BIG FRIGGIN' ARC!!!
 

It's not really about 'electronics' in the sense of this forum, but it is electrical. A friend sent me this link and my 2 years of electronics engineering in college the first time around have left me with just enough residual knowledge for this to not completely go over my head, but rather graze the top of my head and nearly shave my hair clean off at the top of the scalp.

Anywho...you have to click the picture for the movie.

http://www.wiseguysynth.com/larry/day.htm

Holy shit. I don't know fuck all about electricity and shit, but that was impressive (and probably scary as hell for the poor schmucks at the site of it). That must be a lot of juice flowing through there, based on the sound and size of the arc.

If you wade through the gobbledy-goop on the page, the author of the page has worked with high tension powerlines or something like that for 27 years. His guess on what's going on there is probably sound, so based on his hypothesis and the numbers therein you can get an idea of how much power is being released there.

He estimates that the lines are 500KV lines (s'right kids, 500,000 Volts) which run up to 2000 amperes. Someone correct me if I'm wrong because it's been a few years since my last electronics class, but simple electronics know how tells us that voltage x current = power. 500,000V x 2000A = 1,000,000,000W.

One. Billion. Watts.

i think they knew it was gonna happen. Why have the camera set up otherwise? And the guy standing near the truck doesn't look surprised at all. Also, you hear the sound of the arc, which means the mic was on. You don't hear any "HOLY SHIT!" from the cameraman, despite the fact that he's not a pro (notice how the camera is tilted about 10 degrees to the right) so it doesn't seem to have surprised anyone ;)

my guess is they were making a "this shit's powerful, don't mess with it" training video.

that was awesome as hell. Imagine seeing that in real life! That would suck to get......anywhere near that thing, much less shocked by it.

Unbelievable video. So cool.

As for how much current..and therefore how much power we are seeing, the current CAPACITY of these lines is 2 kA, but since there was essentially a large resistor (the air gap) in the circuit, it is likely much less.

that looks like it was prolly near mojave california... those mountains in the background look really familiar

and damn... need a couple metal boat masts and make ourselves one massive jacobs ladder!

Question is: will my speakers handle it or not?

ha ha ha. That was funny, juju.

Wow that is one cool video. The guys in the lower right were hiding behind the truck so I think it was planned. I would have been wrapping myself in rubber while running from the area.

that was hella cool...being an electrical engineer specializing in power and control...i can appriciate that a lot

Kinda cool to see the "wires" (for lack of a better term) retract as soon as the arc began. Is that an automatic safety measure or what?

http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm#500_kV_Switch

It's explained there.

That was pretty awesome

That was one of the sickest things I've ever fucking seen.

That page rocks Nash! THANKS!

I've actually shocked myself with 1/5th that amount of voltage, but probably 1/1,000,000th the current.

That has definatly go to be the largest jacobs ladder ever!

My favourite part was at the end:
"WHOA!"

woww

It is so unreal it almost looks fake! I agree with some type of setup. No way those guys wouldn't be hauling ass if that just happened.

The badass level of that surpasses any other electricity video that I've ever seen.

wow. My neat sparks generated by jumping a couple hacked old computer monitors in series aren't nearly as cool as they were 90 seconds ago.