If not, no big deal. I'm Destin, you're gettin smarter every day.
Have a good one.