Hi all! Just to be clear, when I say high voltage I don't mean positive voltage. Remember Tesla coil has an AC output. High voltage here means high positive and negative. If I show signs, it means a momentary difference in voltage which will switch the other way quickly. The direction of electron flow is alternating in and out of the Tesla Coil, but the way arcs are expanding doesn't alternate, because other factors cause the expansion as I explained. The glowing arc is only a sign of air heating up, and as the charges break new grounds, new paths emerge. Also: #MahsaAmini
@@DiscordC it's his video and he can sya exactly what he wants to, if you don't like something, don't interact with it, it's as simple as that, your participance is not required.
@G E T R E K T That's not politics for politics! That is about Iranian movement for democracy and freedom. Iranian are killed in daily basis for their peacful protest by the regime
@MulhamReacts The Phantom camera is filming at 1,750,000 frames per second (Fps) for the close up slow motion of the electric arc, with the Slow Mo guys. The main video is almost certainly not shot at 1,750,000 frames. I doubt they have 2 phantom cameras.
hope everyone back in Iran stays safe Mehdi. Every Persian I've met throughout my journey as shown to be incredible people far removed from the autocratic clerics running the country Stay strong
Persians are wonderful people on this planet, just don't buy a carpet from them and if you're do, negotiate them to the last price and walk a way from the great deal. Come back weeks later and negotiate them at least a quarter of the price down again. (used to sell Persian rugs)
@@mohammadfoadtavakoli7118 "And no we don't support these protestors who kill police forces and normal people with weapons, destroy public property and force people to close their shops" But you do support the Police that beat women to death and use live rounds against protestors?
@@xamanto not sure if you noticed the overt mentions of what's going on in Iran.... Just enough to spread awareness among those who might be uninformed while not getting himself demonetized. Those little segments.
ElectroBOOM is probably the *_only_* TH-camr for whom I never skip the sponsor part. Because the sponsor part always have that nice music. Oh and also Mehdi always presented the part hilariously 😂
@@yanikb.1312 It depends on your definition of "normal time". If you playback the video at 30 fps it will be 16 hours long. Just divide 1,750,000 by the playback rate.
Wait, I thought electrical arcs were free electrons so they were always negatively charged. How can it jump both directions? Are metal ions being pulled from the electrodes? Come to think of it, why doesn't it alternate jump directions?
Yes it is the motion of electrons, but while one side pushes electrons in the air molecules, the other side sucks them out so both sides look like arcs anyways. Also note that Tesla coil is AC, so electrons are pushed and pulled at 250kHz here, and yet you see arc forming more on the Tesla side.
@@ElectroBOOM To me it looks like all those barely visible tendrils start homing into the same point and when they converge, the brightness goes up. That makes it look like a new spark is starting to appear from that side as well but it is actually the tendrils of the original one regaining their brightness.
The same can happen with lightning strikes, they not only come down from the sky, but some of the bolt comes up from the ground. I believe they can also strike upwards from the cloud.
Dude thanks for #MahsaAmini - lovely to see your support! Also, very cool collab with The Slow Mo Guys, it's the third video I'm watching and still loving it!
I know, seeing that warmed my heart! I'm incredibly impressed by the bravery and endurance of the Iranian people! I so hope you get the freedom you deserve!
Oh man, I suspected you were going to say something about the events in Iran and I'm glad I was correct. I'm so proud of the people in Iran and the media needs to talk about it more. It's not like i'm asking for western intervention but it's an important story for the whole world!
if some enlightened folks start to whine about "losing" a political free channel, a old crt capacitor heck loaded will be hidden to your nearest door knob for a quick remainder
The whole Iran problem started because the USA installed puppets at the head of the Iran state for cheap oil. Before US intervention they were a peaceful democracy.
@@basilhanas8453 Put yourself in Mehdi's shoes. Your home country is a totalitarian theocracy that for decades has blatantly oppressed its citizens and aligned itself politically with other dictators. The current women's rights movements going on in Iran are absolutely pivotal, and Mehdi is totally in the right for using his channel to bring attention to them.
would love to see this experiment carried out with both an active air flow to cool the air between the points of contact, and within a heated, windless environment
What I find truly mindblowing, is the speed physics has. Even 1,75 million frames per second, which is ridiculous to begin with, isn't even enough to show a slow smooth moving arc. Or the collapse of a dying star in milliseconds. Just amazing
If you record the coil with a frame rate that's out of phase with the resonance frequency you would get pictures of different stages of the arc each time. Then you could stitch them together to get an even better animation.
problem is the tesla coil is not really running at a very stable frequency, as the frequency depends somewhat on the arcs, and those are quite unpredictable.
All you would really need to do is isolate the Tesla coil from ground, and connect the "grounded" side to an otherwise isolated electrode. Probably easiest if you run it off of batteries.
