styropyro
4 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2023–2024
38:23 · 11M views · Oct 5, 2023
Styropyro wires 100 car batteries in parallel to produce more current than a lightning bolt and tests what happens when it is shorted. The experiments, done with other YouTubers, show spectacular effects of extreme current.
Cited in battery and electrical safety threads as a vivid demonstration of what very high-current battery banks can do.
4 comments from Hacker News
> One wrong poke with a screwdriver I'm not sure where you're jamming the screwdriver, but certainly any wrenches/tools you use should be insulated if you're dealing with very high current and/or high voltage. Enclosures, insulated wires, conduits, terminal covers should be used to avoid short circuits. Also proper earthing and circuit isolation with RCBOs to protect from electric shock and overcurrents frying the wires/you, all which should be switched to the off position when you're poking your screwdriver, eh? ;) > And they’re big enough, no portable fire extinguisher is going to make a dent either. If you aren't doing basic safety things and somehow manage thermal runaway on LiFePo4 (pretty hard), you're probably going to melt some copper. Probably best not to put your battery assembly near flammable things, unless you want to see the world burn like this guy (though at low voltage/high current) this video
The reason to not keep going higher is purely practicality because stepping down bigger voltage gaps for lower voltage applications begins to become less efficient/more waste heat. If you design 100v computers, monitor, headlights, seat adjustment motors, window/windshield motors, pumps, etc. you could cut these 48v wires in half again but if you end up stepping everything down anyway it loses its utility. The safety rules about voltage and the human body are often poorly overstated, as is the addage that 'its the amps that kill you, not the volts.' in reality it takes a whole lot of both [0]. As further research, here[1] is styropyro touching 2 contacts which have more current than the largest bolts of lightning (enough to almost instantly vaporize a crowbar) with his bare hands, but because it is 12V it is not able to pass through him. [0] [LINK] [1] this video
As shown in StyroPyro's video of him laying across dozens of car batteries (and then shorting them through various things) this video His entire rig at one point delivered >80k amps, but he's fine.
You would probably enjoy seeing what happens, thanks to our industrious Youtuber friends who took the risk so we don't have to! [1] [1] this video