400 car batteries wired together!!

Transcript

This video is sponsored by AnyDesk. Hey guys,  it's Drake Anthony here, and today I am bringing   you some of the most extreme science experiments  ever done on YouTube. Behind me, I have 400 car   batteries wired together.

With these batteries,  I can pull electrical currents far beyond the   typical lightning strike, and for much longer  durations too. I can guarantee you that this video   will be unlike anything you've ever seen in your  life.

You may have watched the video I did with   just a 100 car batteries. I did manage to pull  some big currents there, but honestly, I did not   utilize the full potential of those batteries.  That being said, the data I obtained from those   experiments has prepared me to get the most out of  my new ones.

So, in short, even though I have four   times as many batteries as last time, I'm actually  expecting this bank to be 10 times stronger. Now,   the other thing about the first video is that  made the YouTube overlords a bit uneasy. Now,   don't bring out the pitchforks.

That has all since  been resolved. But in the interest of avoiding   issues with this video, I feel like I should spend  a bit more time covering the scope and safety of   this video. So, let me be clear that this is not 

a stunt. The purpose of this video is to explore   the physics of extreme currents. I'm talking  scales like you'd find in the national lab,   but since this is all in my backyard, I get to  have a bit more fun with it.

And to be honest,   much of this is just going to be me sticking  random stuff in between the contacts to see   what happens. And yes, I know this is a bit of  a chaotic approach, but you know, this is really   how a lot of scientific discovery happens. I mean, 

you know, the scientific method is great and all,   but often times, innovation is a product of just  throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.   So, why car batteries then? Well, as it turns out,  car batteries are actually a great way of getting   into electrical territory where footage doesn't  exist. When it comes to making huge currents,   most people think of using capacitors.

But  interestingly, car batteries don't fall that far   behind in terms of max currents. The benefit with  car batteries is that they can dump those currents   for far longer than a brief pulse. That means that 

with a bank of say 400 car batteries, not only can   I produce the most currents ever shown on YouTube,  but I can do it for many thousands of times longer   than the next contender. And let me tell you,  there are so many interesting and important   aspects of physics that show up at this scale.  And I truly believe that all of this is going   to offer an unprecedented look into the nature 

of extreme currents. So much so that I really   think it's going to change the way that you look  at electricity. So yeah, that is the purpose of   this video. Now for a brief word on safety.

I mean  it feels a bit silly for me to say don't try this   at home considering, you know, the sheer magnitude  of this project. I mean even a single car battery   can mess you up if you screw up hard enough.  So yeah, you definitely shouldn't wire together   28,000 lbs of lead acid batteries in your yard, 

at least if you're not familiar with this sort of   thing. But seriously, I think it's my safety that  concerns people the most. And yeah, what I do on   my channel can come off as pretty ridiculous  and sketchy at times.

But I will say this,   I've been posting my mad science creations to  YouTube since 2006. And let me tell you, it takes   more than luck to do this kind of thing for 20  years without getting hurt. And that is because I   am not a risk taker.

And I realize that this must  come off as the most ironic thing that I've ever   said. But I never approach anything potentially  dangerous without, you know, fully understanding   and mitigating the risks at hand. And no, I'm not 

in some fancy lab constrained by OSHA. I'm just   a guy in my backyard with 400 car batteries. But  I've dedicated my whole life to mastering extreme   science. And I've slowly and carefully worked my 

way to the level that I'm dealing with today. So,   be assured I know what I'm working with here. So,  now that that's out of the way, I want to briefly   cover the issues I had with the 100 battery bank  before showing the changes I made with this new   one.

I started by wiring them all in parallel,  but due to contact resistance of the connections,   I was limited to only 15,000 amps this way. I  then rewired the bank for parallel strings of   five in series, and the higher voltage allowed me  to achieve a peak current of about 48,000 amps.   In hindsight, I could have probably gotten more 

current from parallel strings of just three or   four in series. But with this new bank of 400, I  calculated that five in series, giving 65 volts,   is what will give me the most current. So, this is  the number I settled on.

Assembling the new bank   took about 2 months, and manually placing all 14  tons of batteries was the easy part. Most of my   time was spent digging in the plastic platforms,  cutting and crimping 500 cables, and cleaning all   2,000 contact points immediately before joining  them.

And this is where the real challenge begins.   How do you switch 400 car batteries? I've already  mentioned that the kinds of currents I plan on   dealing with are in a territory where footage  doesn't exist. Over 100,000 amps sustained. This   also means that the kind of switch I need is in an 

uncharted territory as well. I need something that   can slam the full power of the batteries to the  loads as fast as possible while also having the   ability to disconnect power if necessary. Well,  this kind of thing doesn't exist for less than   the cost of the batteries, which means I have to 

come up with something myself. For the 100 battery   video, I used a modified log splitter as the  switch. And this worked pretty much flawlessly.   Since it miraculously still works after sitting in  my yard for 2 years, I figured I should just beef   this thing up with a bunch more copper and steel. 

Now, since I need so much copper for the switch,   I stopped by an unattended construction site and  picked up a bunch of copper. So, hopefully this   will be enough to at least, you know, get the  switch wired. Then, of course, I might have to   make a few more trips to uh to wire the batteries. 

Now, as far as I know, this switch is going to   be the biggest switch ever made for a YouTube  video, at least by current. And let me tell you,   when you're dealing with that kind of current,  you run into some really weird issues. I'm   expecting the switch to vaporize a lot of copper 

in operation. So, that's why I'll be using the   biggest blocks as the switch contacts. Now, I've  saved machining them for last because honestly,   it's not that often that I get to play with pieces  of copper this big.

And actually, both of these uh   blocks combined actually weigh more than I do.  So, yeah, there's there's a lot of copper here. I just want to eat them. So, what's something  interesting that you can do with two giant   pieces of copper? Well, let's try tossing a magnet 

down there. No, I'm not slowing down this footage.   It's really just, you know, moving through  there at a snail's pace. Pretty weird, right? There it goes. I don't even need to 

drop it between the plates either. Like,   just bringing this magnet close without even  touching it, it's almost enough to knock over   this 65lb plate. If I go ahead and force it all  the way to the plate, it doesn't want to just   fall off.

It's It's really slow down there. It's  like it's moving through syrup or something. Yeah,   it's a really neat effect. Oh, heck.

Forgot that  table's magnetic. [laughter] So, what causes these   effects? Even though copper is not ferromagnetic,  it is conductive, so it can still exert magnetic   forces. Moving a magnet nearby induces currents 

in the copper and it's these currents that pull   on the magnet to slow it down. Silver is even  more conductive. So these effects are even more   pronounced in silver bars. There's a reason I 

am showing you these demos. Generally speaking,   this intrinsic connection between electricity  and magnetism has profound implications about   how the universe works. More specifically, it  foreshadows what's to come with the batteries.   The currents I'm expecting will produce 

incredibly strong magnetic forces. This   will make for experiments that look nothing  short of witchcraft. That is assuming I can even   tame them in the first place. When I started 

tearing down the switch to make my upgrades,   I noticed that steel shavings were sticking to it  like a magnet. So, I decided to investigate. So,   I got this compass here. And if I put it next to 

this uh this steel stock, it's a it's a little   affected, but it's not like, you know, super  strongly. But if I come over here and I get   just in the vicinity of these of this old switch  here, you can see that the uh the steel on there   was very heavily magnetized by being close to  such extreme currents.

That's really nifty. This   led me to a less nifty realization. The original  contacts mysteriously wore on one side only. I   assumed it was because of misalignment, although 

weirdly, the contacts look straight when fired   with no load. I didn't think too much about  it when it happened because the switch still   performed well. I realized too late that this was  a magnetic issue.

In the previous video, I showed   you that currents going in the same direction  attract each other while opposite currents repel.   What happened with the switch is that the opposing  currents were magnetically repelling each other.   The one side burn through was due to asymmetry in  the cable arrangement. The daunting thing is that   these forces scale with a square of current.

That  means that if I triple the current compared to   last time, the magnetic forces will be nine  times stronger. This could cause some real   issues. I still went ahead with building the new 

switch and did my best to keep opposing currents   as short and as far from each other as possible.  I knew the magnetics could still be a problem, but   since the closing spring is so strong, I figured  it might simply just work as is. And if not, well,   I can cross that bridge when I get to it. The 

finished setup looks straight out of sci-fi.   Over 1,000 lb of copper interconnect 28,000 lb of  lead. The work blocks are fed with two opposing   loops of cable, which is in contrast to the single  loop I used last time. This will cancel out the   lateral magnetic forces that I had so much trouble 

fighting in the first video. I decided to start   small with the initial experiments, mostly to  rule out major issues before the currents become   terrifying. For the first trial, I zapped a 3/8  in galvanized steel rod.

All right, here we go. The effect was pretty much the same as when  I zapped one with a 100 car batteries. Oh,   yeah. So, you can see it uh left a nice little 

splatter there. Even blew up one of the threads,   which is really strange. I did more trials  with these small rods to dial in my camera   settings. Although these don't look very 

impressive at normal speed, the slow-mo   camera I have set up tells a very different  story. The fact that this rod is galvanized   is a critical detail here. Since the boiling point  of zinc is lower than the melting point of iron,   this means that the zinc plating boils off 

first, which reacts with the air to form this   striking green plasma. When the iron finally  melts, it gets magnetically ejected upwards,   which is not something I expected to happen. For  the next trial, I zapped a small aluminum bar.

Holy All right, pulled about 46,000 amps  with that one. Nothing to write home about,   but uh like a pretty strong lightning strike.  The slow-mo turned out to be way overexposed,   which is funny because it's usually a lack  of light that's the challenge when filming   at high speed.

I ended up doing a few more trials  in an attempt to get a better shot of the action. Look at that. It uh got pushed up and then  resolidified in that hilarious configuration   there.

That was the definitely a magnetic  force that pushed it upwards like that. It   was difficult to get the exposure right with  aluminum since it burned so incredibly bright,   but at least I was able to make out some of  the finer details of the plasma fireballs in   this one.

I zapped a similarly sized  titanium bar for the next trial. Kind of lame. I did find the slow-mo in this  one to be pretty funny since a random washer   got sucked in magnetically and a piece of 

titanium was spun violently as it was launched   out. I stuck a small tungsten welding electrode  on the blocks and the current it drew was so   low that it didn't even trigger my scope.  The peak was probably a few thousand amps   or so. Its white hot incandescent looked super 

neat through the smoke of it oxidizing in air.   At this point, I was ready  to increase the current. So,   I started zapping some big bolts with the  first one being a half inch in diameter. I pulled a peak current of 54,000 amps there, 

which is higher than anything I pulled in the   last video, but it's still far from what  I wanted. So, I moved on to 3/4 in bolts. I could hear some sort of oscillation  in that shot, which was picked up on my   oscilloscope as well.

