Some folks at the i3Detroit hackerspace had an opportunity come up that would allow them to capture lightning in acrylic. They created a few Lichtenberg figures thanks to the help of a plastic tubing manufacturer, some lead sheet and a bunch of 1/2″ thick acrylic.
Lichtenberg figures are the 3D electrical trees found in paperweights the world over. They’re created through electrical discharge through an insulator, with lightning being the most impressive Lichtenberg figure anyone has ever seen. These figures can be formed in smaller objet d’art, the only necessity being a huge quantity of electrons pumped into the insulator.
This was found at Mercury Plastics’ Neo-Beam facility, a 5MeV electron accelerator that’s usually used to deliver energy for molecular cross linking in PEX tubing to enhance chemical resistance. For one day, some of the folks at i3Detroit were able to take over the line, shuffling a thousand or so acrylic parts through the machine to create Lichtenberg figures.
When the acrylic goes through the electron accelerator, they’re loaded up with a charge trapped inside. A quick mechanical shock discharges the acrylic, creating beautiful tree-like figures embedded in the plastic. There are a lot of pictures of the finished figures in a gallery, but if you want to see something really cool, a lead-shielded GoPro was also run through the electron accelerator. You can check out that video below.
Wow, didn’t even corrupt the flash or crash the GoPro. Wonder how many trips the GoPro would survive?
What if they put a 6 oz top sirloin steak through it?
I’d guess still rare, charred on the inside, and just as safe to eat as well done.
http://www.rtftechnologies.org/physics/radcam2.htm appears to document the construction of the camera shielding used
I’ll just leave this here: http://www.capturedlightning.com/
I have one of their irradiated cylinders on the shelf beside me. A beautiful and remarkable object.
Yup, that’s Bert Hickman, who gets a shout-out at the end of the OP.
This is really cool! I have been a fan of lichtenberg figures for quite some time. I actually got the opportunity to create some while I was doing my master thesis. I also produced a video showing some theory about it and our process of making them. If you are interested here is the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-P-GXWOUg4
Language is unfortunately in swedish but I added english captions.
Ah there was one on http://www.unichipeurope.com too i think
I use an americium source from a smoke detector pointed directly at an uncapped ccd from and old webcam as a full hardware random number generator. Each frame the camera takes looks like all the speckles you see just before and after the beam hits. good times :)
Did anyone else think of Half-Life or Portal? :)
+1
I’m glad it wasn’t just me!
yep
Worst theme park ride ever!
Theme park of death
They need to put “It’s a small world” on the soundtrack. Still awesome though.
Seems like a good time to link back to my ElectronTree Bridal Gifts
http://hackaday.com/2013/09/16/electron-tree-bridal-gifts/
Now we need someone to do this with ultra high framerate on the footage. (you can just see the pattern hit just before the noise)
Speaking of “putting lightning in acrylic”, can I actually use lightning to do this to acrylic? Let’s say I could put a piece of acrylic in wet soil, make a hole in the acrylic, put a big nail on it, and link the nail to a lightning rod. Somewhat like they do on beaches to make glass sculpture with molten sand. Would that work, or would the acrylic just explode?
That sounds like science waiting to happen!
You’re probably more likely to get scorch marks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tracking1.jpg
What if you wanted to use a touch screen tablet through a acrylic mirror could you use a electrical beam