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........"

Comments

If you like this, try this, too....

[mickwd]

George Goble's home page.

intelligence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: what is it about intelligence and the desire to blow things up?

A: they are inversely proportional. just look at the current US administration.

Good lesson for an engineering student

[kuhneng]

> January 26th:
> PowerLabs was featured on a ZZZ Article;
> traffic triples (now at 4000+ hits/day).

Let's see what he's learned about scalable designs. I guess Slashdot is going to be part of the "+".

Differences in people...

[cuyler]

what is it about intelligence and the desire to blow things up?

Oh no, you're wrong. Blowing things up is a univerisal love of all humans. It's just the un-intelligent ones only do it once.

Re:Holy shiznit.

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Actually, secretly, he rather overdesigned it; and it works, but doesn't work so well.

I think out of the hundred meter per second or whatever that the projectile leaves the breech, about 90+% of the speed is due to the gas injector he uses to avoid spot welding.

The problem is that the pulse of current happens way too early in the gun, and he skids off a lot of his power in arcing.

He used to run a forum on his website (it seems to be still there, although it doesn't work right now). There was a lot of people, more or less as knowledgeable as him on his forum really interested in trying to help him design it; but he ran roughshod over the lot of them. And they told him about the pulse length issue. So basically they all got majorly pissed off and went off elsewhere in a huff, and they laughed when it didn't go supersonic; well it was Sam Barros's rail gun, but they were trying to help, and he ignored them, and he suffered. Sam had spent too much time going for 'oxygen free copper' to try to improve the current flow, but it didn't help, because but didn't get the fundamentals right.

But that wasn't the reason they left; it was just the proverbial straw; the problem is that Sam has a few ego problems, atleast online, he may well be more personable in the flesh; but he enjoyed telling people how stupid they were online. Mostly they were too, but few people came back to the site after that kind of treatment; and sometimes Sam was wrong, so he treated them unjustly for no reason.

So, basically, the powerlabs forum has basically died, all the contributors went elsewhere.

His basic technical skills are exceptional, although nothing he has done is actually original, so it remains to be seen whether he can achieve his potential, and as anyone can see from the site- he is good.