Put wire inside car battery cell to measure voltage?

Oops. That should have read "under 5 seconds".

Cheers,

Colin

Reply to
Colin Stamp
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I beg to differ. If generating a large volume of, probably toxic, smoke in a very short time is what you're after, then it works a treat.

Obviously. That's why I made sure I was a kid when I did it, so that personal safety wouldn't be a priority.

Spotting tounge-in-cheek newsgroup posts isn't your strong point is it?

Cheers,

Colin.

Reply to
Colin Stamp

As a young kid at school I decided that a bit of wire in the live and neutral points in a socket would be a good idea because the current would just flow along it. I even managed to convice a couple of mates, and tried it to prove the point.

The resulting flash and bang scared the shit out of me, along with the rest of the *German* language class lol...

Reply to
¤¤¤ Abo ¤¤¤

As apprentices we pratted about and wrapped solder around the live and neutral pins of a plug then plugged it back into a switched off socket.

*Huge* flash when it was switched on. The solder vaporised almost instantly but the shock value was amazing.

Would never do that sort of thing now though.

A good way to demonstrate the high instantaneous current capacity of Nicads is to get an AA or even AAA Nicad and short it out with solder - again it vaporises immediately, but a bit less spectacularly.

Reply to
PC Paul

Yes, and another handy tip if you can't see how far down to insert the wire use a lighted match. The flare of the striking match gives off better light than using a torch. Do let us know how you get on.

Reply to
John

I've seen the results of a Stilson being dropped accidently on a 24V lorry battery assembly. It flashed and welded the Stilson on, and it was too damn hot to get off within a few seconds so we just watched it until it went red and the battery posts melted off.

The amount of energy a good lead acid can deliver is quite frightening.

Reply to
Chris Street

That reminds me of my army duty, when we were practicing tossing grenades, and someone was doing it particularly badly (note we were using "training"grenades, also only with a noise fuse and not real TNT)and the sergeant told him, if you do that son in the fire range and see everyone running, you will understand you have done something wrong.

Reply to
Dimitrios Tzortzakakis

And we had some (bad) students in college who were trying to measure voltage with an ammeter..or with a multimeter turned on the ampere rating.I don't know if they made it got a degree and became electricians though.Or they made a (simple) automation circuit all right and when the professor came and they pressed the button to start the automation the result was...bang!

Reply to
Dimitrios Tzortzakakis

A friend of mine welded the links on his watch strap together helping me with a head gasket once. He managed to short the feed to the starter solenoid.

Reply to
Malc

That reminds me of the time a colleague of mine needed to know the distance between the terminals of an SLA back-up battery in a piece of gear we were making.

He absent-mindedly made the measurement using vernier calipers. It was one of those "I can't believe I just did that" moments.

Cheers,

Colin.

Reply to
Colin Stamp

The message from "Malc" contains these words:

To think - I used to dismantle lead acid batteries in my early teens to provide 2v cells for starting glowlug motors.

I also found that with the carbon rods from zinc-carbon batteries, some wire and a car battery I could melt common salt with the arc, from when on it became conductive and could be kept glowing orange for ages.

Reply to
Guy King

The bloke wot repairs my tractor tends to treat me like someone who has never seen a spanner in his life. It's like working on a car with my dad around, lots of teeth sucking and use of the word "don't" while working. Last time he was working on the hydraulics and I noticed the battery terminals were loose. So I got a pair of 13mm spanners and started to re tighten them. He noticed what I was up to and gave me a big lecture about the dangers of working with spanners on the battery (both terminals are close together). Then he decided to take over and show me how the experts do it. First attempt he dropped the spanner across both terminals, huge flash, he tried to stand up but had his head under the hood. Bang, .

He looked around and I was lying on the floor PMSL.

He was very good about it, bought me a brand new battery.

Reply to
Steve Firth

It's nice to know it's not just me tried that trick....

I used to intially melt it with a gas torch though, then see if it could electrolyse it and evolve green gas....

Reply to
Chris Street

The message from Chris Street contains these words:

Stunk a bit, didn't it. And stung the eyes. Never managed to get recognisable sodium on the other electrode though.

Reply to
Guy King

before 1.) i would make sure that the cells' water level was up to proper level.

continue.

wise advice.

Reply to
beav

Seconded. I recently topped up my dying-on-cold-mornings battery with de-ionised water, jump started it, went for a drive and all is well now for several days.

Reply to
PC Paul

No wind up mate. I was asking about what I had read at:

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Reply to
JS

When I was about four, I discovered that your average staple from an office stapler would fit in a conventional 120VAC outlet just fine. The resulting sparks and flash scared both me and the dog (when I jerked my hand away, the remains of the staple landed on the dog).

Poor Petey (the dog). He was *always* afraid of lightning and thunder after that. ;-)

daestrom

Reply to
daestrom

Sometimes its amazing to realize that we actually survived our childhoods without all the current safety devices. I'll refrain from any stories, but will say that this is on par with a few of my experiences and those of folks I knew back then. Many (or at least a few) of them are still alive and mostly well, or as well as could be expected. Come to think about it, there were a few who left the gene pool early.

There is something attractive about those little tiny holes in the wall which contain something that makes things run....

Michael

Reply to
Herman Family

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