More Ways to Blow Things Up

pitabutter writes "Since the /. crowd seems to appreciate the exciting combination of amateur chemistry and fearlessness (what is it about intelligence and the desire to blow things up?), Sam Barros' site would be worth a look. Rail guns, high voltage, electromagnetic experiements-all there and with videos to boot. Unable to confirm if Sam still has appendages intact........"

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Safety link

[Amsterdam Vallon]

Just in case his little server goes down, here's the Google cache of the site.

Have a great weekend everyone :-)

*nix.org -- No flamewars here -- all Unices welcome ;-)

mirror of first page

[angelkey]

Welcome to Sam Barros' PowerLabs! The number one Amateur Science page! PowerLabs represents the efforts of Sam Barros, an amateur scientist (and now currently an engineering student) to document some of his experiments in various realms of science. Here you will find detailed reports including descriptions, pictures, videos, diagrams, schematics and technical details of some of the experiments he has attempted, and devices he has built and worked with over the years, including Tesla coils, various types of high voltage generators, plasma globes, electromagnetic experiments, coil guns, rail guns, electromagnetic propulsion, EMP, HERF, cryogenics, chemistry and much more! Current Updates: January 26th: PowerLabs was featured on a ZZZ Article; traffic triples (now at 4000+ hits/day). My resume is now online. November 20th: What you are looking at now is the prototype for what PowerLabs should look like in the future. Every page can be accessed from its category, for example, to read about Coil Guns, all you have to do is click on the "EM-Weapons" link at the top and from there click on "Coil Guns". I hope this makes the page easier to navigate. Please let me know if there are any problems. November 21st: I put a new video up on the Microwave Experiments page: Microwaving an MRE! 2 New test fire videos added to the Rail Gun page! 24th: Silver Oxalate Synthesis added to ChemLabs page. 25th: Sodium Experiments By PowerLabs added to ChemLabs page. This one is quite spectacular, so be sure to check it out! Older Updates (Includes full web usage statistics for the month): Not available due to a server crash. Coming December 1st. The Future: - The Rail Gun upgrade should be completed soon. I than plan on firing it with a plasma armature, incorporate an inductor into the circuit, and research the effect on efficiency of different pulse lengths and armature compositions. - I hope that my current Rail Gun research will lead me into building a second Rail Gun that will utilize external magnets as a means of field augmentation, and operate at lower currents, for increased rail life and unprecedented efficiencies. - Once my Rail Gun research is over the culminating point of the project would be to publish the results on a related magazine on the field, and perhaps make a more generic/comprehensive set of plans available for the public through this site. - My next project will hopefully be an ETC (Electro Thermo Chemical) gun research with the same capacitor bank the Rail Gun employed. - Starting next semester I will also be working on advanced space propulsion research; Hall and MPD (Magneto Plasma Dynamic) Thrusters, and perhaps also electrostatic propulsion. What am I working on now? The Rail Gun project has now been preliminarily tested and is being prepared for more extensive testing at Michigan Technological University's Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory some time over the next couple of weeks. I am also working on making this web page more user-friendly, please give me any feedback you might have as to how I can make it better. Mail: Don't forget to mail me: I will reply e-mails written In English, Portuguese, French or Spanish. (Note: Please don't mail me asking for plans or asking me to do your research; those e-mails will usually be ignored as any plans I intend on making available are made available through this site.) Current Project QuickLink: Click here to jump to PowerLabs' current ongoing project, the Rail Gun.

Read it Quick~

[1stflight]

Before Ashcroft decides he's a terrorist threat to the U.S.