Flying a kite on a stormy day is not the wisest thing to do, except, of course, you’re intentionally trying to catch a lightning bolt. The guys from [kreosan] replicated the famous experiment, with which Benjamin Franklin once set out to prove the electrical nature of lightning.
After their first attempt to attract lightning bolts in a storm by flying a kite attached to a grounded metal wire, which surprisingly did not yield a catch, they came up with an even scarier setup: They hooked up the wire to the high-voltage rail of a well-grounded television tube to bias it with a few kilovolts. The experiment worked, and as you can imagine, the TV didn’t take the explosion well. The bolt evaporated its antenna, rampaged through its circuits, blasted off the rear cover and left weld marks on the exciting points before it struck into the ground.
The duo took a few safety measures to ensure that they would walk away with their lives, like a self-unwinding wire coil and a second, non-conductive steering line to launch the kite to higher altitudes. It’s still nuts. Take the video below with a pinch of salt and don’t try this at home.
Thanks to [Jack] for the tip!
Russians?
Russians.
YOLO.
Ukraine.
Maybe Ukraine, but speaking Russian, which, for all, err, intensive purposes makes them Russian.
/ to mods: Sorry, flagged the comment by mistake, meant to hit “reply”
“intents and purposes”!
In there clip, life is intensive and filled with purpose.
Ehhh… Depends when you ask. Is Big Brother Vladimir looking, Then it’s Russia. Because, you know, Mobile Artillery and Petroleum.
And on that note I love the moment of post orgasmic paranoia with the “Oh shit what if The Soldiers heard that” figurative dash out the bedroom window with their pants around their ankles.
They do some crazy stuff… Because, what could possibly go wrong. :D
Maybe use a shipping container as a capacitor and see how big a Tesla coil they can make… Maybe a gigantic tea laser :D
I mean the scariest part of this experiment for me was “and we ran home before soldiers showed up” lightning just wants to ground, the soldiers might wanna shoot you.
also fun fact he referred to the kite as an air snake, which is a really cool way of describing the movement of a kite through air. could’ve been talking about the movement of lightning as well now that I think about it, those were the only two words I caught between the english dub, still a really cool visual image
Actually, ‘air snake’ is the literal translation of the Russian expression for kite.
I think the french is something lik “wind frame” for comparison.
Actually we say “flying deer” in French, don’t ask me why…
The German word for kite translates to “dragon” which is fairly close to the russian “air snake”…
Whoops, so it is, can’t think where I got that idea, probably some other language that got misfiled.
Wow, volant is a much abused word though, hard to tell if you’re driving, flying, stealing something or playing badminton. That’s gotta be the basis of at least a hundred French jokes, something like Father: This young man that has been courting you, what is his profession? … Daughter: un Volant … Father, stunned pause, finally: Oh a thief, he should keep you well, I thought for a moment you meant one of those womanising, hard drinking good for nothing pilots.
Here in the South (of the US) we say kite the way it was meant to be said “kai-aight”. Y’all don’t seem to realize it has two syllables.
In Hungarian it’s “paper dragon”
Awesome work it makes one wonder how Benjamin franklin survived or did he not really carry out the experiment ?
lightning didn’t actually strike his kite and he also wasn’t the one flying it, his kid was. ;)
1.21 jiggawatts!
Now for the 80mph…
^^^ how fast they’ll be blown backwards when it goes wrong.
Doesn’t work until hitting 88 Mph
What do you mean by it doesn’t work until hitting 88Mph what are you referring to please explain?
I have to say,this is another data point that indicating just how extraordinary the peoples of Ukraine are and how amazing levels of basic research, development or testing can be performed with the debris of society. Very scary and impressive.
Ukraine is a war zone, that hardly makes it the debris of society. Hearing you refer to it as such made me extremely and inexplicably angry (I’m not Ukrainian) so I’ll now go off to figure out why instead of staying here and saying potentially hurtful and regretable things
Or read what he said again. Im assuming the debris is stuff like junked microwaves, old tvs…
Bob, he said the people are extraordinary. He said they used the debris (old tvs, old microwaves, etc) to perform interesting experiments. He wasn’t saying the people are debris.
I’m surprised the [kreosan] team is still alive.
They have some of the best content on Youtube, Their experiments are crazy all the while living in an active war zone. There guys really know their stuff.
I am not sure that what is more likely way to die in their case. Some lunatic Russian or Rus fanatic shoots missile to their house or get electrocuted by failed experiment.
Actually, if they mess around much with microwave ovens they might have a high chance of getting the Russian equivalent of one of these ruin their whole day…. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM
Because insurgents in other theaters have successfully decoyed that type of missile away from radar controlled AA artillery etc by use of microwave ovens. (The E version now in NATO service might be smarter than that now though.)
Though it should be said also that messing around with TVs in strange locations is probably not a good plan either, since during the Balkans conflict, incoming strike aircraft could be detected by the echo off them from still operating civilian TV transmitters, and there were efforts to use multiple receivers to triangulate and track them. Anyway, trigger happy forces of either side detect TV receiver IFs sitting on a hill that’s theoretically the middle of a farm, and they might decide to mortar or bomb the location to be on the safe side.
You must have missed his magnatron on a stick.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g91xkISmp2g
Considering that they live in Lugansk, which is a secessionist area shelled by Ukrainians, it should be “lunatic Ukrainian or Ukr fanatic”:) Not that it changes your point much.
I’d like to see this weaponized using model rockets.
Here ya go…
https://www.wired.com/2015/06/the-lightning-machine/
Ahh yes, I remember watching this in Discovery. Thanks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buSaGIoNXu8
Why use rockets when you can use lasers (:
I now have a new favorite YouTube channel to watch.
The slow-mo frames of the strike should be sold as posters!
Hmmmmm…
Blender, big industrial fan with metal blades, toaster with bread inserted waiting to be toasted, a plasma screen TV, anything from Apple, WINDOWS 10. :P
I’m torn between:
OMG, these people are idiots; at least energize the TV remotely.
and
OMG that’s freaking awesome.
When I first saw this I knew I had to submit it to hackaday, It’s just one of those things you really would never want to try yourself but would really like to watch.
Still badass, I do feel sorry for the TV though.
Surely I’m not the only one thinking wet copper armour, where is their wet copper armour..
“If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he’d be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting ‘All gods are bastards!”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic
I’m quite impressed about what Kreosan does! Quite many of their experiments are pure post-apocalyptic McGyverism. Here’s also an interesting article about them in the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/18/world/europe/in-bleak-ukraine-city-a-duos-odd-experiments-win-a-niche-online.html
That’s how Slavs learn physics.