On our last episode of make it real we built an electromagnetic railgun using 16 capacitors
now while we were testing the railgun we realized just how much
power we're actually able to create with this capacitor bank we're talking about
literally hundreds of thousands of amps so we thought it'd be kind of fun to do
another video where we see what happens when you put everyday objects in the
path of this capacitor bank let's see
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So you might be wondering why or how capacitors are so powerful, able to
release so much electricity and literally vaporize items everyone's
familiar with batteries they take a chemical reaction to create an
electrical output and it lasts for a very long time in fact they're used to
power pretty much all of our electronics the difference between a capacitor and a
battery is this doesn't actually use a chemical reaction it's actually a static
charge think about static electricity this allows it to attract a massive
charge and then it can release it instantaneous whereas a battery has to
release the power slowly because it's a chemical reaction so one capacitor was
simple enough but how exactly does this setup work well we have 16 capacitors in
parallel the leads are connected to this vise and to this cable here but we've
got an electromagnetic switch here that we rigged up to this button so when you
press the button it connects the circuit and vaporizes whatever you put between
the nails so to charge the raglan capacitor bank we actually use this
little circuit here unfortunately during these capacitor tests we were using it
too frequently and actually overheated and broke so to charge the capacitor
bank now we're actually just using 400 volts DC from this array of batteries
now you can't just plug this into a capacitor you need to have a resistor in
line and luckily light bulbs act as perfect resistors for an application
like this if you guys are curious about how the circuit actually works and how
the capacitors are charged check out the circuit diagram at maker.io and thank
you to DigiKey for providing some of the components we used
All right so this should be an interesting experiment
when electrical current passes through a conductor it actually creates an
electromagnetic field away from the wire since we have this going up and down
when we connect that capacitor bank it's probably going to deform very violently
let's see what happens
that's basically exactly what we said would happen yes it's pretty warm it's
So that's interesting these sparklers actually didn't ignite they just blew
right off of the hot wire you can see solid just in pieces weird
So this is probably a terrible idea we have a lithium ion 18 650 cell connected
to the capacitor bank right now now if you watched our previous videos we've
exploded lithium polymer batteries before and they turn into pretty big
fireballs lithium ion is technically quite a bit safer but honestly I have no idea
what's gonna happen when we run 400 volts in a few thousand amps through a
battery that normally only produces a few amps at 3.7 volts
I love the little mushroom cloud it gives off
Ian: Think it's gonna explode?
James: oh man that's a pretty big watermelon.
Ian: I think it's gonna explode
For the video we want it to explode so even if we have to fire it twice I think it's worth it
James: It's not gonna explode
I can't believe that happened
There could be atomized zinc in this...
Alright that was awesome what kind of items would you like to see destroyed by
electricity we tried a bunch in this one but we're always open to more
suggestions and if you haven't watched the railgun video check it out right
there we also have an awesome series called make it real where we take
fictional ideas from comics movies and videogames and make real working
prototypes if you haven't subscribed yet hit that subscribe button and make sure
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