The slow-mo showed some  sort of bouncing around on the contact blocks,   but it wasn't clear what was causing this.  When I did another trial in daylight,   I could see that the oscillation  might be originating in the switch. Jeez.

Wow. Look at that. Think we had a full  burn through there. In order to find the   source of these oscillations, I zapped a bunch of 

copper cables of varying diameters as the loads.   I suspected that the switch was to blame. So, I  pointed my slow-mo camera at the switch for the   first trials. Going from two gauge cable all  the way up to four aught, I never saw issues   with the switch.

There were sparks from the  initial turn on, but the plate stayed closed. Oh, beautiful smoke ring. Next, I repeated  the trials of increasing cable sizes,   but with the slow-mo camera pointed at the blocks 

this time. What I found was super surprising.   It sounded like the cables were exploding. But  most of them weren't even burning through. They   were being magnetically ripped out of the clamps. 

This force came as a surprise to me since I chose   a wiring arrangement that cancels out lateral  magnetic forces on the loads. Clearly, whatever   mysterious upward force remained, turned out to be  incredibly strong. When I made it to four cable,   which as a reminder is the biggest American wire 

gauge size, this effect was quite dramatic. It was   violently bent upwards and managed to suck in all  of the ferromagnetic materials nearby. It too did   not actually burn through and instead was ejected  from the blocks.

In this shot, I measured a peak   of 76,000 amps. The real-time view of this shot  showcases some of the pros and cons of the low   voltage arrangement of the bank. It cannot shock  me, which is nice.

However, it also means it can't   strike an arc across more than the tiniest of  gaps, which leads to situations where the load   is teetering off the block, ready to go off again  at any moment. I have multiple ways to safely deal   with these scenarios, but the science machete is  my favorite.

Where's my science machete? Oh heck. Not enough. Yeah. Yep. It's blown through.

Yeah. It's fine. I  should point out that my arc flash suit is more   than adequate against these little sparks. And 

the magnetics make it impossible for me to fully   short the bank this way. Now that it's daylight,  you can see that the uh the 76 kiloamp shot just   completely completely welded that cable to  the plate there. It just [laughter] Well,   okay, it came off.

But it was uh yeah, that was  really really stuck on there. At this point,   it was clear that the block mounts were an issue.  But that didn't mean that the switch wasn't an   issue as well. So, I decided to sidestep the block 

issue by c-clamping the copper cable loads. Now,   I need to bring up why I've been using spring  clamps instead of C-clamps. If you watched the   last video, you saw that when I zapped bolts, I  had a lot of trouble holding them on the blocks.   The fact that I was using spring clamps to hold 

them down and not C-clamps infuriated a lot of   viewers. So many people commented about this, many  of them calling me names for not using C-clamps,   vices, or some other threaded mechanism. It's my  fault for not explaining this the first time.

And   I get it. C-clamps are so much stronger, right?  Well, the fact of the matter is that you cannot   use C-clamps to hold a round rigid object on  the blocks. C-clamping a bolt onto the blocks   will always lead to the bolt being ejected 

before it melts. It does not matter how hard   you tighten them. This will happen every single  time. There are a few reasons for this.

For one,   the outer surface has an oxide layer, which means  that the contact regions have lower conductivity   and thus heat faster than the bulk metal. Plus, in  the case of round objects, the current has to pass   through a small area as it jumps from the blocks,  which also dramatically increases the heating near   the contact points.

To make matters worse,  hot metal is more resistive than cold metal,   meaning more energy is dumped into the hot areas,  leading to thermal runaway. All of this results   in the contacts quickly exploding off, shrinking  the contacts to the point where they're no longer   held by the clamps.

Spring clamps, however,  follow through with the shrinking load,   holding contact with the block until  the load finally melts. Of course,   this is unless the magnetic forces are stronger  than the clamps.

That being said, C-clamps are   still useful with flat objects or loads that can  be spread flat like stranded cable. The reason   is that this moves the part of the load that  melts to outside the grip of the clamps. Thus,   for these next trials, I c-clamp stranded cable 

to the blocks in order to see how the switch would   behave with a well secured load. The first test  with zero gauge cable gave an interesting result. It looked and sounded like a perfect  shot.

Something to note is how fast   the sparks shoot out from the exploding  cable. The slow-mo shows that the cable   did indeed burn through. And judging  by the spacing between the blocks,   the cable end was thrown back at a 

speed of at least 190 mph. However,   the scope shows that this was actually a bad  shot since it was split into two pulses of about   76,000 amps. Since the load was well secured, this  implies that the switch bounced.

Zapping two zero   gauge cables in parallel gave unmistakable  proof that the switch was indeed bouncing. As violent as this looks in real time,  the slow-mo is far scarier. The switch   managed to launch a toroidal plasma vortex 

into midair before blowing open. Honestly,   I think I'm better off not knowing what kind  of temperatures are involved to allow an   ionized copper plasma ring to exist in air.  Regardless, it's obvious that the plates are   getting completely blown apart here, which is  most likely a magnetic issue.

For the sake of   data, I zapped even thicker cables, and the  switch plates continued to get blown apart. The C-clamp struggled to hold down  the cable in a couple trials as well.   The scope showed that I was reaching peak currents  of nearly 90,000 amps.

And although this is triple   the current of a typical lightning strike, it's  still far less than what I had hoped for. Clearly,   I need to find a way to keep the switch closed.  The fact that there are opposing currents on   opposite sides of the switch means that there are  tremendous magnetic forces that push the plates   apart.

Some napkin math implies that these  forces are on the order of a ton or more.   This is on top of whatever explosive forces  exist from the superheated plasma that forms in   the switch. How can I combat this? The first idea  that came to mind was to slap some huge springs on   there because at some point a brute force tactic 

like that has got to work. But something about   that just didn't feel right, though. And then  it hit me. I shouldn't be fighting the magnetic   forces.

No, I should be working with them. I  realized that the switch plates would attract each   other if I could manage to get like currents going  along both plates. The easiest way to do this, at   least using what I had built already, seemed to be 

by rearranging the switch cables from an X-shaped   configuration to a Z-shaped one. That way, there  would be a component of current going along the   length of the plates, which would magnetically  bring them together. After thinking about   potential issues of this arrangement for a while, 

I decided to just try it out and see what happens.   Rewiring the switch took me four entire days since  I had to re-clean every contact point that I had   exposed. An unfortunate reality of this project  is that any changes to the circuit are very time   consuming. The initial tests with smaller loads 

like steel rods and aluminum bar were promising.   So after these I went back to zapping four aught  cable. The first cable behaved in a strange way.   Both C-clamps were completely ripped off the  blocks and the cable basically exploded without   melting. I clocked a peak of 94,000 amps, 

which was only a slight improvement from   before. I used four C clamps for the next  shot, but the cable was still ripped out of   the clamps before fully melting. The third  shot finally gave a complete burnthrough.

However, the switch was still bouncing. It sounded  much more violent than before, and the pulses were   spaced closer together, but the current hadn't  gone up by that much. I hadn't even hit a 100,000   amps.

When I did more testing the next day,  I struggled to hold the cables on the blocks   and made these silly oscillators as a result. The  mysterious magnetic ejection force had become much   stronger after rewiring the switch. After adding 

more C-clamps, I eventually got to the point where   I could melt a cable again. The slow-mo of the  switch showed more toroidal plasma vortices and   even angrier explosions. What was blowing open the  switch now? The answer finally made itself clear.

Okay, so you can see the melted wire  there, which which is interesting. But   the real interesting thing is this. So here's  the blown up, you know, switch plates.

And can   you see that hole there? So it's on both  sides. I've basically made a Z-pinch here.   I got goosebumps when I first saw those craters  because I realized I had encountered a phenomenon   of astronomical proportions. The switch was 

triggering a magnetic implosion via a Z pinch.   This is such an extreme phenomenon that it makes  every project I've worked on up to this point seem   like a joke by comparison. A Z-pinch is the  effect where a current conducting plasma is   crushed inward by its own magnetic field. Some 

less extreme examples of the Z-pinch occur in   lightning and electric arcs. It's what holds  the plasma in a thin filament. My best guess   for the sequence of events in the switch goes  like this.

When the plates first come together,   the high points explode off and ignite a plasma,  perhaps causing an initial bounce. The huge   magnetic field then causes the plasma to implode  into a thin filament. This leads to millions of   watts of power being dumped into a tiny volume, 

yielding temperatures beyond my comprehension.   A Z pinch is balanced when the magnetic pressure  inward is equal to the hot plasma pressure   outward. At 100,000 amps, these pressures are so  extreme that they can nearly induce DT nuclear   fusion. The thing is though, a Z pinch does not 

form a stable plasma. I can only speculate which   mechanism destabilizes the plasma in my switch,  but whatever it is, it goes off like a bomb.   I figured I had to either vent the plasma gases  or disrupt their formation early in order to get   the switch to close. The first thing that came to 

mind was to add some copper cable to the plates. This didn't exactly work and managed to spray  liquid copper everywhere, but I felt like I   was on to something. I added much thicker copper  cables along the switch plate for the next test.

What the heck? It was so violent.  Whatever happened there was significant. The bolts holding the copper blocks were  ripped through the wooden mount and the   cable was magnetically crushed into a smaller  diameter.

I have to go take a look at the   current. I think we had another uh 94 kilo shot  there. Kind of odd how flat top it is. You know,   that's interesting.

I might be getting far  higher currents than I expected cuz the fuse   current equation that is very much in line with a  150 kiloamp shot. Hm. Interesting.

At this point,   I realized the numbers were not checking out.  Now, I should bring up how I'm measuring current   here. In the first video, I just looked at the  voltage drop across the cables, which isn't very   accurate and only gives meaningful results when  the current hits a steady state.

For this video,   I bought the biggest hall effect sensor I could  find that listed a price, which is this one rated   for 20,000 amps. I've been feeding the cables  from one of the eight subbanks through it and   then multiplying the value by eight to get total  current.

However, this seems to be measuring far   too low based on how fast this cable melted. I  had previously made this spreadsheet to predict   how fast cables would explode at a given current.  And it's based on the Onderdonk fuse equation.   It predicts that 150,000 amps are necessary  to pop a 4 aught cable in 70 milliseconds.   I suspected that the sensor was saturating, 

so I removed four of the five cables going   through it and then added a factor of five to  the scope readings. I struggled to get a nice   clean pulse in the subsequent shots, but  I eventually achieved one good enough to   confirm that this fixed the sensor issue, and  I was indeed achieving far higher currents.

That was 138,000 amps. I am just in awe. And it  it can go higher. There's more.

138,000 amps. This is big progress. Big progress.  Wow. I need to I need to go eat and   like just the obsession, man. 

