a Van de Graaff generator owner
I always wanted a Van de Graaff generator. The thing that made your hand stand on end in physics class. At 16 after leaving school and a couple of years after having seen a working Van de Graaff generator and the technical aspects of how it really worked a distant memory, me and a friend thought we would re-live our child-hood and make our own Van de Graaff in his bedroom at his Mum's house. We were stoned.

We took a large rubics cube and a small rubics cube, covered them in silver foil and forced 2 glass rods into each of them. We pushed them into a cardboard box so they stood about an inch apart. We took apart the cable from a bedside lamp and attached one wire each to the foil on each rubics cube. We plugged it into the wall.

Nothing happened. There was no static electricity jumping between the two globes as we had seen in class.
We pushed the two rods closer and closer waiting for static. Closer and closer but no spark.
Holding one rod each we then touched them together....
HUGE FLASH. Major Bang! All the lights go out and we're left in the dark. We blew all the fuses.
Lots of screaming from downstairs, lights come back on, we push the apparatus under the bed and friends Mum comes bursting into the room screaming "What the fucking hell are you two doing!?!?!"
As is the teenage way, we deny everything and sit innocently on the bed covering scorch marks and ignoring the lingering smoke. We had huge blots on our eyes for hours because we were about 6 inches from the flash.

Method:
a couple of spliffs
1x large Rubics cube
1x small Rubics cube
tin foil
2x glass rods (or anything non-conducting)
an electrical cord with a plug on the end
an ounce of stupidity

Results:
Blindness and near death.

Conclusion:
get a job in IT support where you get paid for blowing things up.
(twistngo, Fri 30 Mar 2007, 13:04, Reply)