Zappity Zap

[WRT]

Looks pretty cool, not that these plebs would know, hard to see whats happening while you are cowering behind the front of your truck. Shoulda parked further back, methinks - shame it didnt hit the truck, that woulda looked even cooler.

Impressive stuff tho . . .

[Eurodave]

Woah!! Dude!! WTF was that? explain....

[Lias]

I'd love to have someone explain that but even so its still cool as fuck looking.

[WRT]

Dont really know much about it, but apparently its a 500,000v circuit breaker?

[ManDownUnder]

Looks pretty cool, not that these plebs would know, hard to see whats happening while you are cowering behind the front of your truck. Shoulda parked further back, methinks - shame it didnt hit the truck, that woulda looked even cooler.

Impressive stuff tho . . .

Yeah. I saw what happens when someone gets caught too close to 240kV (the NZ equivalent of the high voltage lines) and he went through plastic surgery hell for years...

The arcs look cool though - love the way they take on a life of their own twirling and dancing like that.

[ManDownUnder]

Dont really know much about it, but apparently its a 500,000v circuit breaker?
Sounds right. Not sure of the voltages but I know the long distance lines are higher voltage than the NZ ones. Some operate at 750kV I think.



I'd love to have someone explain that but even so its still cool as fuck looking.

The arc gets struck and ionises the air - making it more conductive and as the ionised air heats it rises carrying the arc with it, as far as the voltage will allow the arc to be maintained.

Same principle and stick welding. You need to "strike the arc" (really close) but then you can draw the arc back once everything's burning.

Looks cool - you should see it at night

[bugjuice]

yeah, seen that a few times before.
bloody impressive, and just as s/he zooms out, you see the people and truck, really gives you a sense of the scale of it.

It was explained to me before about what and why it happened, but can't remember word for word. Basically, it's pumping heaps of voltage. Static in the air could have been higher than normal, and it was just fusing the static in order for it to jump from one pole to the other.

The poles moving happen all the time, and most parts of the world. They're probably here somewhere. It's to switch between loads and demands and circuits

[ManDownUnder]

The poles moving happen all the time, and most parts of the world. They're probably here somewhere. It's to switch between loads and demands and circuits

The poles moving you mention are "circuit breakers" (aka a bloody big switch). They're in place at every power station in the country.

The best ones are the "air breakers" which shoot a blast of air through the gap when the switch first opens, blowing out the arc and stopping this from happening. When the air breakers go off they literally sound like a cannon shot, and can be heard 5km away on a good day.

I used to work at a power station in Taranaki and we'd have loads of visitors come through. The worker bees at the station could tell when the breakers were about to go off because we could hear the generating units winding down. One of the guys was notorious for picking up on it and leading the visitors over toward the switchyard (where the breakers live) and explain the voltages, and if anything went wrong there'd be death, mayhem and...

**BOOM**

One time this kid just ran - simply ran, up a ladder (2 floors) opened the door and went inside - straight into one of the generating units (it was safe enough but set off every alarm in the control room...)

Lots of fun

[limbimtimwim]

Impressive stuff tho . . ."HRC's latest ignition kit"

:-)

[sAsLEX]

I used to work at a power station in Taranaki and we'd have loads of visitors come through.

Lots of fun

What station? dad still works at NP and knows most of the people in the industry


is the jacobs ladders that sparks a cool arc that rises slowly then re arcs at the bottom?

[Sniper]

That was pretty cool. Playing with fire has nothing on playing with electricity now......

[ManDownUnder]

What station? dad still works at NP and knows most of the people in the industry


is the jacobs ladders that sparks a cool arc that rises slowly then re arcs at the bottom?

Stratford, and my Father in law was an operator at NP for years.

PM me with details of your old man

edit - yes the jacobs ladder is as you describe - complete with really cool crackling noise
MDU

[ManDownUnder]

That was pretty cool. Playing with fire has nothing on playing with electricity now......

Would rather play with fire.

Electricity has this bad habit of keeping you in the game - you can let go of fire when it starts to hurt

[Sniper]

Electricity has this bad habit of keeping you in the game - you can let go of fire when it starts to hurt

That just proves that electricity is a much more caring friend. It never wants to let you go :doh: :blink:

Bugger that though, I have electrocuted myself more times than I have had birthdays. Playing with fire is still better

PT

[Colapop]

It's a disconnector arrangement on a 500kV line. We're in the process of designing the 400kV ones for NZ. The line shown was deliberately overloaded to 'force test' the equipment (that's how they knew what and where to video). It was a test of the circuit breaker in Nevada. First the circuit breaker flashes over then the disconnector opens which extends the arc it would have gone on for ages but they opened a circuit breaker upstream from it.


And Sniper, electrickery is worse than fire - it cooks you from the inside.

[WRT]

And Sniper, electrickery is worse than fire - it cooks you from the inside.

Thats one hell of a microwave - how long to cook a chook? Does it do good gravy?