Surely no isolation transformer is needed. The driver circuit is at ground potential, it’s only the hat that is at high voltage. I would think it’s possible to place the driver coils in series or parallel and drive them with a common driver (with suitable adjustments to it). Phase the coils so that one is positive and the other negative.
For people saying keep these videos about science: as a person of Iranian background I can say that what the people have gone through and what is happening are not a small political minutia. It is a big moment right now and there is a lot of suffering they’re trying to end. To say that science exists in a vacuum and that people shouldn’t let parts of their identity intermingle is naive and frankly arrogant. Science needs a rational society of people embracing reason and enlightenment. We in America are extremely lucky to live in a society closer to that ideal. There’s many bright minds in Iran who don’t have that. If you support science you should also be ok to hear a few seconds about the struggles people around the world are going through to enable a brighter future - in particular to hear about it from those who understand that present struggle. Einstein, Feynman, Sagan, all the greats knew that science is a human enterprise that requires conscious effort at a societal level to build on. I for one certainly hope Iran comes back out of the dark ages and can bring its 80 million people freedom to support that future - and while it may be a bit distracting, I’m fine hearing about for a second from ElectroBOOM.
It's nice, right? I made it by breaking a bunch of spaghettis in half, and the effect generated is the sound of millions of Italians' hearts breaking! Sorry Italians!
I have a lot of experience with high voltage (kind of a real life professional mad scientist). I work in a lab that does lightning testing of aircraft and wind turbine parts. I help design the generators as well - our highest current generator is 200kA, and our highest voltage unit is 400kV.....for know. An answer to your "which direction" query: My experience with testing at 2 million volts is that negative charges like to jump off sharp points, but positive charges do not. In reality, electrons jump off, but......protons do not. Electrons are the charge carrier (if you are not inside a semiconductor). My description is similar to yours.......excess charge is always on the surface of a conductor. Similar charges repel each other. When on a flat surface, the charges on either side tend to push against each other cancelling the force, but on a pointy surface, they try to push electrons off the tip. I often setup up demos where a sphere is one electrode, and a point is the other. When the point is negative, the needed voltage to arc is much much lower then if you keep the same config and just reverse the voltage.
That was awesome!! It's a shame you didn't have a vacuum chamber on that high-speed shoot to test that final theory, but next time!! It would be cool to amp up the lighting too so you could see more of that electron fluff at the higher framerates, but I'm not sure how feasible that is at 1,750,000 fps.
I don't think the issue is vacuum because the arcs themselves are from ionized air. The problem is that they're all touching (through solids) the earth. What needs to be done is suspending the whole setup in air without any contact to the earth (or any other ground). Maybe by dropping the whole thing while it's on?
I love how the diffuse connections coming from the screwdriver (e.g., 5:34) directly show the "action principle" in advanced physics at play. One way to predict the path that a particle takes from A to B is to calculate a so-called "action" it has for any path between A and B. In reality, it will always take the path with the least action. Here, it starts out with a lot of paths that have basically the same action. Then, one of them has just a slightly lower action than the other ones, so all following electrons flow through it.
You could power the Tesla coil from batteries, put everything in a metal box at the bottom of it, connect the box to the lower end of the coil, and also add a wire from the box towards the top of the coil. The box would act like a second "top load". That way the ground wont influence it, both sides can charge relative to the environment and the arcs can jump from both sides at once. Entire thing needs to be suspended from non-conductive string for this. And of course you need to re-tune it. And then you could bring a ground wire close to the top OR bottom side and affect which side of the coil the arcs start from.
those fractal lines before converging into one is beautiful. so maybe, we can also see lightning scatters before it merges into a single line when it hits the ground... at high framerates of course
My brother Jackson and I were chilling in the hot tub on the balcony, and it was nighttime so the Christmas lights on the railing were on. But all the connections were covered in ice. And I remember Jackson discovered that if you put your finger on a certain part of the chunk of ice, you could clearly feel an electric current running through it. Back then, I didn’t know 💩 about any of this stuff. But now I realized that, because I was sitting in the hot tub with the water up to my belly button, the electricity was actually running through my wet @$$ into the obviously grounded hot tub. Now ice isn’t a very good conductor which is why I only felt it on my fingers, but had the ice been any thinner and allowed my fingers to get any closer to the live prongs, we would’ve unwillingly recreated that famous scene from “Groundhog day”
@@Moocowthegreat I’m saying the heat from your finger and the salt on your skin melted the ice, so you were touching water. Christmas lights are also 2.5-3.5V. 50V is the threshold to potentially drive a lethal amount of current. Just trying to educate, that’s all.
It's nice to have confirmation that it works basically the same way as lightning but on a smaller scale. Slow Mo Guys did a video on lightning before, funnily enough. At those scales, such a high frame rate isn't required. And, yeah. You see the same sort of effects: 'Stepped leaders', channels of ionised air, moving through the sky, the fluff rising from the ground, especially from pointy objects, getting much brighter when the two sides meet.
