LOL, I have had my share of blowing up parts, but rarely on purpose :)

BTW, Have any of you tried pickels? Yes! I am not joking at all! If you
CAREFULLY take two metal forks and stick them into two opposite ends of a
pickel (not sure if a specific kind is necessary), and attach the two forks
to 120VAC, the pickel will glow with the wonderful characteristic sodium
yellow light (from the sodium ions in the pickling solution). For a few
minutes anyway (while you can still stand the smell and before it bursts
into flames) you will have yourself a sodium (not really vapor) lamp. Be
sure to keep this away from any flamable material as it will eventually
catch fire.

Our chemistry teacher did this demonstration in high school.

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for anyone who gets hurt or destroys
anything doing this.

Sean

At 05:27 PM 9/17/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Couldn't resist this topic, after all of the fun we had in college.
>
>I was the guy that showed up at college with all of my boxes of parts
>(considered to be bizare behavior ten years ago in engineering school).  We
>would sit around the apartment and blow up parts. We took a lamp cord,
>laced the wires onto the part, lay it on the floor (in a pan or something),
>and plug in.  Some parts are quite spectacular.  IC's blow apart with a
>shower of sparks 4 or 5 feet long sometimes, and when they calm down they
>reduce to a glowing blob of molten (??).  The electrolytics were not nearly
>as much fun, because when they did blow up, they just went 'crack' and the
>guts would shoot out somewhere.  No sparks to speak of.  The problem with
>them was that we kept blowing the fuse in the fuse box, and had to put in
>another.  It wasn't long on a student budget and limitted fuses to tire of
>that method.  Sometime I'll have to relate the difficulty you would have in
>throwing a cinder block through a 26" picture tube.  It is much harder than
>one would think.  We found that it was easier to toss them off of the third
>story.  It was faster.  The TV, not the cinder block.
>
>Chris Eddy
>Reformed unsafe person
>Pioneer Microsystems, Inc.
>
+--------------------------------+
| Sean Breheny                   |
| Amateur Radio Callsign: KA3YXM |
| Electrical Engineering Student |
+--------------------------------+
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