Category Archives: dangerous experiments

Wirelessly Charge Your Phone From High Voltage Power Lines

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Using nothing more than an antenna, a spark plug, a flyback transformer, a diode, and a car phone charger, [Kreosan] have implemented the world’s most dangerous cell-phone charger: wirelessly charging their phone from high voltage power lines. This is a demonstration of a hack that we thought was just an urban legend, but it’s probably best to leave this as just a demo — this one is probably illegal and definitely dangerous.

The charger works by holding an old TV aerial fairly close to high voltage overhead cables, and passing the resulting tiny current through a spark plug and a …read more

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Catching Lightning With High Voltages And A Kite

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Flying a kite on a stormy day is not the wisest thing to do, except, of course, you’re intentionally trying to catch a lightning bolt. The guys from [kreosan] replicated the famous experiment, with which Benjamin Franklin once set out to prove the electrical nature of lightning.

After their first attempt to attract lightning bolts in a storm by flying a kite attached to a grounded metal wire, which surprisingly did not yield a catch, they came up with an even scarier setup: They hooked up the wire to the high-voltage rail of a well-grounded television tube to bias it …read more

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