What a project this has been.   I kept adding more cables to the plates, but  I never got another clean shot this way. So,   for the next configuration, I stuck one  of the original switch plates in between   the new ones. I was hoping it would weld itself 

on there at a slight angle to vent the plasma. So, the uh the C clamps actually failed on that  shot, but uh I did pull about 110,000 amps and   the plate, you know, somewhat welded on there.  It's funny how like poor of a weld will still   conduct really well and that's just because  the contact points will melt and then there's   very very little contact resistance when that 

happens. So, yeah, let's blow up another cable.   This wasn't working, but I suspected that  if I allowed the zaps to go on longer,   it might just finally close. So, I stuck  two four aught cables on the blocks,   which quadruples the amount of energy 

dump in the shot compared to a single   cable. This led to the most violent display  of electromagnetism I've ever seen in my life. Liquid copper was shot above the treetop level  here.

I measured a peak current of 140,000 amps,   which gives a total circuit power of 9  megawatts. Yeah. Look how that uh that wire   piece got blasted back there while it was still  like borderline molten and it just wrapped around   that that handle there.

It's incredible. Actually  exploded on both sides. Over here we got copper   just painting everything. Even the ground is now 

copper plated. Just all the boiling copper getting   sprayed everywhere is unbelievable. You know, I  was about to attempt a new switch configuration,   but then I realized that that was actually really  awesome.

You know, maybe I should try jamming some   weird metals inside the switch itself, at least  before I attempt to fix the real problem here.   So, on this one, I'm going to try to weld uh  this copper plate onto the big plate here. And   I also have a piece of steel in there.  So, hopefully it makes a lot of sparks.

The current didn't get particularly  crazy here, but it still made a very   nice shower of sparks. There is not much  left of that uh that steel plate there.   Feels really welded on there. Yeah, that 

plate is a little hotter than I realized. Yep. Quite toasty. I stuck a puck of  zinc in the switch for the next shot.

Unfortunately, it was ejected from  the switch nearly immediately.   Other than the initial explosion, the sparks  here are just from the copper switch plates   hitting each other. You know, I'm thinking  that maybe aluminum maybe aluminum would   uh is the solution here.

Let's let's  try putting this in the switch. Holy What the What just happened? What on earth just happened? That was so violent. Wow. That was bonkers.

That was so violent. The I  mean the copper cables were completely launched.   Oh, interesting. It ejected. Uh, how did the 

ingot end up out here? What? I have I have no   idea how that happened. You know, that iron bar  there got pulled off the ground magnetically.   I'm just trying to trying to notice all the  details on on what actually happened here.   But that that's ridiculous that the uh ingot  was ejected.

I had placed a bunch of bolts on   this little table before that shot in order to see  how they would be affected by the magnetic field. Aluminum works well for illuminating slow-mo shots  since it burns so brightly in air. As you can see,   the bolts were quickly sucked in by the 

magnetic field around the cables. It's   funny because I've lost a lot of tools this  way and that I've left them too close to   the cables before firing the bank. A detail  I'd like to point out is how the steel post   and winch redirect some of the magnetic fields. 

And that's why a few bolts get trapped in their   vicinity. The aluminum was violent enough that  I did a few more trials with it. In this one,   a smoke ring was shot out sideways from the smoke  plume.

I have no idea how that's even possible. In this shot, it's the sound  that stuck out to me the most. I've noticed that so many of the sounds I've  heard from this project are unlike anything   I've ever heard before.

These batteries are  capable of some truly unique audio effects. So,   this is that aluminum block that uh didn't quite  all the way melt inside the switch contacts.   It got close, but uh not all the way. So, I'm 

going to put it on the yeet blocks this time. Even though I had yet to solve the switch  issue, I realized that the peak currents   I was achieving might be enough to pull  off the most important demo of this video,   and that's magnetically crushing a pipe. So, why 

is crushing a pipe the most important demo? Well,   I tried this in the last video and failed  miserably. Even when I let the pipes melt   from the current, they were still not crushed by  the Z-pinch effect. At the end of the experiments,   I said this.

Since the pressure on the pipe is  proportional to the square of the current going   through it, that means I'm not even getting  close to what's needed at 40 kiloamps. Now,   if I had a uh if I had a few hundred  more car batteries, well, then yeah,   I could I could pull it off.

But for what  that would cost, I'd rather build a more   accurate lightning machine. Now, I bring this up  because this car battery series was not my idea.   I was actually hired to make these videos by  the company AnyDesk.

And no, they don't make   car batteries. I'll tell you more about them in a  bit. So, what I'm getting at is that these maniacs   bought me 300 more car batteries and another half  ton of copper just to see me crush a pipe.

So,   yeah, this one's pretty important. I want to  quickly add that if you have ideas for ridiculous   experiments that you'd like me or another YouTuber  to try, submit them at anydesk.com/science. It only hit me when I set up for the first 

pipe crush that this might be more difficult   than I expected. Although these batteries  are capable of pipe crushing currents,   the circuit is slow to turn on. The combination  of a bad switch, low circuit voltage,   and cable inductance means that the pipe might 

melt before the current reaches crushing levels.   A few attempts with various fuses did not  manage to crush the pipe. Next, I decided   to stick the unfused pipe on the contacts to  see if it would at least crush while melting. Oh, it it it blew off both sides.

Oh,  that's crazy. I don't even know where   it went. Now I got to Well, I  did see something over here.

It's crushed. It's crushed. There it is.  It was crushed. Look at that.

Of course,   it uh was brought to the melting point. So, in in  some way, it was kind of cheating, but but still,   this is like, you know, I could not do this with a  100 car battery. So, I'm really happy to see this.   True.

It actually crushed the pipe. Just it's  amazing. I'll have to take a look at the current.   Just want a better shot of that waveform. It's 

really only like 90,000 at the peak, but um hey,   it did it. It did it. So, I actually managed  to find the uh the pipe that I tried, you know,   directly melting and crushing with my 100 car  batteries.

And you can see how it's uh it didn't   crush at all. So, it's really cool to see that uh  what the increased current does. So, it you know,   they both melted on both sides, but clearly the uh  the 400 car batteries really uh it really made the   more dramatic crush there.

I still wanted to crush  a pipe without it melting though, which meant I   had to go back to using fuses. When I tried  zapping an annealed pipe, I lucked out with   a perfect shot of the switch. However, it did not 

crush the pipe. I clearly needed more time for the   current to rise, but using any bigger of a fuse  would melt the pipe first. That is unless maybe I   could try water cooling it. I found this aquarium 

in the woods years ago. And since I haven't put   any fish in it by now, I figured I might as well  use it for this experiment. I really hope that   this works because uh I I don't know what I'm  going to do if it doesn't.

I mean, I put a lot of   stock into the uh into the idea that I was going  to easily crush a pipe with these batteries, but   yeah, it turned out to be harder than I uh than I  expected. So, yeah, I'm really crossing my fingers   that this one works. So, I'm going to use this uh 

this giant flashlight here at full power to uh to   illuminate this so my uh my slow motion camera  can see it. I'm going to need a lot of light.   Okay. Okay. Here we go.

Get ready to sprint. So,  explodes. Then I hit the button. There we go.

Okay. What happened? The slow-mo shows that the  magnetic forces broke the aquarium right off the   get-go. Then the pipe started to crush, but then  it exploded.

Clearly, everything is happening way   too fast here for the water to do anything. The  ends of the pipe were crushed when it exploded,   but this isn't much different from what happened  with the unfused pipe in open air. Notably,   the switch performed horribly in that 

shot, and this was a good reminder that   I should go back to solving that glaring  issue. Zapping smaller load showed that   the switch wouldn't bounce until the current  rose to around 100,000 amps or so. Maybe all   I need are some huge springs to hold the plates 

closed beyond that. This seemed worth trying,   but I was too impatient and zapped a few more  items before making modifications to the switch. I was particularly excited to pop  these magnesium anode rods.

Here we go. What? It blew up my fuses. It uh as you  can see, it you know blew up all those   fuses and the magnesium one. You know, I see 

that they all melted at the uh like at the   lugs there. It wasn't the wire that melted.  It could be that the fuse current of those   lugs is lower than the actual quadruple  cable. When upgrading the cable fuses,   I noticed that two of them had been untorqued from 

the magnetic forces, allowing some corrosion to   get between the contacts. With bigger fuses  and clean contacts, I was able to achieve   even higher peak currents. I got a particularly  impressive number when zapping the zinc plate.

Due to fresh fuses and hot weather  improving the battery performance,   I achieved a peak current of 176,000 amps with  this shot. Now, something I wanted to point out is   uh so I tossed this makeshift this little  wooden cover over this actuator that pulls   out the pin that fires the switch.

And as  you can see, it's taken quite a beating.   It's just coated in in copper there. Now, the  funny thing is that I had these copper wires   that held it in place and those melted before  the the wood gave way.

It just wood is like a   surprisingly resilient material against plasma  blast. It's the same way with lasers, too. So,   it's uh it's funny how the uh the wood outlasted  the copper there.

At this point, I realized I had   to quit procrastinating and decided to go ahead  with welding some big springs to the switch. Well, I will say one thing. These batteries,  they don't scare me.

What does scare me are these   uh springs here. I have to load them up with the  uh ATV winch. So, uh yeah, these these are less   predictable. I don't know what these want to 

do. My welds could rip off, bolts could snap.   Who knows? These batteries, I feel like I have  a good good idea of what they're capable of.   Okay, got these springs mounted on here. That  way the uh internal spring as well as these   new springs make a nice little triangle there. 

And I'm going to finally test it to see how it   works. I really hope this keeps the switch  closed. Scopes ready. All right, here we go.

No, your video player didn't lock up.  I just wanted to take this moment to   admire the incredible light output  of these copper plasmas. Anyway, I can't tell what happened. It seemed oscillatory, 

unfortunately. Unfortunately, the switch was still   bouncing. The new springs added so much tension  that it maxed out the 1,600lb hand winch I used   to load them up. And yet, they barely hindered 

the bouncing in the switch. Shorting one car   battery may be easy, but shorting 400 takes  a feat of engineering. I initially discounted   the idea of using solid state switching, but out  of desperation, I revisited the idea.

Much to my   surprise, I found that big SCRs were more than  capable of switching the batteries. However,   I couldn't find a single distributor that had big  ones in stock, so I had to resort to brute force   tactics. I bought another log splitter.

I should  point out that I've been using the hydraulic   part of the log splitter to open the switch, not  close it. The idea is that the tough hydraulics   can rip apart the plates when they weld, and it's  functioned perfectly for this purpose.

However,   its big internal spring I've been using  to close the switch is clearly not enough.   Adding a second log splitter makes the closing  action hydraulic as well, but it comes at the   cost of moving much slower than the spring. In  addition, I added some rails and reinforced the   entire structure with a bunch of steel posts. 

The reasoning is that the slow-mo shots had   shown the plate sliding sideways from magnetic  forces. So, I wanted to lock everything to one   axis to prevent that. I had a little mishap when  I tested the return springs I added.

Oh, shoot.   That was what I was worried about. Oh, it just  it just straight up sheared off the uh the hook. See, that's a that's what I mean when I say  springs are actually scary.

