There's only few times in your

life when you look at something and

you're like: 'You know, this can't be a thing,'

But it is a thing!

This video is just like that. We're going

to look at an invention today by Nikola

Tesla, but the thing is, it looks just

like a video game, but I assure you this

video is real. Before we check that out I

want to go look at a couple of

contributions he made to society as

soon as he emigrated to the U.S. in the

1880s. If you've ever done a

patent search on Nikola Tesla you'll be

amazed. It's all there! Pumps, guidance,

power distribution, fluid propulsion,

wireless energy, and a super important

one: motors. Tesla created a multi-phase

AC generator system that first proved it

could work at the Ames Hydroelectric

Power Plant in Colorado. This led to Tesla

teaming up with George Westinghouse and

creating the first large-scale AC power

plant at Niagara Falls, which was a huge

deal. If you haven't seen, it this really

cool statue of Tesla overlooks the

Canadian side of Niagara Falls. My

favorite part of the statue tells how

it came up with the idea of AC power.

He said he was walking in a park in

Budapest with a friend when suddenly the

idea of rotating magnetic fields

came to him like lightning so, he drew it in the dust.

Speaking of lightning, Tesla carried out

incredible experiments with high voltage

arcs in Colorado Springs. One such

experiment involved making this circuit.

There's a power supply which charges a

capacitor and when the capacitor fills

up in arcs across a spark gap, which

dumps that energy into a primary coil.

A secondary coil is tuned to the same

frequency for resonance, and then boosts

that voltage, and there you have it. Lightning.

There's a company called One Tesla

that makes do-it-yourself

Tesla coils that you can buy and assemble

all by yourself as long as you know how to solder.

My buddy Philip works at a

nuclear plant, so since we're dealing

with high-voltage, I got him to come over

and help me out. These things are super

cool and a great place to start if you

want to build your own coil. Instead of

using a spark gap like Tesla did, this

thing uses a really fancy inhibitor

circuit that lets you do really cool

stuff. You can load MIDI files onto an

onboard SD card and it will play

whatever song you want.

I wanted to hear it play O Fortuna

(buzzing in the tune of 'O Fortuna') Whoa!

(astonished noise)

Obviously, the next step was to try to impress the kids.

(buzzing to the tune of 'Super Mario Bros. - Main Theme')

(laughter)

(tune continues)

That is so cool

(tune continues)

(laughter)

after this we started trying to

methodically probe the limits of the

system to see what it was really capable of,

but I got a little too confident, and in my

excitement I started to do things with

the manual tells you not to do.

Looking back at it this is kind of funny,

because you can see the exact second

when i go from pure geek joy, to instant regret.

(rapid, high pitched buzzing)

Are you seein' this?

Oh it broke!

I broke it and I feel bad about that,

because I knew what I was doing, I over

drove it I probably broke the rectifier

or the igbt and I'm sad. It's a DIY

coil, though. We can fix it quickly, but

instead of working on it why don't we go

visit a guy in my hometown, who has a

website dedicated to Tesla coils. I

found him today, have never met the dude,

about to go be best friends with this

guy. he's got a little bit larger coil.

Let's go get Smarter Every Day.

This is Cameron Prince. He runs the number one

Tesla resource website on the

Internet called teslauniverse.com. He

provides tesla coil performances, and he

also happens to live directly across the

street from my aunt and uncle.

This is a little bit bigger than mine.

"How big is this thing?" Prince: "Oh it stands about nine foot-tall." Destin: "Nine foot-tall? "Did you build it?"

Prince: "I did. It's as big as I could make

it and fit in the garage."

"Really." "Yeah." "So that was the design requirement?"

"Yeah that was the design limitation there."

Destin: "Is that a capacitor bank down there?"

Prince: "Yeah, that's a big capacitor bank."

"Dude! That's not a joke!"

Prince: "Those came out of an MRI machine."

"Really. Is that the most expensive part of the

whole device?" Uhm probably." "And do the cats walk

around when you're doing it?"

Destin: "That would- It would bake a cat, man!"

Destin, narrating: Cameron is the real deal. When I was a

kid I collected baseball cards and rode

my bike. Not Cameron. His life changed

forever the first time he saw a picture

of Nikola Tesla." Cameron: "when I saw those pictures

of him in colorado springs, in his

experiments, sittin' in front of his coil,

that lightning going around him

and then I was hooked. You know most people were...

when they were kids, were throwing baseballs

and stuff. I had a box of light bulbs and wires and

batteries" Destin: "That's awesome. I like

it when people are excited about things.

This makes it so much more fun."

okay here we go

(indistinct speech, snapping switches)

(loud buzzing, rising in intensity)

Destin: "Holy Cow!"

