gadfly56
Senior Member
- Location
- New Jersey
- Occupation
- Professional Engineer, Fire & Life Safety
...It felt like a good stiff 120 volt shock, but I think that particular flash tube took at least 300 to fire. The amazing part is the shock was created using 2 AAA batteries as a source of power...
That brought back memories! Some years ago I had to come up with a lighting effect for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", when Chief rips down the electrical panel. The prop was well away from any area I could run a line to the lighting panel, so I investigated the possibility of recycling the flash unit(s) from a disposable camera(s). Well, the guts of course were all kinds of exposed, but somehow I managed not to make contact with the terminals while fiddling around with it. We know Murphy can't abide something exciting NOT happening, and eventually it did. And you're right, the circuit voltage is around 300 and I found at one web site the cap stores about 5.4 Joules. Wouldn't you know, I didn't believe what had happened and had to repeat the experiment, and I'm not even from Missouri :lol:!
I did get the effect to work, but the actor and I rehearsed where he could grab the prop A LOT!