Electricity doesn't   scare me. Springs scare me. I ended up just  forgoing the return spring since the internal   one seemed adequate. All right, for the first 

test with the uh with the two log splitters here,   I'm going to zap two more of those quadruple aught  cables just because they have a very predictable   uh fusing properties. So, yeah, I really really  hope that this works. All right, there we go.

That was good. That was very good. I liked that.  The scope showed that the switch bounced at first,   but it did eventually completely close  when 160,000 amps were passing through   it.

The slow-mo confirms this as well, as  the switch quits making sparks before the   cables explode. The drop in current at the  end was from the cables getting magnetically   ripped from the blocks. Further testing gave the 

same results. The switch would initially bounce,   but it would still close afterwards. I had to  concede that this was going to have to do. I   needed to continue on to the main experiments 

before autumn temperatures got too cold and put   too much of a hinder on the currents I could  pull from my batteries. It took me months,   but now I finally reached the point where I can  hold sustained currents of over 150,000 amps.   You're about to see what this kind of current  can do to small objects, but I still think it's   worth giving you a sense of scale and just 

how incredible this number really is. So,   how big is 150,000 amps? Well, this is fusion  reactor levels of current. And this is enough   to ignite DT nuclear fusion in a Z-pinch  fusor.

This level of current exceeds the   entirety of the auroral birkeland currents  that surround the planet on a typical day.   It also far exceeds even the top 1% of lightning  strikes. And in fact, the charge transfer during   a single shot from these batteries is more  comparable to an entire thunderstorm's worth   of lightning bolts.

Now I get to screw around with  these baffling levels of current. A 1-in bolt was   the finale of my 100 battery video, so I'm curious  to see if it's much different with 400 batteries. [laughter] Wow, that was a lot of sparks. 

That was really cool. Wow. So,   in the previous video, I made a  crowbar circuit. So, of course,   I want to try it with the 400 car batteries this 

time. Now, as a review, a crowbar circuit is a   real thing. It just uh usually doesn't mean  using a a literal crowbar for it. Just means   to have something short the power supply rails 

to protect the rest of the circuit. So, yeah,   let's see how long this thing will hold up to  the car batteries. All righty. And here we go.

Whoa. Whoa. Everything's on fire.  [laughter] Oh, that's beautiful,   dude. Every That's insane.

Look at all that  hot metal. Look at all that hot metal. It's   like burning the dirt. Look at that.

All that  just incredible. It It blew it up into a bunch   of chunks. That's really crazy. It didn't 

do that last time. My friend James brought   over his dad's old wrench to see it zapped by  the car batteries. Where's the leak, ma'am? Wow, that was faster than I expected. Whoa. 

What? Wow. That is Wait, that broke like Yeah,   it it it broke in a bunch of spots. Just like  what happened to the crowbar. The magnetic   forces on the wrench broke it up into several 

pieces when it melted through. I still hadn't   figured out where this upward force was  coming from. But when I zapped brass bars,   I had an epiphany. The big bar suffered the 

same fate as many of the cables I had blown up,   and that it was magnetically ejected before it  could burn through. It still made an impressive   display of sparks, though. It was the  small bar that gave me the revelation.

It got launched, didn't it? The bar melted on  both ends and was ejected perfectly upwards,   being sent into a fast spin as it was launched.  The bar solidified into this bent shape,   which I figured approximated the equilibrium  state of forces on the bar when it's on the   blocks. I've already mentioned that the forces 

from the opposing loops of cable cancel out,   which meant that the upward force must have  been coming from the fields of the nearby path   of current feeding the loads. I realized that an  object off the axis of the main current would be   exposed to much stronger fields than an object in  line with the current.

The fact that the current   had to make the small bend off the blocks was the  origin of this super strong force. The funny thing   is that this explanation is actually wrong, but  it still gives the right result. Mounting objects   closer to the center of the block ends would 

reduce these forces. When I zapped a kilogram   ingot of bismuth, I was able to jam it in the  middle well enough to minimize these forces. This was one of the most impressive  burnthroughs I achieved with the batteries,   and there was very little left of the bar 

afterwards. The slow-mo shows that much of   the metal likely boiled off, giving these  incredible plasma fireballs as the metal   vapor reacted with the oxygen in the air.  The yellow color of the smoke is due to   the bismouth triioxide that was formed  in the reaction.

I zapped a big block   of zinc and although it wasn't particularly  noteworthy, it did lead to something funny. So, look at this ridiculous thing. So,  these blocks were sitting on the ground   and got magnetically sucked in there. 

Then they shorted and welded themselves   together. Zinc gives far more beautiful  effects when it's plated onto steel,   like on this galvanized pipe here. It's funny  because I zapped all sorts of weird and exotic   metals for this video, and humble old zinc 

stole the show from all but a few of them.   Zinc's fairly high reactivity paired with its  unusually low boiling point gives unique effects   unlike any other metal I've zapped other than  maybe bismuth. The fact that zinc burns green   at a modest light level is what really takes the  cake when it comes to slow-mo filming though.

I   zapped a couple titanium bars. And although  they were cool, they were so bright that I   failed to get good slow-mo footage of them. The  most notable effect from this trial was that the   two bars magnetically attracted each other and 

welded themselves together. I zapped some pieces   of zirconium, which is among the hottest  and brightest burning metals. There we go. That was so bright.

Much like titanium, zirconium  was so bright that it too was challenging   to capture on camera. It feels weird for me to  complain about something being too bright, but the   enormous contrast and light levels is difficult  to squeeze within the dynamic range of even a nice   camera.

I substantially dialed back the exposure  on the slow-mo shots compared to most other   metals, and they still ended up on the overexposed  side. Now, that being said, I love how well the   little popping pieces of burning zirconium show  up in these scenes.

I revisited titanium in the   form of little chunks to make another attempt at  slow-mo. I cranked back the exposure, but it still   wasn't as much as I should have. Now, that being  said, it still showcased similar popping sparks   to what I got with the zirconium.

As a bonus,  this shot made a perfect smoke ring as well. I was curious how this configuration would work   with a bunch of Abe Zincoln pennies.  I'm pouring one out for the US penny. Ha.

This one I see I shot with  a laser at some point. Funny. So, there's one really, really big spike there,  like uh about 140,000 amps for a short bit.

So,   that's [laughter] Wow, that that was actually  more than I expected. But of course, it was   very brief. That's hilarious. I was surprised 

how violently the pennies were ejected from   the center like this. But then again, weirder  things have happened at 140,000 amps. Yet again,   zinc showed off its beautiful pyrotechnic colors  in this shot, which were likely complimented by   the copper shells that surround the zinc 

cores. The thick and delicious zinc oxide   smoke seems to make filming the burning metal  so much easier as the smoke diffuses the light   and limits such stark contrast in light  levels. I tried the same configuration   with a bunch of bolts and nuts to see if 

ferromagnetic effects would change anything. Wow, look how much different that was. So, they  didn't even get ejected. They all just stayed   there for the most part.

I guess they were  magnetically sucked in there. That's really   interesting. Wow. Yeah.

Look at that. Just  one giant mass that all melted together. Now,   that is an abstract art piece there.  Beautiful.

I revisited aluminum and   had a few notable shots. In one trial, it  made a really cool sounding oscillator. The lens on my tree camera was hit in another shot  as well.

Since aluminum burns so brightly in air,   I wondered, would it burn in the same way if I zap  some underwater? When I tried crushing a copper   pipe underwater, it ended up just exploding,  but it made for really cool high-speed footage.   I found another aquarium in the woods to  attempt this setup with aluminum cable.   All right. So, camera flashlight camera 

flashlight. Okay. I think I'm ready. Glass went absolutely everywhere on that shot.   I mean, everywhere. Water went everywhere.

My  cameras are soaked. My uh that was that was   ridiculous. That that thing blew up so violently.  Okay.

I really hope that was good. Whoa. Oh my goodness. Oh, that was a cool  shot.

Wow. That was beautiful. Okay. Yes,   that's what I wanted. Only the Lord decides 

how the switch will perform in a given shot,   and this was its slowest turn on of the entire  video. Now, this gradual ramp up of the current   actually made for some interesting slow motion  effects. Once the aluminum was heated well beyond   the boiling point of water, the leidenfrost 

effect became apparent through these neat   oscillating bubbles. The switch managed to close  about a millisecond before the cable melted,   pushing the current to around 70,000 amps as  it exploded. You can actually see the aluminum   melt here.

And notice how it gets magnetically  crushed inwards the moment before it explodes.   This explosion was so much more violent  than the copper pipe that I suspect that   chemical effects played a role. The reaction  of aluminum and water is extremely energetic,   exceeding even thermite by mass.

However, this  reaction is incredibly difficult to initiate,   but I figure a 70,000 amp plasma would do it.  I wanted a better shot of the explosion itself,   so I obtained another aquarium and crimped  another aluminum cable. I used a smaller lug   that better fit the cable in order to push the 

explosion to the center. All right, here we go. Okay, that sounded good. Unfortunately, the copper  lugs exploded before the aluminum here.

I managed   to push a 100,000 amps through this one, but the  explosion was less violent than the previous shot,   which implies the shot earlier was indeed  chemically enhanced. I substantially dialed   back the exposure on the slow-mo compared to the  last shot.

And even though it was the copper that   exploded here, the details of the plasma  bubble are much more apparent this time. The last element on my list to zap  is tungsten, which is the metal with   the highest melting point. This quarter 

inch thick rod may not seem like much,   but this is tungsten after all, so there's  a sizable mass here. Here goes nothing. Did it Did it just burn through instantly? What?  All right.

This is really strange here. So,   uh, it actually just burned and melted the  steel around that. There was a steel holding   it down and it just melted right through that. I 

I think the tungsten did burn a bit, but uh yeah,   I just melted everything else around it.  I guess I I shouldn't be so surprised,   but that's pretty funny. Well,  I I smacked it to unweld it and   uh it just broke it. Of course, tungsten 

is pretty brittle, so I'm going to have to   get a bigger piece of tungsten here to zap. All  right, I've got this long tungsten rod here. So,   it's 1/4 in in diameter. And the thing is, 

I I know that electrically this isn't a big   challenge for these batteries here. This is really  more of a a materials challenge. All right. So,   the idea here is that I' I've added some copper 

under the uh this tungsten rod here. And then   I'm going to use these graphite blocks to  to hold it down with the clamps. So, yeah,   hopefully this works. I'm starting to worry that 

I'm not going to be able to pull this off, but   uh this should at least make a lot of sparks.  So, let's try this. All right, here we go. Oh yeah, it completely detonated. Oh yes, it 

completely detonated in there. Wow. Completely   obliterated it. So, let's see what what the  remnants look like here.

Look at that. That's   true melting. Happened so fast that it definitely  wasn't burning. It actually straight melted the   tungsten.

