This site is a sloppy collection of poorly written pages about
nonsense projects involving electricity and electronics, with a focus on high
voltage/high energy experiments.
The most popular thing here is the quarter
crusher. It's basically a device that smashes a coin into itself from the
outside without making contact with the metal itself. This allows all details
of the coint to be preserved. The ridges are still there, and the surface details
are left for the most part intact. A powerful magnetic field is used to crush
the coin. Under the correct conditions a coin is repelled by a magnetic field,
and if this field surrounds the coin it has nowhere to go but inwards. The source
of the energy is a high voltage capacitor bank charged to approximately 35,000
volts. This capacitor bank stores about 10000 Joules of energy which is the
same as running say a 100 watt load such as a light bulb for 100 seconds or
1 watt load for 10,000 seconds.
Crushed coins are for sale if you want to buy one. Quarters
are $15 each and I include the initial quarter. Most copper-based coins can
be crushed as well. Email quarter @ symmetric.net for more information.
The rest of the stuff here is just nonsense I took the few
minutes to sort of write up.
