Brian Basura is a guy who likes to play with high voltages at home. He built a device that can shrink quarters to the size of dimes, using 10,000 MW of power!
He designed an ultrafast switch that immediately zaps all the power from a 22,000V capacitor into a quarter. He calls the switch a “trigatron”.
More about him:
There were signs lying around the Analog Electronics Lab that said “Danger: High Voltage”. I always thought they were kidding. I never touched anyone’s experiments anyway, out of respect.
One day I found out that the signs were real. Following that day, I was afraid to come near anyone’s high voltage experiment, because who knows when you could get electrocuted.
A couple of weeks ago, some folks from the power company came to my house to remove the old power lines and replace them with new ones.
I was told to move my car, because they would be cutting the power lines directly above it. I moved it to a place that I thought was out of the way, but then I was told that I had to move it to the other side of the street. Apparently, the power lines are longer than they seem, and if one falls on your car, it can deliver some shockingly high voltages to the poor little automobile.
So I moved it to the other side of the street. Then I went back inside to unplug my laptop, as I was told. I unplugged all the other appliances too, because it seemed like the right thing to do.
I watched out the window as a man dressed in protective gear carefully cut the old power lines and installed new ones. I was completely amazed. I cannot imagine working with high-voltage power lines all day. The stress of it would probably give me a heart attack. I would probably faint often, but the high-voltage shocks every now and then would probably resuscitate me anyhow.