The slow-mo of this shot is one of my  favorites from the entire video. The white hot   rod gets magnetically shattered into pieces as  it melts, sending a shower of burning fragments   upward in a scene that resembles something  from the Hubble Space Telescope.

All right. So,   you can clearly see that that definitely melted  there. So, I mean, and it happened so fast that   this couldn't possibly just be from burning.  You can see how it liquefied there.

I might I   might try zapping these pieces in parallel  to see uh maybe get a better slow-mo shot. Holy heck. I dialed back the exposure a  bit compared to the first shot.

And yet,   this one ended up even more overexposed than the  first. I really should have expected this with   twice the metal, though. Not only did it melt,  it was splashed upwards there.

Man, I wish I wish   tungsten wasn't so expensive because I'd love  to throw just a huge chunk on here. I ended up   splurging on this half inch thick rod of tungsten.  Once again, this may not look like that much,   but it weighs nearly a kilogram. To put that in 

perspective, this thing weighs more than a typical   fox squirrel, which is North America's largest  species of tree squirrel. The thing is though,   melting this rod in air felt like it  wouldn't even be a challenge. Of course,   the batteries could do it.

I wanted to melt  this rod underwater. This meant I had to come   up with some clever mounts. Even though copper  melts at a far lower temperature than tungsten,   I figured that with enough contact area and a 

big enough current, the tungsten would still   melt even if the full contact area of the copper  melted first. The only issue with a full liquid   metal conduction interface is that nothing  would stop magnetic forces from blasting the   copper plates outwards. So, I loosely bolted 

the plates to a block of phenolic. That way,   as the copper melts, the magnetic forces will  twist the plates in a way that exposes the   tungsten to more solid copper. I couldn't  find any more aquariums in the woods,   so I had to start buying them at Walmart.

The  setup of this took so long. I I will be very   disappointed if this does not work. All right.  Oh, man.

I'm nervous. Okay. All right. Here we go. What happened? I don't even know what happened.

Oh, it's totally gone. What happened here?  I didn't hear like this big explosion, but   I just heard like this boiling. The scope makes  it look like it melted instantly.

I I don't see   I don't see the tungsten rod. I don't know what  happened to it. And it clearly exploded. So yeah,   that's we'll find out once once this 

is done saving. That's really strange.   There's a lot to unravel in this footage. So  I'm going to start with the real time views. Let's start with the obvious.

The tungsten was  blown to pieces as well as the aquarium. However,   did you notice that crazy blue smoke? The  submerged piece of white hot tungsten reacted   with water to make this ridiculous mixed sub  oxide.

I had no idea tungsten could make a   blue compound like this. When the water  drained and this piece was exposed to air,   it then burned with a typical yellowish smoke  associated with this triioxide. Another important   detail is that the cables feeding the aquarium 

z-pinched so violently that they nearly uncrimped   themselves. Now for the slow-mo, the current  in this shot quickly rose to 100,000 amps,   producing tremendous magnetic forces on the cable  loop feeding the rod. And it was these forces that   shattered the aquarium.

It took a full tenth of a  second for the tungsten to melt after the aquarium   first broke. And since the view is so obscured by  water at this point, I can't say for sure whether   it actually melted underwater. Chances are better 

than not that some part of it was exposed to air,   though. Yeah, the Lorentz forces were too strong.  It looks like it just it's so hard to avoid those   huge forces just because I have to the cable  has to bend when it goes in there. You know,   if I were to uh if I had time to redo this 

again, I would replace two of the edges on   the aquarium so I could uh with like on a wood  or something. That way I could I could pass the   cable straight through it. That would that would  save a lot of the forces.

But uh I guess for now,   I'm going to have to call it quits. At this  point, I decided to revisit the magnetic pipe   crushing experiments. Even though I had already  managed a hot pipe crush earlier, I wanted a   better slow-mo shot of that happening.

So, I  repeated the trial with another unfused pipe. However, it failed to crush. The new switch was  way too slow to crush even a melting half-in   pipe.

With the switch before this, the current  would quickly ramp up to a 100,000 amps, even   if it bounced afterwards. While this new switch  can actually close, it can take a full tenth of   a second to reach full current. That's way too 

slow. I moved up to bigger size pipes for the   next trials. I didn't have any cable that would  conveniently crimp to this size of pipe, so I just   smash the pipe ends flat with a hammer. The idea 

with the bigger pipe is that it would allow the   current to rise to a higher value before the pipe  melts. Although it comes at the cost of requiring   even higher current to achieve a given magnetic  pressure. Unfortunately, even this did not lead to   the pipe crushing.

Then one day I had some friends  over and I stuck a pipe on the contacts just with   the intention of making a loud bang for them.  The switch decided to turn on quickly for once. What was the second one? So usually this cuz  the switch is slow.

So you heard the switch go   and the but something was magnetically ejected. I  don't know what something got thrown. Got thrown. Woo! Yeah, look at that.

Completely totally  crushed. The pipe was crushed so violently   that it folded twice. It's too bad I didn't  set up external lighting for the slow-mo   camera since I would have liked to have 

seen more detail here. The magnetic field   managed to suck in some nearby steel  plates and toss them into the yard. This sent me on a wild goose chase of catching  this effect in better lighting.

Naturally, the   effect turned out to be super difficult to repeat  as the switch returned to misbehaving and turning   on too slowly. I was determined to get this to  show up on camera, though, and blew up more pipes   than I'd like to admit in pursuit. The switch 

wasn't always the failure mode in every shot,   though. Sometimes the C clamps would give way  and other times steel objects nearby would get   sucked in magnetically and photobomb the shot.  Crushing the pipe flat did turn out to be somewhat   repeatable. If I hadn't seen the cool double fold 

earlier, I would have been quite content with   this. However, I figured that with enough trials,  the odds would be in my favor for the double fold   to happen again. After countless trials, I  finally got the lucky shot I was waiting for.

In hindsight, I think the trick was placing  the pipe on the edge of the blocks, as this   intersects a stronger external magnetic field  than zigzagging the pipe through the middle. This   adds additional lateral forces along the full  length of the pipe that help initiate folding.

I didn't stop there, though. I still wanted to  crush a pipe without melting it and came up with   an elaborate plan to do so. For starters,  I suspected I could bypass the log splitter   switch by using an SCR to slam on the circuit.

Of  course, I didn't expect the SCR to survive this,   but if it worked for a single shot, that would  be good enough. I also upgraded the pipe from   the hardware store variety to oxygen-free high  conductivity copper.

The reason being is that   at liquid nitrogen temperatures, it's 10 times  more conductive than copper at room temperature.   This allows for significantly more time for  the current to rise before the pipe melts. Now I close the main switch and it's not touching. Okay, now I hit this.

Go. No, I missed it on my camera. Heck. No. [screaming] I had been struggling with my slow-mo 

camera getting EMPed, so I removed the   trigger cable prior to this. I forgot that  this changed the trigger rules on the camera,   and pressing the record button didn't  actually start the recording. Okay,   so man, it's too bad I don't have data from this 

shot, but it actually it did pinch a little bit,   but I think the most intriguing part is that it  uncrimped itself. So, this cable probably got,   you know, crushed and then it pulled itself out  there. So, it pulled out the crimp.

That's pretty   wild cuz I I I really crushed it down with a  hydraulic crimp. So, there was some pinching   and there's a little bit of crushing. A little  bit of crushing, but man, I I just wish I had   the data from that shot.

That's a real shame.  I decided to give this setup another try with   a much more aggressively crimped pipe. I'm going  to hit the camera to detonate it. Right.

Okay. Okay. What happened? Didn't even see any of this.  Let's go look at the slow-mo. I did actually   manage to capture slow-mo of this one.

It's  interesting how the SCR in this shot exploded,   even though the one prior to this did not.  Of course, the first one was still destroyed,   though. Well, looks like it's the SCR that failed  there.

So, yeah, didn't uh didn't quite work.   That fuse is still totally intact. They had a  peak of a little under 100,000 amps, but yeah,   I couldn't make it any any higher than that.  I wonder how much of that was the SCR's fault.   versus other heating in the circuit.  But yep, disappointing.

At this point,   I had to admit defeat with the cold pipe crush  because there are still so many more experiments   left to do. The cold pipe crush could probably  be done with a pulse forming inductor, though,   or maybe just another 400 car batteries. I want 

to do a brief section on zapping auto parts since   this was a popular request for me. An ignition  coil seemed like a good place to start. In the   past, I've abused ignition coils to pull off some  cool high voltage tricks.

With the batteries,   though, the internal coil melted too fast  for anything interesting to happen. I   figured that a starter motor would be more  durable than the ignition coil since it's   designed to draw a significant amount of  current in operation.

Something tells me   it isn't quite rated for the full 400 car  batteries, though. All right, here we go. That was a lame. Slow-mo shows that the motor 

did start to spin, but it still only managed to   survive for mere milliseconds before burning  up. Now, I'm just going to try shorting it   through the case. I feel like this should be  uh should make more sparks this way at least.

Ah, yes. Much better. I have this long dead car  battery here that measures 0 volts and will not   take a charge. I'm curious what will happen 

by zapping it with the batteries. You know,   I feel like containing this one  wouldn't be such a bad idea. I'll   uh play it safe with this  microwave casing.

Uh here we go. Oh jeez. Can't tell what happened. This was one of my most surprising experiments.  It looked as if nothing happened.

But instead of   exploding, this battery was actually revived  somewhat. It seems the plates were desulfated   because the battery can now take and hold a  charge. That's wild.

You know, jumper cables   work pretty well with one car battery. So, of  course, I wonder how well they'll work with   400. I wonder if uh I wonder if they'll melt  first or if they'll magnetically rip apart.

So,   I guess they're just one way to find out.  Oh. Oh, hey. I was not expecting this. Oh,   are you going to be a problem? because um I can't 

blow things up if you're here. Are you going to   interfere with my uh with my car batteries?  My squirrel friend Ophelia decided to visit,   so I had to wait to test out the jumper cables.  She's used to all the explosions at this point,   but I figured I'd let her chew on these antlers  in peace before blowing anything up.

After a   subsequent splooting session, she ran off and I  was able to continue with the jumper cable test.   Here's the uh jig for the uh jumper cables. So,  I'm just going to I just have them short of there   just to just just to see what happens there.  So, we'll see what breaks off first.

Here I go. What? What? The switch is closed. Oh,  well, there's the culprit. It just it   melted through the uh I guess where 

it was crimped to the clamp there.   Well, if these clamps are just going to  melt off, I at least want to see what the   what the actual cable does. So, now I just  have the bare cable against the blocks. All right.

So, this is kind of sus. Get that in  focus. Look how Look, it's silver colored. Is   this like copper plated aluminum or something? 

The the box said it was pure copper. Well,   that is that that's not pure copper. I  don't like that. I think this is just   garbage.

Uh garbage jumper cable. I ended  up making some much nicer jumper cables   using four aught copper cable. All right. This is 

what I have for the new jumper cable setup. So,   have them actually bolted together there.  But you can see you can see how that is glued   together there. So, that's that's really what  I wanted to show.

