Must Watch: Young Genius Performs High-Energy Physics with Dangerous Toys

Drake Anthony is no ordinary science nerd. Bright, curious, and equipped with equal amounts of ingenuity, discipline, and a fascination with stuff that burns, bursts, or explodes in spectacular ways, he’s a real-life amateur mad scientist who documents his experiments under the moniker of StyroPro on YouTube since 2006.

His channel features dozens of fascinating exploits. They range from building military-grade assault lasers and a 20-kW microwave oven, to observing tornadoes and other natural phenomena at unreasonably close range.

Despite the spectacularly dangerous nature of his wild exploits, the thing that separates Drake from the garden-variety thrill-seekers and pyromaniacs I’ve encountered is investigative rigor, his profound curiosity, and keen powers of observation. He uses them all to turn even the simplest stunts into full-blown science experiments.

One of his latest and most ambitious projects involves creating an apparatus that can produce extremely high currents (in excess of 150,000 A) and studying what happens when it’s passed through various materials. Since Drake didn’t have direct access to a grid-level substation and the requisite switch gear, he rolled his own high-current source by strapping together 400 car batteries and switching them with a homebrew monster contactor built from a log splitter and a massive pair of copper bars.

Though the setup is simple in theory, his video carefully documents the complex behavior of his homemade switch when it’s exposed to the weird phenomena that arise when you attempt to channel up to 4X the current produced by a typical stroke of lightning through it.

The video featured below alternates between careful documentation of Drake’s struggles to overcome the effects of magnetically induced switch bounce and Z pinch-induced plasma effects, and some of the most spectacular electrical pyrotechnics I’ve ever seen.

You’ll come for the explosions, but you’ll stay for the science!