(buzzing continues)

'Ok, I got it! I got it!"

(buzzing falls off, Destin laughs) "That is ridiculous!

(still laughing) Alright. Alright. That's unnerving!

Time out. There are some experiences you

cannot convey via internet video, and

this is one of those. We're talking

20-foot lightning bolts hitting the

ground constantly in front of you.

This was unreal. My heart has never gone from

zero to a hundred in this short amount

of time. It was... whatever. I can't explain it,

I'm not gonna try." "I can't explain that!"

After I calmed down a bit, Cameron asked me if

I wanted to see a real-life Tesla gun,

which I didn't even know was a thing!

He built this thing from a kit designed by

his two friends Steve Ward and Phillip

Slowinski. Only a few of these things exist

in the world, and I apologize for the

laughing here, but I was really, really

excited.

It doesn't look real; it feels like

you're in some kind of video game.

"How do you control the power output?"

"The display right here." "Dude! This is full-on

Ghostbusters stuff" "Oh yeah. Totally." "Where do I need

to stand?" "Uh, anywhere. I need help with a breaker,

that pin there, pull up."

(pin clicks) Destin: "Holy Moly! Okay." "Alright."

(Destin laughs)

Destin: "Where do I need to stand?" "Anywhere." "Oh, dude."

(Tesla coil buzzes)

"Wow."

(continued buzzing) Cameron: "That's super low,"

(buzzing stops) "but I can bring the intensity up."

Destin: "You know that that feeling when"

somebody has a loaded gun around you,

only the gun could point anywhere.

So I'm going to step back here. (laughs)

(deeper buzzing)

"Wow. So what's it arcing to? Why is it not

coming back to ground?

So, that's the primary coil.

No you do not have air-cooling on that!"

Cameron: "It's water cooled." "It's water cooled?!"

Destin: "You know what's unreal to me? I wanted to study Tesla coils, and I

started googling, and you live where I live."

"Yeah." "That's unreal." "It is." (Destin laughs) "Oh dude.

"One more time please." (buzzing and maniacal laughter)

ok ok, Let's get ready to do the

high-speed. let's do high speed."

(narrating) "After capturing several videos with the

Phantom, I decided I didn't like the

lighting. The problem was it was too dark

to see the gun, but I needed the darkness

to be able to see the arc. Cameron agreed

to bring the gun over my house the

following day at sundown, so that I could

use the sunlight to illuminate the gun,

and I used a black backdrop so I could

record the lightning bolt coming out of it

at 28,000 frames per second.

(buzzing)

Destin: "Got it. Got it!"

(whooshing background noise)

(crackling noise echoing)

(sudden buzzing)

(crackling continues)

(noises fade)

(sudden buzzing)

(echoed crackling)

(buzzing and continued crackling)

Ok. After watching this slow-mo, and seeing

that arc curve back towards Cameron, the

obvious next question to ask is: what

happens if you get hit?" "He's just

casually cleaning his Tesla coil."

(buzzing)

"WHAT?!"

"It's hittin' your hand!" (Cameron chuckles)

Destin: "What? Can that go through your heart?" "I mean yeah, but it's so low current."

The primary coil on a Tesla coil circuit? Fatal, no questions asked.

But on the secondary coil the

output is in microamps, which is

generally accepted to be safe, but some

people still say it's dangerous.

Here's the deal.

DO NOT do this. A lot of people say this

is safe a lot of people say it's dangerous,

I just really wanted to touch it.

"Ok, ready, ready to trigger the high-speed?"

"Ok, Oh God, I'm good, I'm good.

it just scared me

Okay, go ahead.

Okay. Wow, okay. All right. Yeah, it's thing."

(guitar music and crackling buzzing)

"So after I took that hit, Cameron asked me

if I wanted to shoot it myself. I don't know

if that was a rite of passage or what,

but, um, yes, I would like to throw

lightning bolts from my fingertips!"

"You turnin' my breaker on? Oh! good grief!

This Is like a video game!"

Destin: "I can't thank you enough for lettin' me do this.

I mean, this is like... the little boy in me is just..."

"Wow!"

"Okay. I need to give you your gun back".

I had so much fun making this video

I mean I just wanted to learn about Tesla

coils and, all this happened; I'm very

excited about this video. Anyway if you

enjoyed this video, and you want to

support Smarter Every Day then support

the people that support Smarter Every Day!

there's Audrey from 1 Tesla; I'll

leave a link in the video description.

there's Cameron at Tesla Universe;

leave his link down there, and then the

sponsor is Audible.com.

Audible has audio books that you can get

download for free if you go to

audible.com/smarter. I do this every day.

I listen to audiobooks on my way back

and forth to work. Special treat today,

Mark Cipher is a guy that I talked to