All right. Am I ready? Yes. Oh yeah, they got obliterated. [laughter] They  got obliterated.

Nice. This was exactly what   I was hoping to see. The huge currents  traveling in opposite directions through   the cables caused tremendous magnetic forces  that ripped them apart.

I couldn't get this   to happen with the garbage cables I zapped  earlier because they melted before passing   enough current. The final auto part to  zap is the suspension spring here. And   I did this one with an audience.

Are you  guys ready? Yep. All right, here we go. Heck, this suspension spring ended up as one of my  favorite shots of the whole project.

And for such   an ironic reason, too. The long length of steel  acted as a resistor and substantially limited   the current, starting at only 8,000 amps and  dropping to less than a thousand by the time it   melted through. It's usually all or nothing with 

these batteries. Either the items are obliterated   in milliseconds or nothing interesting happens. It  was cool to see something that fell in the middle   ground between these two categories. Later on, 

I zapped a length of chain that gave a similar   middle ground result. In this case, the chain  reached a steady state where it got red hot but   never melted through. Other than this chain and  the suspension spring, though, everything else I   zapped either instantly exploded or had no visible 

reaction. Whoa. For the next experiment, I've   hooked the output of the car batteries up to this  metal stick here, mainly because I want to try   cutting stuff with it. Now, I did some experiments 

like this in the last video, but with this one,   I'm most interested in testing different electrode  materials cuz I can already tell you that the   steel electrode here is not going to last long.  So yeah, let's get to experimenting. Now, I'm   going to have to step up the PPE for this section.  In particular, I have this arc flash hood.

Now,   this was actually given to me by Greg Leyh. And if  you don't know who he is, he uh he recently had a   lot of notoriety for his Lorentz Cannon video that  he posted. Now, I actually find it hilarious that   this is the video that got him so much notoriety 

because that's really like a a tame project for   him. He's currently building the biggest Tesla  coils ever operated right now to do some just   ridiculous uh lightning experiments. So yeah, that  guy is the man when it comes to electricity.

So   if you don't know who he is, you should definitely  check him out. And yes, a big thank you to him for   giving me this arc flash hood. I'm going to keep  this section short because between my respirator   and arc flash hood, it sounded like I was speaking 

through a wet sock on my microphone. I would like   to take a moment to appreciate the sparks that  iron makes, not only here, but throughout this   whole project. Iron sparks aren't nearly as bright  as many other metals.

But this fairly subtle   effect pairs nicely with the extreme powers I have  available. Plus, when it comes to filming these   effects, it's much easier to capture something  like iron sparking compared to a bright metal like   magnesium. Honestly, iron is an underappreciated 

element overall. You know, I think of those memes   where it says, "This is why women live longer  than men." Yeah, that was fun. Now, I want   you to notice those curved paths there. I felt 

this, you know, force off to the side when I was   uh when I was trying to cut there. I think that  was being magnetically deflected. It was uh it was   really strong, too. All right.

Now, I've upgraded  to a magnesium electrode this time. Now, magnesium   doesn't have a very high melting point, but it  is surprisingly conductive. And most importantly,   it's very pyrotechnic.

So, I'm curious to see  what happens when I try cutting iron with this   uh with this magnesium electrode here. Oh dear.  Right off the bat, it was clear that magnesium was   an entirely different animal. Since magnesium 

burns so readily and energetically in air,   these chemical effects greatly enhanced the heat  produced in the ark. It didn't take long to ignite   a good portion of my yard on fire with these  scenes. The most dramatic difference compared   to iron was how hard it was to hold the magnesium 

electrode. It was extremely difficult to make more   than a brief contact since the electrode would get  forcefully ejected from the object I was zapping.   The magnesium was obviously drawing more current  here. Now, one interesting thing I do want to note   is that the the magnesium here didn't get that 

warm. So, even though, you know, it just produced   just incredible temperatures there, what happened  here, I just because it's so conductive, it really   didn't get that hot, it wasn't on fire. So, I I  dumped some water on it, and it even like sizzle.   Now, this is the one I'm most excited for.

It's a  big rod of titanium. Now, titanium has a uh it's a   it's more resistive than the uh than the magnesium  is, which honestly is probably going to be a good   thing, but also has a very high melting point, and  more importantly, it's still very pyrotechnic.

So,   yeah, I'm going to hook it up to that stick over  there and and and try it out. This is another one. I would say that titanium was my favorite of  the three metals I tested.

It was far easier   to hold the titanium electrode compared to the  magnesium one, likely due to its much lower   conductivity limiting the current. Even with a  lower current, I'd bet that the average power was   still higher simply because I could actually hold  the electrode in place and get a faster train of   pulses compared to what I could with magnesium. 

Titanium's high melting point also meant that   this electrode lasted much longer than the  others. Look at that titanium rod. I didn't even   realize it was it was getting so hot. Yeah, it's 

clearly more resistive there. But uh [laughter] I can't believe that. But wow, that one  is fun. That is very fun.

There's an old   saying that says that anything will act as  a fuse if you put enough current through   it. I feel like most of the experiments in  this video will fall under that. However,   I do want to try popping some like 

actual legit fuses with these batteries.   In most other scenarios, a 500 amp fuse  would seem pretty huge, but in this context,   it's pretty tiny. What happens when I zap it  with the batteries? All right, here we go. If you thought that was boring, well, it's 

designed to be boring. A fuse is supposed to break   the circuit in the least exciting way possible.  I cut open the fuse to see what's inside.   As you can see, it's filled with sand, which  prevents it from getting spicy when it blows.   Some of the sand actually melted to the fuse  element there.

Here I have a 1,000 amp fuse, and   I'm actually going to cut it open first. That way,  we can at least see some sparks when it pops. This   fuse looks to have parallel elements inside. I 

hope this one is more exciting than the last one. Nothing to write home about, but that vivid  green flash was pretty neat. I can see the   burn through there was a lot more a lot  more complete compared to the last one.   That's probably just because I got rid of 

all the sand inside. I refilled the fuse   with Indium metal to see if anything  cooler would happen when it zapped. Probably should have done the math on that  one because the indium didn't melt at all.

So,   I think there's just way too much  cross-sectional area of indium. But look,   that the magnetic forces actually bent  those tabs there. Those are thick tabs.

So,   that was uh that's pretty silly.  The slow-mo shows that the extreme   currents may have magnetically ejected  the fuse before the indium could melt.   Regardless, I doubled up the cable feeding  the fuse for the next shot to play it safe. All right, there we go.

Yeah, I don't think  there is a drop of indium left in that fuse.   That just completely exploded. That's really,  really funny. Oh, and there's a bolt there that   I did not put I did not put that there.

That  just of course got magnetically sucked in as   everything does. And let's go take a look at  the current. 120 130 130,000 amps.

Not bad.   The slow-mo on this one turned out awesome. Even  though the clamps barely held up for the shot,   most of the indium was ejected as it liquefied,  mainly via magnetic forces at first. And then when   the fuse finally popped, it made an impressive 

explosion. All right, now it's time for the real   inspiration of this section. Some years back,  the electricity legend PhotonicInduction popped   a 5,000 amp fuse. As far as I know, this is still 

the biggest fuse that's been popped on video.   Well, I'm going to try popping a 6,000 amp fuse.  This monster weighs something like 45 lbs. It's   the biggest fuse that I could find online. Now,  it's not often that I can beat photonicinduction   at anything, so I felt like this was a good use 

of my batteries. This monster has silver plated   copper contacts and has an impressive 200,000 amp  interruption rating. That's one heck of a fuse.   Now, of course, being a 6,000 amp fuse means  that it's meant to conduct 6,000 amps without   popping.

So, something like this car battery  here, I mean, it could short this car battery   all day and it's not going to pop. I mean,  it's going to kill the car battery first. So,   this is where the 400 car batteries come in. 

So, how much current does it take to pop this   thing? Well, that depends on the duration of  the impulse. My 6,000 amp fuse is the top line   on this curve here. So, based on this, at 10,000  amps, the fuse will last about 17 minutes before   popping.

If you go up to 20,000 amps, it'll  last about a little less than a minute. But,   of course, I'm most interested in this  end of the curve. At 100,000 amps,   it'll only last 10 milliseconds.

Now, of course,  the uh the actual peak current that this gets to   before it pops is going to depend on how  my switch wants to behave, but regardless,   this shouldn't be very hard for my batteries.  In the interest of making more sparks, I opened   it up and emptied out all the sand inside.  This does change its fusing characteristics,   but I would argue that due to the nature of the 

continuous extreme DC currents I'll be feeding it,   the fuse will now take an even higher impulse  before breaking the circuit. The reason being   is that without the sand, it's going to make some  angry plasma. That's hilarious.

It's just bunch of   smaller fuses in parallel. So, like that all the  way down, isn't it? Fuselets all the way down. I'm not even going to bother cleaning  the contacts here because it'll melt   straight through all that, you 

know, char and stuff on there. All right, there it is. All the camera's  going. Here we go.

Let's pop it. Let's   see. All right. I think I'm ready for this. I 

think I'm ready. Let me get my slow-mo camera   set up here. All the camera's good.  Think so. All righty.

Here we go. Jeez, I think I popped it. Wow. I can't wait to  see what the uh what it pulled in the scope there.   Oh, yeah.

Big pulse. Big pulse there. Oh, it's  What happened? What? It's not dead. No.

No way.   It It It melted the contact block. It didn't blow  up the fuse. That's crazy. What? It didn't pop   it.

What? Look at that. It melted the block first  and it ripped up that C-clamp. There's only That's   insane. I'll just have to resituate that cuz 

yeah, the fuse is completely intact. Wow. I was   so confident that that was going to work in one  shot, too. It's crazy.

Sure enough, the close-ups   show that the fuse itself was completely untouched  by this. The sparks were simply from the contacts   below burning up and causing the C-clamps to  give way as a result. If you wonder why I didn't   bolt the fuse to the blocks, it's because the 

blocks are too uneven from previous experiments,   meaning bolts would lead to the same results as  the C-clamps. This isn't something I can buff out.   A suitable clamp, however, will allow the high  points to melt, giving a conduction path with   very low resistance. Okay, so I've I've changed 

this side to spring clamps. That way, it can like   follow through as any variations uh burn out  there. So, yeah, let's let's give that another   go. I can't I can't believe that this is taking me 

two tries. This is silly. All right, here we go. Okay. Yes, that one finally popped it. 

Thank goodness. There we go. I'm surprised   how clean of a burn through that was. It just  completely vaporized those pieces in there.

