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"Backyard Scientist" - idiocy never fails to astound me

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0culus:
Styropyro isn't an idiot either...he is is actually a degree-holding chemist in real life. I think he mentioned he finished his PhD a while back. He has also taken measures to build a fully shielded lab for his experiments.

coppercone2:

--- Quote from: 0culus on August 08, 2020, 10:35:55 pm ---Styropyro isn't an idiot either...he is is actually a degree-holding chemist in real life. I think he mentioned he finished his PhD a while back. He has also taken measures to build a fully shielded lab for his experiments.

--- End quote ---

if you did not notice in the corporate world, PhD is usually considered a lab/shop hazard in many cases. Put one around a industrial electrician/technician/engineer (not a cubical engineer), and bricks are shit.

They don't like 'time wasters' like 'connect the wires and then turn the equipment on'. After this, sparks occur. I would put a 6? amp limit on when PhD's get scary. Under 6A you might get smoke or a replacement.

If you do something smart, like connect wires then take five minutes to make sure the area is clean and there is nothing wrong, check the polarity, maybe even double check the wiring diagram, flip the switch, its like lighting a wad of money on fire to them.

0culus:
At my job, the PhDs are mostly not complete idiots about practical things. But, as Ron White so eloquently put it, you can't fix stupid. A PhD certainly won't fix stupid.

But my impression of styropyro is that he isn't nearly as much of an idiot as he acts for entertainment value.

dbctronic:
When I was in high school (late 60s), a friend made a Jacob's ladder using the transformer from an X-ray unit that was used in shoe stores (many years before) to check for foot bone problems caused by ill fitting shoes.

Imagine working around that all day, selling shoes.

The transformer was as big as a breadbox, and made a very thick, noisy, turbulent arc that easily started at 6" and walked up to points at the top of the ladder about 14" apart, where it died with a pop. I had no desire to play with it, ever. No, no, no.

Red Squirrel:
I'm normally not one to freak out over this stuff, but the fact that a laser like this can blind someone instantly, I do feel it was used in a very unsafe manner.  Even the testing was being done in a room with a window.  If anyone walking outside happened to glance in and catch a refraction of the laser.  Instant blindness.  You will not see it since it's IR which makes it even worse as your pupils won't naturally close, but even if it was visible light, at those power levels it will not happen fast enough anyway.

Something like this should have been done inside a completely enclosed area with no windows and everyone wearing proper eye safety gear.   

As cool as it was, it was just super unsafe to anyone that happened to be in the area. 

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