Discharge Capacitors

Danger!High Voltage, High Power.

The above capacitors are rated 10kv at 176uF,roughly 8800J of energy fully charged. They are made by Aerovox, and weight close to 150 lbs. One of these capacitors was used for the below experiments. The images below are clickable,to download the movie. 

See the destruction of a piece of aluminum foil. The file is 446KB in mpeg-1 format. This shot was at about 2.5kv or 546Joules. This is almost an embarrassment, to what this cap can supply, and what I have used it at.

This movie shows what happens to a piece of aluminum foil when the joules heat it up. The file is 686KB in mpeg-1 format. This one was also shot at 546Joules or 2.5KV. Again this is nothing to what the cap can supply,8.8KJ.

This is a rather far away movie of an apple taking a few joules. Its rather neat to see, there is a very bright flash and then the applesauce needs to be picked up off the ground. I remember being hit by pieces of this one. It is 219KB in mpeg-1 format. Oh I really upped the power on this one, fired at 3.5KV or 1.07KJ about twice as much energy as it took to get rid of that little bit of aluminum foil above. There's still another 7kJ locked up in this cap, that I haven't tapped into. Yes in the background next to the garage there is a pole pig sitting happily in the weather, waiting for some ballasting. It does not power any of the experiments here. There is a black box sitting on the cap, a neon sign xformer rated at 5kv 120ma's.

Here we see a unprotected and innocent grapefruit bite the dust, its buddy got it earlier. Poor grapefruit! This was run at a tiny 787Joules,or 3KV.  I think its time for some cans to be smashed and some Hard Drive platters to be sent into space.