Your plugs for your sponsors are more entertaining than most channels I subscribe to. Your videos are as entertaining as Qi ! Thank you! Also, I agree with you on the demonstrations in Iran.
Not many have balls here to speak against islam They tried to talk about it in one humanright + Antiracism group. The discussion was soon taken down because "sensitive subject for minorities within the group"
This same experiment should have been also performed above hot surface where we would have less conductivity and in water vapor environment as well, but still this exp. tells a lot. thank you sir.
seeing those kids whining about Mehdi should *not* talk about politics : seriously how many ElectroBoom vids have you kids watched? one second per clip?
hello electroboom i want to say thank you when i watched your videos it teached me lots about electricity and you really helped me become smart actually i got all of my knowledge from other sources but your channel gave me knowledge of electricity and physics so thank you
Hi nightguard, thank you for sharing your learnings with us. Can I please ask you a question? What was the last thing you learned from this channel? Can you please explain the concept you learned?
I have some sh*tty idea, but it might worth it: try to have a video with something is moving as background and then use green screen to animate yourself. This way, it is more natrue. Some helpful links: Tom Scott: th-cam.com/video/E5HRvQNg4pQ/w-d-xo.html Captain Disillusion: th-cam.com/video/aO3JgPUJ6iQ/w-d-xo.html
I made a small air gap relaxation oscillator, a few years ago, powered ~3-5KV. I measured the current flowing thru it on a scope. It generated sawtooth waves at a tad over 1MHz. So air, at standard atmospheric pressure, has a very high response time. This is in contrast to noble gases, at near vacuum, such as in a neon bulb, where response times are the 100s of microseconds.
I suspect there are a lot of things going on that would lead to asymmetries in the arc formation. The big one is the fact that the Tesla coil terminal has charge being directly added/removed by the Tesla coil's circuitry, while the screwdriver only gains an induced charge, due to its proximity to the coil terminal (capacitive coupling). Therefore the absolute charge will be much much greater on the coil terminal, and the electric field density at the terminal correspondingly greater. There are also differences in how easily you can make positive versus negative ions, and how easily you can strip free electrons from different materials. These effects are relevant in arc welding, for example, which is why different processes require different polarities, or even AC, as when TIG welding on aluminum. It would be interesting to see if there are any circumstances where you can tell the difference between the two different polarities of arcs in the high speed video.
Great video. Really cool to see arcs in slow motion and also really cool to see that you are not scared to rase awareness about some political topics unrelated to the main content in the video. Even though some people might not like it, I think it is the right thing to do. And as always great explainations about the underlying principles.
Mehdi, if you turn the video sideways (Telsa coil on top) this looks suspiciously like the way lightning comes down from the clouds..... little fingers searching, and step leaders reaching out.... and eventually, the earth says, yep, here's a little help.... I'd love to see this done again at even higher frame rates. Great video!
There was an experiment when they broke an egg and recorded that with a high speed camera. The fractal pattern is the same. Searching for source, he was a professor from University of Debrecen.
I thought the original video was good, this is a freaking education. Wonderful. Seeing the equivalent of a lightning leader on this scale is astonishing.
yeah. I still think I remember when the Slow Mo Guys did a video on filming lightning strikes on the water at night, and you could see the lightning make its way down to the ground in those satisfying tendrils... It's crazy that now we have footage of that sort of principle but on such a small scale
Great video (as always)! However, I'm not quite convinced that your explanation of why the arc forms in one direction is correct. I'm not sure if it makes sense to say that the air is connected to ground. But it doesn't really matter anyway. Instead of looking at voltage difference, one should look at electric fields. To ionize air, we need a strong electric field and not just a large voltage difference. That is also the reason why the arcs always start at the spike of the Tesla coil and not on the bulge. The voltage between spike/bulge and surrounding is the same, but the electric field at the spike is much stronger. The arcs only go one way because only the Tesla coil has strong electric fields around it. This is because the Tesla coil accumutes a lot of charge on top if it while the other end has practically no charge. If we look at the charges and electric fields, we can explain the phenomenon without considering the potential of the air and we don't even need to argue whether the air is connected to anything.
from 7:25 onwards you can see something really cool, mehdi's arm relaxes and tenses extremely fast when the arcs connect and disconnect from him. as soon as the arc detaches from the stick, his arm moves and then stops again when the arc jumps back.
Medi your video is so fun and educational as always, however your very public support for Women's right in Iran has brought me to tears with joy, thank you, thank you, so much x
I admire your guts in standing up for human rights and decency in your native country. Your daughter and daughters all over Iran deserve better than a political misuse of of their established faith. Oh, the electrical arc are cool, too!
