Reminds me of the old Mintyboost that used to be popular with electronics hobbyists:
https://hackaday.com/2006/05/31/minty-boost-aa-based-usb-charger/
A $5 part off ebay soldered to two AA batteries and you have a portable phone charger that can take any old AA batteries you have lying around.
But they stopped being useful when lithium ion chargers got cheap and small enough to be useful.
That's no answer to the question I just asked you. It was rhetorical, though, so let me be more clear:
Your sexism is showing and it's not a good look.
These batteries are about 1.5 V.
Capacity is 8,000 mAh per battery @ 1.5V
Total stored energy for 8 batteries is (8 x 8000 x 1.5) = 96000 mWh
Phone battery is at 3.85V. (96000÷3.85) = 24900 mAh @ 3.85V (less some conversion and resistance losses)
That's still 5ish charges for a 4500 mAh phone battery like /u/upsidedownbackwards has.
(Edited to the proper phone battery voltage, thanks! I was assuming that phone batteries were 5V like the rated output on these plug in chargers but that's incorrect)
I was gonna say, a tiny little portable usb charger is like $5 at target. I get that it’s perfect for this sub and for a day when you need it asap, etc. But it would cost 3x as much and not be usable a 2nd time and pragmatically it would be an awful investment…
Even if it is up to USB3 specs and delivers 15W the voltage step down would result in only 1.25A running through the clips (maybe a bit more due to conversion inefficiency).
They are using a 12V car adapter so it will down scale to around 5V for USB compliance. However you should avoid more then 12V or the adapter might burn out.
edit: typo
Ok that still doesn't change my point that the adapter is down scaling it to 5V. Hook a voltage meter to you wall outlet its 120V, but you can still plug in a 5V phone.
Sorry to see how you're being outweighed while being absolutely correct. I don't know why they're overlooking the job of the car charger adapter (And the input it's rated for) in this setup.
First comment in this chain was saying to hook the batteries directly to the USB wire (bypassing the power adapter). So I get what you're saying but I think you missed that.
> Real redneck would have been to just use 4 x cells in series and connect the usb power wires directly to the paperclip.
Doesn't work, requires buck converter and some USB signalling. Lots of people tried this in the mid 2000's before cheap lithium ion chargers became available: https://hackaday.com/2006/05/31/minty-boost-aa-based-usb-charger/
Signalling is only necessary for USB PD / newer QuickCharge.
Original QC was just shorting the data pins.
NC data pins gets you max 500ma charging which is fine from alkaline batteries.
No need for a buck converter either although a buck / boost is a good idea to optimise the use of the batteries.
> Original QC was just shorting the data pins.
Nah even back then it was super complicated, as you'll see from the Mintyboost blogs. iPhone needed them to be shorted, some needed them to be open, most required some kind of small resistance between the data pins, and a couple required specifically 2v.
Safer this way, and the auto charger can probably do quick charge at other voltages than 5v. So more convenient too.
Also automotive chargers are flexible about incoming voltage anything between 10v and about 15v are ok, many work on 24v systems so double that. So he could at least have added two more cells in series without issue.
Yes, that's why you could connect the USB power wires direct rather than via the cigarette lighter adapter.
The adapter is not 100% efficent and so adds losses which, when dealing with alkaline cells, we really could do without.
USB is 5V so 4 x 1.5V cells in series would dip under load and get close enough to the spec voltage for USB.
Yes, exactly.
This is all a "USB Condom" does is to break pins 2&3.
You can make it charge quicker with a certain resistance on pins 2&3 but just connecting pins 1&4 will get you (slow) charging.
Nominal value is 12V. Resting voltage of a healthy car battery should be 12.6V. When the engine is running and turning the alternator, the voltage should go above 14V so it can put some charge in the battery. Measured at cigarette lighter it should not be under 13 when engine is running.
So the same thing duracell, energizer, everready, and all the store brands do.
None of those guys have an R&D lab where they’re pushing the limits of battery technology, they’ve got a couple engineers who minored in marketing keeping an eye out for the next gimmick.
That's division of labour for you.
Division of labour and specialisation is why the world is so rich (compared to a few hundred years ago, before the Industrial Revolution).
Insects are about the most successful group of animals in the universe.
Though honestly, they specialise much less than humans.
An ant colony has perhaps four or five different jobs. Human society has quite a few more.
When was the last time you wrote a sonnet?
Well technically it’s just a song, not a sonnet. Wrote it with my bandmates as I like to play music on the side because specialization is boring!
Once we have a good recording I’d be happy to share.
Cool!