[Colapop]

Thats one hell of a microwave - how long to cook a chook? Does it do good gravy?

Hey, same question I asked. And I'll tell ya what I got told "You stand over there with your chook and I'll flick the switch."

[WRT]

Hey, same question I asked. And I'll tell ya what I got told "You stand over there with your chook and I'll flick the switch."

I was gonna go more for the "stand back and throw" method - you wanna stand on the other side with a pair of oven mits ready to catch it?

[bugjuice]

Would rather play with fire.

Electricity has this bad habit of keeping you in the game - you can let go of fire when it starts to hurt
wuss .

[ManDownUnder]

wuss .

if being scared of that shit keeps me from being electroplated (again - with 400V.... OUCH OUCH FUCKEN OUCH)

then yeah - wuss!

[bugjuice]

pfft, and I thought you were fun..
should have dropped the electric eel in the dive pool last week.. now there's fun we all could have had

[Colapop]

I was gonna go more for the "stand back and throw" method - you wanna stand on the other side with a pair of oven mits ready to catch it?
Hmmm if 240V (home power) can make your hand black (done it) then I wonder what 400,000V would do? (please don't anybody bring up the volts/amps difference thng)

Lets put it this way if you upscaled a chicken to the size that it would have to be to get cooked (and only cooked not burnt) you' d be looking at a chook the size of a hippo. Anyone for drumsticks?

[ManDownUnder]

pfft, and I thought you were fun..
should have dropped the electric eel in the dive pool last week.. now there's fun we all could have had

That was no eel... I just paint it that way so I don't put the boys off when I go swimming (too tight if I stuff it into my pants...)

Did you notice the chicky kinda liked me - and you wondered why...

[Wolf]

Lets put it this way if you upscaled a chicken to the size that it would have to be to get cooked (and only cooked not burnt) you' d be looking at a chook the size of a hippo. Anyone for drumsticks?
Go on, WRT, let's see ya throw it.

[bugjuice]

That was no eel... I just paint it that way so I don't put the boys off when I go swimming (too tight if I stuff it into my pants...)

Did you notice the chicky kinda liked me - and you wondered why...
no, she was gagging and I wondered why..
the eel was my back up 'carrier'..

[WRT]

Go on, WRT, let's see ya throw it.

I was thinking more a size 16 tegal, but what the hell. You find me a Moa, I'll find a way to chuck it (http://www.castlewales.com/trebucht.html) . . .

[sAsLEX]

I was thinking more a size 16 tegal, but what the hell. You find me a Moa, I'll find a way to chuck it (http://www.castlewales.com/trebucht.html) . . .


seen the competition they have in the states to hurl stuff with these things?
can get some awesome distances with huge projectiles! and they use thier own weight as ballast in some of them

[Wolf]

I was thinking more a size 16 tegal, but what the hell. You find me a Moa, I'll find a way to chuck it (http://www.castlewales.com/trebucht.html) . . .
Dunno about finding a moa but, man, that thing's cool, I wonder if they let the tourists go for a ride on it....

[WRT]

THE ARC OF TRIUMPH
In Britain, at Acton Round, 150 miles north of London, lives Hew Kennedy, the proud godfather of all this. He is in his late fifties, a landowner with a considerable estate, nearly 700 acres, most of it in woods and rolling hills. Kennedy went to Sandhurst, the West Point of Great Britain, where he learned that Napoleon III had built a trebuchet and that it had not worked very well. "The French had done something wrong." He adds: "Of course."

In time, he talked a neighbor, Richard Barr, into building a trebuchet that would be the envy of the French and everyone else. After some false starts, they built one 60 feet high, on two A-frames fashioned out of the logs from 24 trees. Between the A-frames was an axle. On the axle pivoted a three-ton beam powered by a six-ton counterweight. It was in a field where Kennedy grazed sheep. He and Barr invited other neighbors, properly tweedy. The sheep grew understandably nervous. "None have been killed," Kennedy says, "but we have had some near misses."

To date, Kennedy and Barr have flung:

- Sixty pianos, most of them uprights but several grand pianos as well. "They accelerate up to about 90 miles per hour in about 2 1/2 seconds," Barr says, "which is about 14 to 20 G's." Each was tuned and concert-ready.

- A half dozen motorcars: Morris Minors, Hillmans, Austin Minis, even an Italian Lancia. "We like to throw the whole car," Barr says. "It's got to have the engine in it and the wheels on it." If the car will not run, they will not throw it. "Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be any point."

- Several dead cows, a dead horse and a lot of dead pigs. "A pig makes a good missile," Kennedy says, "because it is nice and aerodynamic, you know." Barr adds: "It's very amusing seeing a pig in a parachute."

The parachute was part of an experiment conducted by the Royal Air Force in Kennedy's sheep pasture to see if it was possible to hurl a man. "Fascinating," Kennedy says. "They spent three days at it, but it wasn't any good. "It did establish that the man would have been dead when he landed."