Great footage and great secondary message. But I have a question now you've piqued my interest... What effect does wind/air movement have on the arcing from a tesla coil. Could you use a fan that would blow hard enough to restrict (or extend/bend) the arc?
Could you imagine what Ben Franklin or Nicolai Tesla would think if they could see this insane footage? I dont know if any one in history deserves to see this stuff more than Tesla
May there be equality, peace and freedom of thought and belief in Iran! And everywhere! Hopefully, the scientific method will help people choose reasonable views and respect others.
Hi all! Just to be clear, when I say high voltage I don't mean positive voltage. Remember Tesla coil has an AC output. High voltage here means high positive and negative. If I show signs, it means a momentary difference in voltage which will switch the other way quickly. The direction of electron flow is alternating in and out of the Tesla Coil, but the way arcs are expanding doesn't alternate, because other factors cause the expansion as I explained. The glowing arc is only a sign of air heating up, and as the charges break new grounds, new paths emerge.
Also: #MahsaAmini
So what's the proper designation
please leave ALL politics out of these video's we don't come here for politics.
@@DiscordC it's his video and he can sya exactly what he wants to, if you don't like something, don't interact with it, it's as simple as that, your participance is not required.
@@DiscordC It's his video, he can do whatever he wants
@G E T R E K T That's not politics for politics! That is about Iranian movement for democracy and freedom. Iranian are killed in daily basis for their peacful protest by the regime
1:59 I'm glad you briefly touched the subject of current events in Iran. Respect.
Edit: 3:40
Respect.
Hypocrite! Go worship the White House and Joe Biden, we don't need your fake solidarity. The western sanctions are killing us, not the government.
Mehdi didn't mention about Gaza anywhere as far as I know. He should.
Electroboom: 1.75 million fps? That’s a good starting point.
@@ZeroOneInfinity noctua😚👌
The video is more or less than a second (he meant the entire vid had 1.75mil frames) so u have to do 1.75E10/length of video
@MulhamReacts The Phantom camera is filming at 1,750,000 frames per second (Fps) for the close up slow motion of the electric arc, with the Slow Mo guys. The main video is almost certainly not shot at 1,750,000 frames. I doubt they have 2 phantom cameras.
@John Wickno, it's th-cam.com/video/HDzVD-cqiWM/w-d-xo.html
@@DbD285 LITERALLY no one gives a f*ck and you are ABSOLUTELY CONVINCING NO ONE to join you, deal with it
hope everyone back in Iran stays safe Mehdi. Every Persian I've met throughout my journey as shown to be incredible people far removed from the autocratic clerics running the country Stay strong
Persians are wonderful people on this planet, just don't buy a carpet from them and if you're do, negotiate them to the last price and walk a way from the great deal. Come back weeks later and negotiate them at least a quarter of the price down again. (used to sell Persian rugs)
@@pittypatterputzzler5311 best I can do is 10 big bucks, take it or leave it. (I’ll be back in a few weeks anyway)
Agreed! A striking number of all Persians I have met have been both intelligent and resourceful.
@@mohammadfoadtavakoli7118
"And no we don't support these protestors who kill police forces and normal people with weapons, destroy public property and force people to close their shops"
But you do support the Police that beat women to death and use live rounds against protestors?
I appreciate what Mehdi is doing in these videos. Good for you Mehdi, all evil requires is for good men to do nothing.
Equalizing charges, and equalizing human rights...all in one place. Brilliant, purely brilliant.
always pun intended
How is he equalizing human rights?
@@xamanto not sure if you noticed the overt mentions of what's going on in Iran.... Just enough to spread awareness among those who might be uninformed while not getting himself demonetized. Those little segments.
@@frollard aah, yes, spreading awareness. Ok.
@NewPaper clearly people do care. Take your 'we' and go elsewhere.
ElectroBOOM is probably the *_only_* TH-camr for whom I never skip the sponsor part. Because the sponsor part always have that nice music. Oh and also Mehdi always presented the part hilariously 😂
you should check out legal eagle, some of his sponsor reads are hilarious
I had skipped the sponsor, but after reading your comment, I actually went back and watched it, lol
Yes me too. I love his humor.
LaserPig has some kickass adds too. freeking hilarious.
@@rainbowdashieness they are pretty long but he manages to make them interesting every time 😂
I love your vocal support of the women in Iran! Thanks brother
Learn English first
Now I want to See Mehdi's Eyebrow wiggle at 1,750,000 FPS
Bring the micrometer to see the movement
The slow-mo guys said that one second in 1.75 million FPS equal about 19 hours in normal time.
@@yanikb.1312 It depends on your definition of "normal time". If you playback the video at 30 fps it will be 16 hours long. Just divide 1,750,000 by the playback rate.
Wait, I thought electrical arcs were free electrons so they were always negatively charged. How can it jump both directions? Are metal ions being pulled from the electrodes? Come to think of it, why doesn't it alternate jump directions?
