6 Badass Tricks You Can (But Shouldn't) Do With Electricity

#3.
Make a Thunderstorm In Your Microwave

Everyone knows that if you put metal in a microwave, fun happens. Awesome, face-burning fun. What many of us don't know is that there are many objects that, when put in a microwave, bring you one step closer to home-brewing your own plasma weapons.

Those "eye of the storm" gadgets from Spencer's Gifts and other stores that sell birthday cards with fat naked women are pretty cool, but what if there was a way to make them cooler? And by cooler, we mean really dangerous and possibly destructive?

How?

Just put the ball in the microwave, turn it on and wait for extremely dangerous awesome to occur.

No Shit?

The plasma ball works normally by filling the inner ball with electricity, which then travels through neon or some other gas that glows to the outer globe and discharges. When you put your hand on it, you provide a conduit for the electricity. When you put it in the microwave, the microwaves create "holy fuck" levels of electricity which then goes batshit.

You might want to note that the video mentions that they took out three microwaves before this successful try, so, you know, make sure you have alternate means for heating burritos.

#2.
Blow Shit Up

With electricity we tend to over-emphasize its awesome ability to fry the shit out of things, but downplay its equally awesome ability to make shit explode.

Have you ever seen what happens when lightning strikes a tree? Well, you can do that on a small scale with your favorite produce.

How?

All you need is a capacitor--the video here is using one from a defibrillator (NOTE: DO NOT STEAL A DEFIBRILLATOR FROM AN AMBULANCE TO BLOW UP FRUIT)--some wires and some potatoes or apples. Hook the wires up to the capacitor, and up to some kind of conductor stuck in the fruit and/or vegetable, and stand back.

No Shit?

When enough electricity, say the amount used to restart a human heart, is pumped into something moist yet otherwise poorly conducting and not in need of having its heart restarted, like a tater, it meets resistance. Resistance is what makes a light bulb glow, except in this case there is significantly more electricity that's delicious potato instead of moderately tasty filament.


The gritty remake of Toy Story.

We like to think that if Edison had discovered this first, the light bulb would have been invented as the world's most badass potato masher.

#1.
Make a Frankenfrog

We have already showed you how to make a zombie, but sometimes you just want to play God in a more hilarious way. While you will probably get stopped at the door of the mortuary if you tried to leave with body parts, nobody minds at all if you play around with dead frogs. And that is just what Garnet Hertz did.

How?

Using a computer, some electronics, a dead frog, a vat of mineral oil and a computer network, Garnet hooked up a dead frog to a webpage that, depending on which link you clicked, would make the left or right leg kick. Science realized they may actually have discovered the weirdest thing on the Internet.

Twitch, Ace Art Inc. (Winnipeg, Canada, 2003) - Frog: Experiments in Galvanism from Garnet Hertz on Vimeo.

No Shit?

The technique is called Galvanism and is essentially the little brother of reanimating a corpse with electricity.

The idea that you can make muscles move with electricity is nothing new; they have been doing it for at least 200 years as a hilarious funeral prank. And you can call Mr. Hertz crazy for putting it online, but let's face it: If letting people control a dead electricity frog over the Internet rid them of their desire to make their own, it was probably well worth it.

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