Kind   of surprised just considering the voltage I'm  dealing with is low. But that that definitely   did it. That was a full pop. The switch had a 

few hiccups there, but once it finally closed,   the fuse pulled 150,000 amps. So, that is why that  was so violent there. Nice. The slow-mo shows that   the fuse made an incredibly violent plasma jet 

when it burned through. Impressive. One thing I   have to mention is that when photonicinduction  popped his fuse, he used a capacitor bank that   gave a short but intense impulse. Now, 

he claims a peak current of 200,000 amps.   Now, even though he doesn't provide waveforms, he  likely achieved at least that number. Now, when I   set out to make this video, I really thought I was  going to show you the highest current on YouTube,   but that's because I I didn't consider his  video, and I popped a bigger fuse than him,   but as far as the the highest peak current on 

YouTube, he still has me beat. I will say this,   though, his capacitor bank is very impressive.  And although I don't have a capacitor bank   like he does, I do actually have a more  energetic pulsed electrical device. No,   I'm not talking about the batteries.

I'm  talking about the cables feeding the batteries,   specifically in their inductance. When the  bank fires, there's actually more energy   stored in the magnetic field around the cables  than photonicinductions capacitor bank at full   charge.

This inductive energy plays a role in  the explosions I get when objects burn through. Now, even though I popped this fuse,  I still have one experiment in mind   left for it. I want to see how it acts when 

filled with metallic sodium. Interestingly,   when I was considering sacrificial fuses for the  pipe crushing experiments, sodium metal stuck out   to me as a promising material since it has a very  high conductivity along with a low melting point. Yeah, just sort of smash it all in 

the middle like that. Maybe I can   shove it back in. There was a lot  of leftover sodium from that shot,   so I smashed it up against the contacts in  order to give it another zap.

Ready, we go. Honestly, these shots were kind of mid. I think  sodium's high conductivity actually made it hard   to heat up with the batteries. Spraying everything 

down with a hose afterwards showed that little   droplets of sodium had been splattered everywhere,  which I thought was pretty funny. Now, it's time   for my favorite experiments of this whole project,  the magnetic experiments. As you've seen countless   times by now, the currents I can pull from my 

batteries produce incredibly strong magnetic   fields. Now, these fields were a nightmare when I  was trying to build my switch. But now that I have   that somewhat solved, now I can actually have fun  with the magnetic field.

A typical electromagnet   involves a coil of wire wrapped around an iron  core. At the currents I'm dealing with though,   an iron core will just saturate, which means I'm  better off not using anything as a core material.   Now, the problem is that making even a bare coil  is an engineering challenge at these currents.   It takes an enormous amount of metal to not melt 

just instantly. And that's on top of how magnetic   forces will try to shred any coil arrangement.  As an example, I wound this coil here with stiff   aluminum cable. Its resistance is high enough  that it will only pass around 50,000 amps or so.

Even at these limited currents, the coil windings  are strongly attracted to each other and cause the   coil to scrunch up. At 150,000 amps, these forces  would be far stronger. I spent a lot of time   considering how I was going to make suitable 

coils without spending a fortune on metal.   But after witnessing how anything becomes  a magnetic black hole at these currents,   I realized that even straight pieces of  copper would be more than adequate for   these experiments. Sure enough, by sticking  a couple cables on the blocks and tossing   a bunch of nuts and bolts around them, 

the magnetic effects are super obvious. Wow, look at that. Look at the exploded cable  there. The switch performed horribly in this shot,   but even so, the nuts and bolts were glued to the 

cable before the current had hit even a quarter   of peak. When the cable finally melted through,  it managed to catapult some of the bolts across   the yard. Anyone that grew up with a CRT TV is  probably aware of the fun that can be had when a   magnet is brought near them.

Their sensitivity  to magnetic fields is the same effect as all   the other magnetic forces in this video. It  is yet another example of the Lorentz force   acting on current. I was curious how much a CRT 

TV would be affected by the fields produced by   this battery bank. The load for this shot is  my standard pair of four aught copper cable.   I really hope this doesn't kill the TV.  All right, let's do this. And here we go.

That had an adverse effect on the  electronics in this TV. [laughter] The magnetic field was so intense that it just  turned off. I didn't know that could happen.

Oh,   yeah. The the CRT looks different after that.  I know it temporarily killed it, but uh yeah,   let's let's take a look. Yeah, I think that  was a bit excessive because it the magnetic   field was so strong it just completely 

deflected the beam off the screen. So yeah,   maybe I need to move it away. Yeah, that plasma  shield did some work there. Ripped off one of   the C clamps and then wrapped that cable back.

A  peak of 160,000 amps. So pretty intense. You know,   I think it was a bit much to have the uh the  TV in the center there.

I decided I moved it   out this time. And I also uh I'm going to limit  the currents by using this steel rod instead   of copper because yeah, I think 160,000  amps was a bit much. Then also now that   the field is going to be the magnetic field 

is going to be reversing directions here. So   uh maybe maybe we'll actually fix the TV by by  having it sit out here. So yeah. Okay, here we go.

Yeah, that was much gentler that time.  That was only about 55,000 amps. So, yeah,   that was pretty interesting. I'm glad I tried  that.

Now it looks as good as new. The image on   a CRT TV is produced by an electron beam. And it's  this current that gets deflected by the magnetic   field. This sort of magnetic beam deflection is 

actually the basis of mass spectrometry, which is   a standard analytical tool in chemistry. I made  an important discovery when I zapped a Z-shaped   cable. My intention was to physically simulate  the forces and torque present on my Z switch   arrangement.

The clamps ended up failing on this  one, but it functioned as a magnetic catapult.   If you look closely, cable fragments were ejected  so quickly that it managed to do a little tree   trimming out in the distance. The slow-mo shows  a lot of cool details.

A bunch of magnetic junk   got sucked in like in every other shot. But in  this one, a little magnetic particle managed to   orbit the cable for a bit. The main takeaway from  this shot, though, is that the cable is bent from   its original arrangement and violently ejected 

upwards. I stuffed the cable back in the blocks,   but this time I bent the cable so that it was  below the center line of the currents feeding it.   The switch struggled to close in this one, causing  the cable to bounce around for a while at first,   but the main result was clear. It was being 

violently slammed downwards this time. A   bonus is that when the fuse in the center finally  exploded, it ejected a neat ring of liquid copper.   These shots gave me an epiphany regarding the  mysterious forces that eject the cables from the   blocks. I thought I had solved it earlier and that 

the fields from the straight current through the   blocks was causing this. But no, that's completely  wrong. Those fields do exactly the opposite. They   actually pulled inward via the z-pinch effect. 

That means that this mysterious, tremendously   strong outward force is actually beating the  fierce z-pinch forces that pull it inward.   What's actually going on here is quite profound.  I've had to read a lot about fusion power for this   project because I'm dealing with fusion levels of  current and the people in this field have done a   good job at documenting the just crazy things that  happen at extreme currents.

Now, sure enough, the   same phenomenon that launches items in my setup  is actually a huge issue in fusion reactors. So,   here's the basic idea for what's going on.  So when a current path is perfectly straight,   that means that the magnetic forces that crush  inwards are also perfectly balanced.

However,   this is an unstable equilibrium. If there's  any sort of bend in this current path,   then you get this buildup of magnetic field on  the inside of the curve compared to the outside,   which causes a net force pushing outwards.  Now, of course, this makes the current path   make an even bigger bend, which means you have 

an even bigger force pushing outwards, and you   get this runaway force. And and this effect is  called the kink instability. Now, in my setup,   the fact that the current has to make this small  bend off the blocks is actually the origin of   this incredibly strong force that launches 

my items. And just to clarify this insanity,   simply making the current take a 1-in jump off  the center of the blocks produces forces so strong   that it can rip up four 8-in C-clamps that have  been wrenched down so hard that the handles are   bent. That is the nature of extreme currents for 

you. Now, I'm lucky in that my current path is   through a solid conductor, which means I can  just add more clamps or maybe pound the ends   flat first to defeat this force. Now, when  the conductor is a plasma, like in fusion,   this is much harder to deal with.

In fact, it's  instabilities like this that are one of the main   obstacles to achieving fusion power. In order to  mitigate the kink instability, I started using   leftover pipes from the crushing experiments as  loads.

By pounding the ends flat, I can mount them   closer to the blocks than the four out cable. And  the rigidity helps prevent runaway forces compared   to the flexible cable as well. For this shot, I  sprinkled a bunch of magnetite to under the pipe.

I was disappointed when I had to concede that I  couldn't get a perfect turn on with my switch.   But in many of these experiments, the initial  chaotic changes in current honestly make for   cooler video. In this clip, an initial brief  pulse launches some of the magnetite beyond   the pipe.

And this happens once again before the  switch finally latches shut. If you look closely,   you'll see that the magnetite spirals inward  as opposed to traveling straight to the pipe.   The coolest part of this clip is after the pipe  explodes and the magnetite rains down here in   this crazy pattern.

I think what's happening  here is that the magnetite was magnetized by   the current and this residual magnetization  causes the particles to clump up and stick   together. I wanted a better slow-mo shot of  bolts getting sucked into the magnetic black   hole of all its current.

So, I repeated this  experiment using a pipe fragment as the load. Woo! All right. Beautiful. Unfortunately, both 

C-clamps failed to hold down the pipe in this one,   causing a bunch of sparks to obscure the view.  One of the C-clamps was completely destroyed   here as well, since it briefly conducted some  of the battery current. I used a longer pipe   for the next shot. That way I could hold 

it down with four C clamps instead of two. This could be an epic one. Let's see how this  one went. Oh yeah, that was awesome.

Cool. Yeah,   it was awesome. That was a good shot. I couldn't  tell where it went, but that's just cuz it got   slapped backwards there.

And all those bolts  just went everywhere. Yeah, it looks like a   peak of 160,000 amps on that shot. Switch had some  issues, but uh hey, it did its job.

Sort of. This   is one of my favorite shots of the entire video.  The bolts were quickly sucked in by the current,   and the oscillatory nature of the startup is once  again apparent here. It's clear that it's not just   the bolts getting pulled in by the field, though. 

A spring clamp on the ground found its way to the   pipe as well. And even way in the background, you  can see everything magnetic getting thrown around.   The pipe eventually collapsed by the forces  of the current it was carrying, and it made a   hefty fireball when it finally melted through.  I wanted to see if I could hit a weight limit   for the lifting forces.

So, I placed about 10 lb  of big bolts all around the pipe for this shot. That sound good? I I don't understand what  happened. What? That's weird.

They all got   sucked in and glued to it. What? That doesn't make  any sense. What? That's so weird. I've never had   that happen.

This one was unusual in that the  bolts didn't fall back down afterwards. They   were stuck to the pipe. Now, this is really  weird.

So, the pipe got pulled downwards and   these are all like glued to the pipe. They're all  welded together. The slow-mo shows that the nearby   bolts were effortlessly sucked in by the magnetic  field.