Yes it is the motion of electrons, but while one side pushes electrons in the air molecules, the other side sucks them out so both sides look like arcs anyways. Also note that Tesla coil is AC, so electrons are pushed and pulled at 250kHz here, and yet you see arc forming more on the Tesla side.
@@ElectroBOOM To me it looks like all those barely visible tendrils start homing into the same point and when they converge, the brightness goes up. That makes it look like a new spark is starting to appear from that side as well but it is actually the tendrils of the original one regaining their brightness.
@@ElectroBOOM Some might say the other side is pushing out holes.
@@ElectroBOOM I do not see how the other side could suck electrons to make arcs jump both ways if floating in space. A new video perhaps?
The same can happen with lightning strikes, they not only come down from the sky, but some of the bolt comes up from the ground. I believe they can also strike upwards from the cloud.
Dude thanks for #MahsaAmini - lovely to see your support! Also, very cool collab with The Slow Mo Guys, it's the third video I'm watching and still loving it!
I know, seeing that warmed my heart! I'm incredibly impressed by the bravery and endurance of the Iranian people! I so hope you get the freedom you deserve!
❤️❤️
Oh man, I suspected you were going to say something about the events in Iran and I'm glad I was correct. I'm so proud of the people in Iran and the media needs to talk about it more. It's not like i'm asking for western intervention but it's an important story for the whole world!
if some enlightened folks start to whine about "losing" a political free channel, a old crt capacitor heck loaded will be hidden to your nearest door knob for a quick remainder
Hypocrites
You won't be criticizing if YOU WENT THROUGH THE SITUATION YOURSELF!
Go shed these crocodile tears somewhere else. Iran doesn't need you. You only speak when BBC or CNN highlight something.
The whole Iran problem started because the USA installed puppets at the head of the Iran state for cheap oil. Before US intervention they were a peaceful democracy.
Mehdi doesn't often get political on his channel, but when he does it's for a really good reason
No it isn't. There is completely no good reason to include politics in science channel.
@@basilhanas8453 Put yourself in Mehdi's shoes. Your home country is a totalitarian theocracy that for decades has blatantly oppressed its citizens and aligned itself politically with other dictators. The current women's rights movements going on in Iran are absolutely pivotal, and Mehdi is totally in the right for using his channel to bring attention to them.
@@someonerandom704 Like in Libya Syria and Irak SUURe that is some pivot to death and garbage.
@@basilhanas8453 ... he's from Iran
@@basilhanas8453 go be sensitive somewhere else
Could be fun to run 2 tesla coils, with one 180 degrees phase-shifted :)
Arcs must jump out of each that way and reach at the center!
@@Aoi-lol Wth , is wrong with you, commenting the same thing over and over again???!!!
@@Aoi-lol ◉‿◉
How did you watched this video so early
@@Aoi-lol Is it hard to be that dumb?
Much support to Iran here. An Iraqi speaking here, the poor Irani people have suffered for too long. May Allah keep them safe
2:44 the arc is MOTIVATED
The diagrams you drew for explaining the concepts like the "zone of ionized fluff" was really helpful for me to understand it! Great job
He's a great presenter in my opinion, and the reason why I started messing around with electronics!
would love to see this experiment carried out with both an active air flow to cool the air between the points of contact, and within a heated, windless environment
What I find truly mindblowing, is the speed physics has. Even 1,75 million frames per second, which is ridiculous to begin with, isn't even enough to show a slow smooth moving arc. Or the collapse of a dying star in milliseconds. Just amazing
9:06 Nice T-shirt design there
thanks for this vid. really answered allot about lightning strikes. Also hanks for making me aware of Mahsa Amini. I wish I could do more
Seeing you share #MahsaAmini in the video made me very happy!
If you record the coil with a frame rate that's out of phase with the resonance frequency you would get pictures of different stages of the arc each time. Then you could stitch them together to get an even better animation.
Clever!
That came to my mind too. If I remember correctly, that’s how some scientists filmed light moving.
problem is the tesla coil is not really running at a very stable frequency, as the frequency depends somewhat on the arcs, and those are quite unpredictable.
@@Basement-Science and the arcs won’t have the same paths
I’m so glad your still uploading thank you for the years of good videos
So could you power your coil through an isolation transformer and get it to generate arcs from both directions simultaneously?
Would possibly do better in jumping both ways.
Yes, but you would need a transformer that can withstand an isolation voltage of several 100kV....difficult to find, actually.
@@WolfgangMahringer Not as difficult to find as it would be difficult to fit in a studio.
All you would really need to do is isolate the Tesla coil from ground, and connect the "grounded" side to an otherwise isolated electrode. Probably easiest if you run it off of batteries.
Surely no isolation transformer is needed. The driver circuit is at ground potential, it’s only the hat that is at high voltage. I would think it’s possible to place the driver coils in series or parallel and drive them with a common driver (with suitable adjustments to it). Phase the coils so that one is positive and the other negative.
