Harvesting Capacitors for Backyard Munitions

Diabolus writes "This is the tale of a man, a bunch of disposable cameras, and his techniques for harvesting lots of capacitors to build a gauss gun. Insane..." A basic capacitor tutorial is probably in order.

Comments

Flux?

[jcsehak]

No info on flux capacitors? Damn, guess I'll never get back to the 2030's...

Re:Flux?

[Cyno01]

if you call radio shack and ask if they have flux capacitors in stock, they'll tell you they're out, but they should be getting some in about two weeks

Re:Flux?

[Tablizer]

(* Actually, I work at Radio Shack... we'll tell you that because its easier then explaining why They don't exist. I mean come on, if your coming to *me* for parts, thinking a flux capacitor exists is the least of your problems... *)

Dude, make one up quickly in the back room and sell it to them for 300 bucks. When they come back complaining, ask them if they have a degree in nuclear physics. When they say, "no", then politely take it back, minus a 95 dollar restocking and time-diffusion recharge fee, which you pocket.

In unison, "Nothing"...

[MarkusQ]

Be careful if you try this; those capacitors hold a fair amount of charge.

My brothers and I played with some of them in the kitchen at a family gathering a few years back. One of them is in the biz, and had more used, disposable cameras then he knew what to do with. We were bored and trying to rig up something ad-hoc (as I recall, we were using whatever we could find in the kitchen--rubber bands, tupperware, etc.) Our wives were in the dining room with the everyone else, and we weren't being very structured about it.

Things were going fairly well until we accidentally shorted something. There was a loud bang, a flash, and one of us jumped back, knocking over a pile of pie tins.

All conversation in the dining room stopped, and after a moment our mother's voice called calmly: "What are you boys doing in there?"

Without missing a beat we all replied, in unison, "Nothing!"

It was like old times.

-- MarkusQ

Terrorist threat from cameras

[Random Bystander]

Does this mean we won't be able to take disposable cameras on to planes any more?

Imagine the memo to baggage scanning technicians:
"WARNING: Any passengers attempting to take large numbers of disposable cameras on board any flight is a terrorist. These cameras can be used as a weapon by assembling a gauss gun from their parts. Call your appropriate superviser IMMEDIATELY if you have any suspicions"

Re:Terrorist threat from cameras

[Tablizer]

(* Imagine the memo to baggage scanning technicians: "WARNING: Any passengers attempting to take large numbers of disposable cameras on board any flight is a terrorist. *)

Imagine all the things they would start banning if McGyvor worked for Al Quieda.

Horrible Story Time

[Monkelectric]

Ok, when I was 17 (long ago, but not too long) I went on a band trip to Hawaii (you laugh now, but did you school send you to hawaii?:). The school gave us packs of junk, chewing gum, deck of cards, and disposable cameras as a goodwill gesture (I gather). I was the section leader for the tenor sax players -- if you've ever met any tenor sax players you know they are the bigest screwoffs in the world (I've often wondered -- does being a screwoff make you choose the tenor sax as an instrument, or do you become a screwoff after choosing it?).

Anyways, I was responsible for 4 complete goobers and one gorgeous blonde (who really dosent have anyhting to with the story, but I just want to mention her), which was not an enviable task. They got bored on the plane to hawaii and took apart their disposable camera ... well low and behold they figured out about the only thing you can do with a broken disposable camera is shock shit or get shocked. After some dumb luck (getting shocked in the first place) and some trial and error, they figure out if you touched these leads and pressed that button youd get shocked ... so the next step was to walk around the plane getting people to hold the leads so they could shock them (someday Id like to know why you would hold two leads a 14 year old asked you to).

So one afternoon our scheduled activity was to hang out in this park because thats damn cheap :) and well now you have to know about the director ... he was this big fat, raunchy, disgusting fat fuck who happened to be one of the best directors in the nation, and he had this even fatter and even rauncher wife their two skinny (but soon to be fat kids). The wife was horrible annoying and the kids were even worse, the whole band was sick of them. Meanwhile in the park, the band was getting pretty restless, shocking eachother with cameras actually became entertainment :) So these guys I am responsible for are shocking eathother, Im hitting on the blonde (amy hays if you're out there... ;-) ), and oie of the directors sons walks up and he says "Hey what are you guys doing?" (the kid couldn't have been more then 6 or 7) One of the worst jerkoffs in my section gets this HUGE grin on his face and he says, "I'll show you. you touch this and this, and then press this button" Meanwhile I look over and see whats going on, as Im screaming "nooooooooooooooooooooo!!" in slow motion like the matrix, the kid shocks the crap out of himself and I swear he almost pissed his pants as he took off running. We never got in trouble so I dont suppose he told his father :) but we were paranoid the whole rest of the trip.

on an unrelated topic, couldn't this guy just buy a couple 1 farad capacitors? Those are pretty popular with car audio buffs, they run maybe between 100 - 200$ a piece, I think that would be so much easier then getting UV burns like this guy is describing :D

That Sinking Feeling of Being Slashdotted...

[BigBlockMopar]

It doesn't take very long to realize you're getting slashdotted if you're paying attention.

Yeah. First, you notice that kmail seems to be taking longer transferring mail than usual.

Then, you click on a webpage link, and your usually-quick DSL feels like dialup again.

The hard drive in your webserver is scratching so much, it's hard to think; it sounds like you're compiling a kernel and making a divx at the same time, but it's pages being served and visits being logged.

You fire up top and are greeted by a whole screen of httpd daemons and CGI.

Congrats, you're being Slashdotted.

It's actually kind of fun.

As my advisor said

[IdahoEv]

My EE advisor in college was fond of saying:

"Any diode can be light-emitting ... once."