And less than a tenth of a second later,   the bolts that were out of frame on the ground  got sucked in as well. There was so much iron   getting pulled in and accumulating on the  pipe that it eventually spanned the entire   gap between the blocks, which meant that it too  began directly conducting some of the current.   This current welded all of the bolts together and 

around the pipe. So, this is why they didn't fall   off afterwards. The biggest iron object I had  that would fit between the blocks was this anvil.   It weighs 10 kilos or 22 lb. So, it's a hefty 

little piece of iron. All right, here we go. Sounds like the anvil got zapped. It never stops  being crazy to me that the strongest electromagnet   I've gotten to screw around with on video isn't 

a big coil of wire around an iron core or even   a coil at all. It's merely a straight piece of  copper that just so happens to pass an entire   thunderstorm's worth of charge in a couple tenths  of a second. Much like the big bolts before this,   the anvil was pulled up against the copper blocks, 

causing it to pass some of the current as well,   which is the reason for the sparks. I want to  point out something surprising about the dirt   on the blocks here. I know countless commenters  are going to lecture me about dirty contacts   increasing resistance and causing problems, 

but I found that the max current is completely   unaffected by whether I clean these or not.  Where contact resistance actually matters is   in all the little cable connections throughout  the bank. Those have to be spotless to get the   currents I'm achieving. However, I found that 

anywhere the current density gets extreme,   like the blocks or the switch, the  contact interfaces actually melt,   giving a purely metal conduction path that  has extremely low resistance. If anything,   the dirty blocks help the switch close faster  because the current initially ramps up slowly.   Pretty weird, right? I zapped a pipe near an 

array of compasses in order to visually map   out the fields. Notice how they're pointing  all over the place at the start here. This is   because of the pieces of iron nearby that have  been magnetized from the previous experiments.

Jeez, where where'd it go? Where' the pipe  go? I have no idea where the pipe went. Here it is. Oh, it got crumpled like crazy.  Look at that.

Wow. It really folded in.   That's impressive. That was one of my best  crushes. I nearly didn't include this compass   bit in the video because what the compasses 

show doesn't make any sense. In particular,   the four compasses on the side of the block to the  left read alternating values. That's ridiculous.   They should all be aligned with each other. I 

initially chocked this up to the compasses being   cheap garbage and simply reading incorrectly.  The pipe crush at the end was so good, though,   that I wanted to include this clip in the video.  I decided to give the compasses the benefit of   the doubt. I grabbed my box of new compasses and  tested them with a magnet.

Much to my surprise,   they all tested perfectly. That's strange. I  had kept the compasses used in the experiment   separate since they were dirty. So I grabbed that 

box and tested them. Lo and behold, some of them   read exactly the opposite of what they should.  What gives? A compass works on the principle of a   magnetized needle aligning itself with a magnetic  field. It seems what happened here is that the   magnetic field became so strong so suddenly 

that the compass needles that were initially   aligned against the field didn't have enough time  to reorient and were remagnetized in the opposite   direction. That's pretty neat. I had noticed that  these pipes have been acting as decent catapults.   So, I wanted to try intentionally launching 

something this way. I glued a big steel nut   to this GoPro here and notched the pipe to  cause it to melt through in this location. Yep, we're good. All right, here we go.

Where'd it go? Oh, it it didn't get lodged. Well,  it did not get launched into orbit, it looks like.   Sad. A little crispy, too. The inertial forces 

were too strong, and the nut was immediately   ripped off the GoPro. The nut was catapulted  into oblivion, but the GoPro barely moved. I   ended up bolting the nut to the GoPro in a very  ironic way in order to give this another try.

We're going to get launched. It  wasn't launched as far as I'd like,   but I am impressed how well it held up to the  magnetic fields. I've had major issues with   my cameras getting EMPed throughout this 

video, and that's even with them spaced   much further away from the big currents. The  time has come for the final experiments. In   my favorite shots of this project, I'm going  to see what happens to ferrofluid next to a   pipe carrying 160,000 amps.

Ferrofluid is  a neat way to visualize magnetic fields,   and it consists of magnetic particles  suspended in a fluid. Most demos showcase   it around permanent magnets, but of course  it works just as well around electromagnets,   too.

Considering the strength of the fields I have  available, I expect this one to be pretty cool. Woo! Something exploded. Oh god,  the pipe crushed.

All right,   that was cool. See what that looks like.  Holy, that was an epic shot. Wow. Wow.

Okay,   I didn't realize that the dark background  wouldn't offer enough contrast against the   ferrofluid to see it rise up. But at least the  fluid wrapping around the pipe was super obvious.   I want to point out the bit of ferrofluid  that gets trapped around this little iron   post.

And that's due to the iron concentrating  the fields in this area. As the pipe heated up,   so did the ferrofluid around it, causing the oils  to boil off and make a thick white fog. The pipe   in this shot was crushed from the current.

And  when it finally melted through, the sparks ignited   the oil vapors and made a huge fireball. I decided  to give this another try with a better background   using a piece of wood to offer some contrast  against the ferrofluid.

All right, here we go. Woo. That was That was nice. See what that  looked like.

Wow. So, completely stained   that piece of wood black from the ferrofluid  and then it just crumbled that pipe. Nice.   Wonder what the current was on that. Oh, it 

was huge. Oh yeah. Yep. That was 160 at its   peak. That was a a really good shot.

Well, for  the new switch configuration. Holy heck. Sadly,   I had bumped the camera lens out of focus  for this one, which is such a shame because   this shot was destined for greatness.

This was my  last bit of ferrofluid, too. So, I almost called   it quits here and settled on the earlier shot. I  realized that if there was one shot to do right,   it was this one.

So, I ordered another bottle of  ferrofluid to give it yet another go. All right,   so I'm going to go camera light, heat switch,  and back to the camera. Okay, here we go.

Jeez. Wow. That is always so surprisingly loud. See?  Yes.

Yes. That was finally it. This was the   shot right here. And I think it's the coolest  thing I've ever filmed in my life.

In the span   of a tenth of a second, nearly the entirety of  the dish of ferrofluid was slammed up against   the pipe while the total circuit power rose to  over 10 million watts. One detail that stands   out to me is how the smaller bits of ferrofluid  in midair are aligned with the field.

And another   is that many of the particles take a spiraled  path inwards. Just like in the other attempts,   the pipe implodes from the 160,000 amps that it  passes. And once it melts through, it ignites the   hot ferrofluid to make a huge fireball.

I think it  will be hard for me to ever top a shot like this.   I've already mentioned that this video was not  my idea. It was actually the company AnyDesk that   reached out to me and wanted me to experiment  with a bunch of car batteries.

And of course,   they bought me all the batteries as well as the  supplies I needed to make this video possible.   Now, the fact that a video sponsor came up with  the best idea for a video on my channel is still   just astonishing to me. I know Any Desk is going  for the whole Red Bull of Science kind of vibe,   and they really hit it out of the park with this 

one because this was a genius idea for so many   reasons. It's one thing to make an electrical  video about something like capacitors or Tesla   coils. And although these can be a lot of fun,  these aren't things that most people can relate   with, but car batteries, everybody knows what 

those are and everybody knows they are powerful.   It goes far beyond the clickbait appeal, though.  These car batteries gave me currents riving what's   seen in multi-billion dollar facilities. They  allowed me to poke the fundamental forces of   the universe. And as a result, they allowed me 

to take footage unlike anything ever recorded   before. You can thank AnyDesk for making all of  this possible. So, what even is AnyDesk? Well,   AnyDesk gives you a lightning fast connection  to all your devices.

Whether it's your computer,   your surveillance network, or even your favorite  experimental apparatus, you can manage them from   all around the world with low latency and on  low bandwidth. With AnyDesk, you can offer   tech support for loved ones from the comfort of  your home or help out work clients from wherever   life takes you.

AnyDesk free for personal use and  offers business plans that are custom tailored to   your IT and work from home needs. AnyDesk is also  in the business of supporting some of the coolest   science projects on the internet. If you have 

ideas for ridiculous science experiments that   you'd like me or another YouTuber to try, submit  them at anydesk.com/science. The ideas that are   brought to reality will win cool prizes and  lead to the creation of epic videos. So yeah,   a big thank you to AnyDesk for making this project 

possible. So at this point, I've ran out of time   to continue the battery experiments. I mean,  winter's clearly here, and the cold temperatures   dramatically limit the kind of current I can  pull from the batteries.

That means that any   further experiments will have to wait until next  year when it warms back up again. So, what will   I do with the batteries until then? Well, they're  just going to hibernate out here in the yard. Now,   I know this is surprising to most, but the rain 

and snow really aren't bad for them. I mean,   the only critical detail for storing them in the  cold is that they're kept fully charged. I mean,   the first hundred have been sitting out here for  2 years now.

Oh my gosh, the snow is blinding me.   But those those two-year-old batteries  still test almost new just because I've   always kept them fully charged. Now, if you're  curious how I've been charging the batteries,   I've just been using this 1500 watt power supply  here.

Now, if you think this seems small, well,   it is. It's just that, you know, every experiment  with these batteries takes a lot of prep. So, in a   typical day, I can really only do a few shots and,  you know, that doesn't really discharge them by   all that much.

So, you know, slowly charging them  with this thing is more than adequate. Now, I will   say that it feels like I've barely scratched the  surface of what's possible with these batteries.   It's just that I spent so much time working on the  Switch that I didn't have time to get through all   the experiments that I wanted to.

So, needless  to say, there will be more videos with these   batteries in the future. Now, as far as future  experiments go, there's a lot I have in mind. Uh,   I really wanted to melt tungsten underwater, as 

well as some other underwater experiments. So,   that's probably like the lowest hanging fruit  of uh future experiments I can do. Now, I know a   lot of people want me to wire all these things in  series here, but I really just can't think of that   many things I'd do with that kind of arrangement. 

I mean, yeah, I could draw some just ridiculous   arcs, but other than that, I just I really don't  feel that it's worth the effort or risk really.   Now, that being said, I did arrange all these  battery subbanks in a way where I can fairly   easily rewire this bank to 500 volts. and you know  500 volts at 20,000 amps.

I think there's a lot of   fun to be had there. There is a more interesting  way to get higher voltage from the batteries   though. If I were to stick a big coil in the  circuit, uh that would allow me to get these big   currents also at a high voltage.

So the idea with  that is that uh you know you'd build up a bunch of   uh magnetic energy in the coil which you can then  release in an instant in this just enormous pulse.   So if I wanted to build a rail gun with these  batteries, that's how I would power it. and even   just for like blowing things up.

If you stick a  big coil between the batteries and the load, it's   going to make the explosions a lot more violent.  I'd like to give a special thank you to Greg Leyh,   Seth Miller, Bert Hickman, as well as all the  members of my Discord for the advice that they   gave me throughout this project. I'd also like to 

thank all of my Patreon and channel members for   all of the support. As always, these supporters  get early viewing of my videos as well as sneak   peeks on all of my projects. So yeah, that's all  I have for this video.

I hope you enjoyed it and   uh and be sure to stay tuned for even crazier  experiments in the future. Thanks for watching.