For people saying keep these videos about science: as a person of Iranian background I can say that what the people have gone through and what is happening are not a small political minutia. It is a big moment right now and there is a lot of suffering they’re trying to end. To say that science exists in a vacuum and that people shouldn’t let parts of their identity intermingle is naive and frankly arrogant. Science needs a rational society of people embracing reason and enlightenment. We in America are extremely lucky to live in a society closer to that ideal. There’s many bright minds in Iran who don’t have that. If you support science you should also be ok to hear a few seconds about the struggles people around the world are going through to enable a brighter future - in particular to hear about it from those who understand that present struggle. Einstein, Feynman, Sagan, all the greats knew that science is a human enterprise that requires conscious effort at a societal level to build on. I for one certainly hope Iran comes back out of the dark ages and can bring its 80 million people freedom to support that future - and while it may be a bit distracting, I’m fine hearing about for a second from ElectroBOOM.
10:30 the sounds of the arcs breaking trough molecules is extremely satisfying
It's nice, right? I made it by breaking a bunch of spaghettis in half, and the effect generated is the sound of millions of Italians' hearts breaking! Sorry Italians!
@@ElectroBOOM @davie504 wants to know your location
@@ElectroBOOMWhen is the breakdown for the marx generator slo-mo coming? It's been over a year. Have you dropped the idea?
I have a lot of experience with high voltage (kind of a real life professional mad scientist). I work in a lab that does lightning testing of aircraft and wind turbine parts. I help design the generators as well - our highest current generator is 200kA, and our highest voltage unit is 400kV.....for know. An answer to your "which direction" query: My experience with testing at 2 million volts is that negative charges like to jump off sharp points, but positive charges do not. In reality, electrons jump off, but......protons do not. Electrons are the charge carrier (if you are not inside a semiconductor). My description is similar to yours.......excess charge is always on the surface of a conductor. Similar charges repel each other. When on a flat surface, the charges on either side tend to push against each other cancelling the force, but on a pointy surface, they try to push electrons off the tip.
I often setup up demos where a sphere is one electrode, and a point is the other. When the point is negative, the needed voltage to arc is much much lower then if you keep the same config and just reverse the voltage.
I've been binge watching every episode you have put out waiting for this upload.
I need more ELECTROBOOM!
That was awesome!! It's a shame you didn't have a vacuum chamber on that high-speed shoot to test that final theory, but next time!! It would be cool to amp up the lighting too so you could see more of that electron fluff at the higher framerates, but I'm not sure how feasible that is at 1,750,000 fps.
Gotta watch out for x-rays when doing sparks in a vacuum...
@@tiagotiagot You say that like it's a bad thing
@@personzorz I like your bold attitude
I don't think the issue is vacuum because the arcs themselves are from ionized air. The problem is that they're all touching (through solids) the earth. What needs to be done is suspending the whole setup in air without any contact to the earth (or any other ground). Maybe by dropping the whole thing while it's on?
thank you mehdi for everything you are doing for us, these videos always help me
7:25 - That's a good screensaver! Especially with such music!
I learnt about 🇮🇷 Iran, as well as how electric charge works in one video
Mehdi I thought you're not going to talk about what's going on in Iran, but you did!
دمت گرم
its a great video even in our science class our teacher uses your vids in teaching us i love it
This is my favorite elecroboom video so far
This video is sooooo freaking awesome!
I love how the diffuse connections coming from the screwdriver (e.g., 5:34) directly show the "action principle" in advanced physics at play.
One way to predict the path that a particle takes from A to B is to calculate a so-called "action" it has for any path between A and B. In reality, it will always take the path with the least action. Here, it starts out with a lot of paths that have basically the same action. Then, one of them has just a slightly lower action than the other ones, so all following electrons flow through it.
Your Iran comments are extra meaningful as you're a daddy to a wee girl. Kudos, Mehdi.
This is so cool! I am so happy ElectroBOOM exists! This guy is right up there with Bill Nye.
7:21 this one is amazing, it is like Mehdi vs The Flash
You could power the Tesla coil from batteries, put everything in a metal box at the bottom of it, connect the box to the lower end of the coil, and also add a wire from the box towards the top of the coil. The box would act like a second "top load". That way the ground wont influence it, both sides can charge relative to the environment and the arcs can jump from both sides at once. Entire thing needs to be suspended from non-conductive string for this. And of course you need to re-tune it.
And then you could bring a ground wire close to the top OR bottom side and affect which side of the coil the arcs start from.
I want the slow mo video of Mehdi holding the rod as my laptop wallpaper ahahahah, it's such a work of art!
those fractal lines before converging into one is beautiful. so maybe, we can also see lightning scatters before it merges into a single line when it hits the ground... at high framerates of course
3:49 YES ! ! ! ! !
