Hi. Graphite. I like graphite!
It's a specific arrangement of carbon atoms that is highly conductive.
Which also allows us to draw.
Graphite has many applications. From pencils, to DC motor brushes,
to some traces on electronics,
to battery carbon rods, and more.
This is a replacement lead of a mechanical pencil.
It's not made of lead, of course. It's carbon.
The reason they call it lead is the result of the same ignorance
that resulted in calling the North American natives “Indians.“
You know, those early explorers, when they found America,
they thought they were in India, so they called them “Indian”.
Later, British tried to fix it by eliminating natives,
which they failed.
So they took over India, and tried to turn them into British,
which they failed.
Now, we have to call the real Indians...
... East Indians, South Asian, Asian Indian,
or whatever, to avoid mixing them with natives, who were wrongfully accused of being Indian.
Aaach! I wasn't even involved!
The point is that, people were originally using lead to draw.
So when they discovered graphite, they thought it does the same thing, so it must also be an Indian.
One important note - the element of lead is highly poisonous, and I hate it!
It turns you into an idiot before it kills you.
But I like graphite.
Now let's pass some current through the pencil lead. That way I can measure its resistance.
Dogsh*t!
Aah! Nowadays, everything blows up.
Let's try again.
Wow! It lights up well!
Now I'm running 1 amp and measuring voltage across around 1 centimeter,
so for this particular piece, the resistance is 150 milliohms, across 1 centimeter.
And this is how they make potentiometers.
Let's try 30 volt 10 amp.
Just melted my alligator clip.
Now, let's kick it up a notch.
I'm gonna run 10 amps through a regular pencil's graphite.
Wow! This is getting-
Oh my god-
Sh*t!
@#$%!
Whoa!
@#$%&*%!
@#$%*%#*@%&!*@#%@!
Well see, the graphite gets super hot and burns the wood around it.
But it doesn't burn.
That's why it's good for high temperature applications.
Let's run 10 amps through this graphite and see how much it glows.
Yaaaaa!
Look at this!
Let me see if I can measure its temperature using my thermal camera.
Wow, look at that! Right away it goes above the 330 degrees maximal-
@#$%!
By the way, I have four of these thermal cameras to give away at the end of my video.
So these get very hot. Always wear safety gloves to protect your fingers, and don't try this at home.
Let me see if I can make some arcs.
Muuuh sh*t!
Always wear safety goggles when dealing with very bright arcs. Let's try it again.
Nice. Look at that!
Nice.
F*ck! Am I on fire?!
(blow blow blow)
I suppose using the gardening gloves is not the best idea.
You can get carbon rods from a carbon zinc battery.
Not an alkaline battery; its structure is different.
Make sure it says "carbon zinc" or "heavy duty," and it doesn't say "alkaline" or "rechargeable."
First, you pull the cover off.
Then you gently pull the battery rod out, while turning it like this.
Now I have AA battery rods,
D size battery rods,
and some longer rods from my old 6 volt battery pack.
And I have my supercapacitor bank.
I doubled the number of capacitors so I can charge them to 30 volts that can deliver more than 200 amps.
Let's make some arcs now.
Hey - my rods are burning?
Aah sh*t! Goggles!
Well, it wasn't the rods apparently. It seems like there is some flux in them that eventually burns out.
Let's see if we can melt some copper with this.
Look at that people! Molten-
Ah sh*t!
This glove is not good for this purpose!
(blow blow blow)
Good news to my supporters at Patreon.com,
I have four of these Seek thermal cameras to give away.
And if you're interested to buy their products at thermal.com,
you can get a 20 percent discount with the promo code ElectroBOOM20 for a limited time.
Are you watching Discovery Channel again?