truck go boom

cement truck+a few hundred pounds of dynamite and c4= greatest episode of mythbusters ever. so lets start off with the basics first. the massive potential energy is set off by the added energy of the detonator which is basically just two metal poles stuck into the c4. a charge is run through the poles and travels through the c4 because the c4 acts as a bit of a resistor. sparks fly and just like the pickle in class the c4 ignites and sets off a chemical reaction that produces a lot of heat, light, and sound energy. the truck then tries to hold itself together but the force of the explosion is too much for it to handle and the truck just starts to move with the explosion. all the pieces of debris are thrown in to the air and act like projectiles landing far from the point of origin because of the massive Force(X) and Force(Y) vectors caused by the explosion.

great balls of lightning!

we all know that lightning is when there is no longer an equilibrium with the charge in the ground and the charge in the clouds. and it is this imbalance that causes the charged particles to jump from the cloud to the ground ( or ground to cloud). but what happens when the charged particles just stagnate in mid air? this video has a very good example of a weather phenomenon called ball lightning. there are several theories about what is happening here. some believe that there are thousands of tiny nano-particles in the air acting as sort of a battery. and when enough of these come together they discharge and create the ball lightning. others believe that it is due to irregularities in air pressure and dryness that creates small pockets of trapped charged particles that discharge in midair rather than connecting with the ground-cloud. it almost reminds me of that weird staticy noise we heard when landon's finger got close to sammy and we heard a sizzling noise. i think that it is that same effect just in a more concentrated area and with enough charge that it is visible to the eye.

i also wanted to throw this in. just some classic Bill Nye with a nice tribute to The Vapors at the end.

ok this one is pretty cool. the tesla coil is supercharging its metal sphere and making it very very negative. so negative that the air around it seems almost positive and the shocks jump out from the metal sphere. ok that was the charge part of this thing. now here is the cool stuff. each shock is played many times a second to get the desired sound from the coil. which means that it could be fired a few hundred times a second for a very high pitched noise. this is what plays the song. the electrons jumping off the metal heat up the air creating a mini thunder bolt. only this thunder bolt is short and in a frequency that we can hear easily. i would go into more detail about this but we havent covered sound yet and i dont really know what im talking about.
finally is the coolest part, those little neon lights at the bottom of the screen. they light up when ever the coil is firing due to the electrons just flying through the air. they enter the light and turn the light on. i thought that was pretty damn cool.
there is another video (not posted) that has almost the same thing only on a much smaller scale and you can better see the neon light effect.