My brother Jackson and I were chilling in the hot tub on the balcony, and it was nighttime so the Christmas lights on the railing were on. But all the connections were covered in ice. And I remember Jackson discovered that if you put your finger on a certain part of the chunk of ice, you could clearly feel an electric current running through it. Back then, I didn’t know 💩 about any of this stuff. But now I realized that, because I was sitting in the hot tub with the water up to my belly button, the electricity was actually running through my wet @$$ into the obviously grounded hot tub. Now ice isn’t a very good conductor which is why I only felt it on my fingers, but had the ice been any thinner and allowed my fingers to get any closer to the live prongs, we would’ve unwillingly recreated that famous scene from “Groundhog day”
Ice doesn’t conduct electricity. The heat and salt from your finger began melting the ice. That’s all it was.
@@I_SuperHiro_I It still had some conductivity. That’s why I wasn’t dead, because of the heavy resistance
@@Moocowthegreat I’m saying the heat from your finger and the salt on your skin melted the ice, so you were touching water. Christmas lights are also 2.5-3.5V. 50V is the threshold to potentially drive a lethal amount of current. Just trying to educate, that’s all.
Hey Mehdi! Thank you so much for that throwaway gag in support of #MahsaAmini you're such a cool person.
Thank you Mehdi
Excellent Footage
Excellent Explanation
Excellent Animation
Thank you
Give it up for this brave man, always taking one for the team for our learning and viewing pleasure. And for all that he does, I thank him.
Loved all the digs and support you gave on this one where deserved. Just wonderful!
7:30-ish thank you for absolutely Mehdifying my day!
I really like this political jabs Mehdi is doing in the video! Nice one!
It's nice to have confirmation that it works basically the same way as lightning but on a smaller scale.
Slow Mo Guys did a video on lightning before, funnily enough.
At those scales, such a high frame rate isn't required.
And, yeah. You see the same sort of effects:
'Stepped leaders', channels of ionised air, moving through the sky,
the fluff rising from the ground, especially from pointy objects,
getting much brighter when the two sides meet.
0:21 the elon musk joke 💀
Elon exploded
Damn it's been ruined alot
Your plugs for your sponsors are more entertaining than most channels I subscribe to. Your videos are as entertaining as Qi ! Thank you! Also, I agree with you on the demonstrations in Iran.
Appreciate Mehdi speaking out against the Iranian theocratic regime
Not many have balls here to speak against islam
They tried to talk about it in one humanright + Antiracism group. The discussion was soon taken down because "sensitive subject for minorities within the group"
This same experiment should have been also performed above hot surface where we would have less conductivity and in water vapor environment as well, but still this exp. tells a lot. thank you sir.
This was a fun vid to see between you and Slow Mos.
Plus, top job inserting #MahsaAmini.
Buzz off of here, you slave of west!
seeing those kids whining about Mehdi should *not* talk about politics : seriously how many ElectroBoom vids have you kids watched? one second per clip?
nah shaddup if he said maga you will not say this, change my mind
Thank you for mentioning Women, Life, Freedom
Thank you, mr. Sadaghdar!
hello electroboom i want to say thank you when i watched your videos it teached me lots about electricity and you really helped me become smart actually i got all of my knowledge from other sources but your channel gave me knowledge of electricity and physics so thank you
Hi nightguard,
thank you for sharing your learnings with us. Can I please ask you a question? What was the last thing you learned from this channel? Can you please explain the concept you learned?
well the last thing i learned was how plasmas work and how they act which can boost the process of learning in physics which i am learning right now
@@Seraphim262 haha nice one
I have some sh*tty idea, but it might worth it: try to have a video with something is moving as background and then use green screen to animate yourself. This way, it is more natrue.
Some helpful links:
Tom Scott: th-cam.com/video/E5HRvQNg4pQ/w-d-xo.html
Captain Disillusion: th-cam.com/video/aO3JgPUJ6iQ/w-d-xo.html
00:13, I have an LED display which led me to think that my screen is filled with dust lol
7:21 that would be an amazing animated wallpaper!
Always informative😊
Wow! You should make a "I got shocked in an ElectroBOOM Video" and give one to Dan!
Thanks you for supporting iran🥺
Thanks again for your support. We love you in Iran 🌹🌹✌️✌️
huge W on speaking up about iran
I made a small air gap relaxation oscillator, a few years ago, powered ~3-5KV. I measured the current flowing thru it on a scope. It generated sawtooth waves at a tad over 1MHz. So air, at standard atmospheric pressure, has a very high response time. This is in contrast to noble gases, at near vacuum, such as in a neon bulb, where response times are the 100s of microseconds.
Resently I visited your channel for new video. And I get this one in time 😁😁
I suspect there are a lot of things going on that would lead to asymmetries in the arc formation. The big one is the fact that the Tesla coil terminal has charge being directly added/removed by the Tesla coil's circuitry, while the screwdriver only gains an induced charge, due to its proximity to the coil terminal (capacitive coupling). Therefore the absolute charge will be much much greater on the coil terminal, and the electric field density at the terminal correspondingly greater.
There are also differences in how easily you can make positive versus negative ions, and how easily you can strip free electrons from different materials. These effects are relevant in arc welding, for example, which is why different processes require different polarities, or even AC, as when TIG welding on aluminum. It would be interesting to see if there are any circumstances where you can tell the difference between the two different polarities of arcs in the high speed video.
Great video. Really cool to see arcs in slow motion and also really cool to see that you are not scared to rase awareness about some political topics unrelated to the main content in the video. Even though some people might not like it, I think it is the right thing to do. And as always great explainations about the underlying principles.
Agreed, it was really good to see
What would happen if you repated the experiment in a vacuum chamber? You could team up with The Action Lab...
Finally! The collab video that everyone is waiting for.
*The fastest frame rate ever done in a phantom camera*
Electroboom: great starting point
Mehdi, if you turn the video sideways (Telsa coil on top) this looks suspiciously like the way lightning comes down from the clouds..... little fingers searching, and step leaders reaching out.... and eventually, the earth says, yep, here's a little help....
I'd love to see this done again at even higher frame rates.
Great video!
There was an experiment when they broke an egg and recorded that with a high speed camera. The fractal pattern is the same. Searching for source, he was a professor from University of Debrecen.
Id like to see this done again but with a powerful fan blowing the air. Maybe see that wind drift effect you see in lightning sometimes?
I thought the original video was good, this is a freaking education. Wonderful. Seeing the equivalent of a lightning leader on this scale is astonishing.
yeah. I still think I remember when the Slow Mo Guys did a video on filming lightning strikes on the water at night, and you could see the lightning make its way down to the ground in those satisfying tendrils... It's crazy that now we have footage of that sort of principle but on such a small scale
Also, I gotta say, the diagrams he drew while explaining stuff like the zone of "ionized fluff", was really helpful for me to understand the concept.
@@richardpike8748 This is nuts, I went to school with a a Richard Pike. I wonder if you're the same one!
Good choice of background music while showing the records.
It really sets up the propper mood!
Good job picking up on the important topics of our time.
Great video (as always)! However, I'm not quite convinced that your explanation of why the arc forms in one direction is correct. I'm not sure if it makes sense to say that the air is connected to ground. But it doesn't really matter anyway. Instead of looking at voltage difference, one should look at electric fields. To ionize air, we need a strong electric field and not just a large voltage difference. That is also the reason why the arcs always start at the spike of the Tesla coil and not on the bulge. The voltage between spike/bulge and surrounding is the same, but the electric field at the spike is much stronger. The arcs only go one way because only the Tesla coil has strong electric fields around it. This is because the Tesla coil accumutes a lot of charge on top if it while the other end has practically no charge. If we look at the charges and electric fields, we can explain the phenomenon without considering the potential of the air and we don't even need to argue whether the air is connected to anything.
4:23 the tongue flap of sadistic joy ⚡⚡⚡
That Elon joke was on point
Nah. Bro is a nutter lefty.
Stopped at 3:52 to give you at thumbs up.
from 7:25 onwards you can see something really cool, mehdi's arm relaxes and tenses extremely fast when the arcs connect and disconnect from him. as soon as the arc detaches from the stick, his arm moves and then stops again when the arc jumps back.
I've seen this for first time and being electrical engineer I just got mesmerized
Medi your video is so fun and educational as always, however your very public support for Women's right in Iran has brought me to tears with joy, thank you, thank you, so much x
I admire your guts in standing up for human rights and decency in your native country. Your daughter and daughters all over Iran deserve better than a political misuse of of their established faith. Oh, the electrical arc are cool, too!
Shut up hypocrite!
Neat follow-up!
Glad to hear you mention the situation in Iran
4:24
Damn electric song
Shout out to Iranian women and people fighting for rights!
The titles should say: me and the boys having fun with arcs
good luck for Iran. Quite like the fact you made some references to the protests.
ElectroBOOM X The SlowMo Guys are the collab i never knew i wanted but was what i needed
Great footage and great secondary message. But I have a question now you've piqued my interest... What effect does wind/air movement have on the arcing from a tesla coil. Could you use a fan that would blow hard enough to restrict (or extend/bend) the arc?
Could you imagine what Ben Franklin or Nicolai Tesla would think if they could see this insane footage? I dont know if any one in history deserves to see this stuff more than Tesla
This was an excellent collaboration, so much to learn!
We stand with people of Iran #MahsaAmini
Thank you for 1:58 you legend.
May there be equality, peace and freedom of thought and belief in Iran! And everywhere! Hopefully, the scientific method will help people choose reasonable views and respect others.