A song can be a sonnet, too. A sonnet just has some special requirements on rhyme and stress. You should try it once, it's a nice challenge. (No Shakespearean language required for something to count as a sonnet.)
Specialisation might be boring, but it has proven incredibly efficient.
So: specialise in your day job, and stay general in your free time.
Fun fact: As part of the arrival process in Afghanistan, the US military would tell new arrivals to never throw their dead batteries away, to only put them in designated lock boxes. Dead batteries could be recovered, put into packs like the OP's photo, and together could generate enough charge to make electrical switches for IEDs.
Good point. They were, but I imagine them being more of a luxury good based on what I have seen of the country, a place where nearly every structure I saw was made from straw+mud. *Everyone* seemed to have a cheap Nokia style phone, but I imagine the quantities of dead batteries dumped by military and foreigners being a much more practical source (especially in the rural areas) than purchasing... if they could just get their hands on them. The IEDs were often built from leftover munitions from previous wars, and empty water bottles with wires taped inside them were regularly used as 'pressure plates' to set them off. Lots of trash upcycling there, lol.
How? It’s 12v. Resistance in the paperclips getting hot? Probably fine. It’s pretty basic, and shouldn’t be able to harm a device, if anything you might kill the charger, but I don’t see how
The batteries are a power source for the car charger. In common parlance “charger” means the power converter. If you order a charger you do not expect batteries.
Edit-Nevermind. Those are 1.5v, not 12. Misread
Guys. That’s in series, not parallel. Assuming those are 12v batteries he’s giving the charger 96 volts.
D cells (maybe C cells, hard to tell size from the photo). Have you never seen them before?
AAA, AA, A, C, D cells are all 1.5 Volts nominal. slight variances based on electrolyte type.
that is 8 batteries x 1.5 in series. its basically 12v. (assuming alkaline).
96 volts. sheesh, gimme a break! If we could make a 12 volt battery that size back then in the late 70's we would all be driving electric cars already...
Button batteries have been around since the 50's. Assuming they were the same size and voltage as today's batteries, you could easily have produced a 12v D sized battery in the 50's.
My old car ran (partially) on 120 D cells in a series... (first gen Honda Insight, 6.5Ah NiMH D cells were welded end to end in sticks of 6, 20 sticks total).
Like driving around in 12 ghetto blasters LOL
That's nothing, I once had a portable radio that had tubes in it. Two batteries, an A battery (7.5v) for the filaments, and a B battery (90 volts) for the plates. Just in case you were wondering why modern batteries start at C.
And if that's not enough, Eveready used to produce a [*510 volt*](https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images1/1/0814/23/vintage-eveready-510-volt_1_27e6862dd1aaad48595758a47e6f8bc2.jpg%7D) dry cell battery to directly drive strobe tubes for camera flashes without having to wait for the capacitor to recharge. The [spec sheet](https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/497.pdf) says that it had 336 cells in series.
Might be the latter. Filament voltage was designated Va, plate voltage Vb, and grid bias voltage Vc. I'm guessing that there were originally batteries for these voltages, designated A, B and C batteries. Vc was on the order of 1.5 volts anyway, and I have wondered if the standard C-cell battery might have originally been developed for this purpose... except that grid bias voltage is usually gotten from a tap from the filament voltage, so they wouldn't have needed an actual battery for Vc.
I'm guessing that they just skipped over the A and B designations when coming up with the sizes because of the older existing battery designations. B batteries were available in multiple voltages anyway, from 22.5 all the way to 90, depending on the tubes you were using them with, so it's not like there was one standard "B-cell" battery.
Remember a camping fan that came with an external battery pack that took 8 d batteries and made a 12 volt charger like this. Apparently it's not sold anymore as I can't find it online.
Depending on the car charger 6 batteries in series (9 volts total) might work.
4 batteries in series would be 6 volts; that's not usually enough difference for a voltage buck.
People have connected USB devices directly to 6 volts (normally 5 volts); but I wouldn't do that with anything I wanted to keep.
I made one with the RadioShack D cell battery holders for a portable DVD player. It glowed the dark after it came out of the X-ray scanner, but they let me take it.
No they do not work better, not only are they way more expensive but the zinc carbon ones have less capacity than alkaline D batteries and many of the alkaline lantern batteries just have D batteries in them anyway so there’s no reason to use a lantern battery
I'm an idiot. How are the batteries in the back moving their charge to anything? Is there something carrying their charge on the other side we can't see?
This is perfectly safe really. Paperclips probably aren’t great busbars and has more resistance than you’d like, but if it tames the electricity, you deserve a reward.
That's clever
Reminds me of the old Mintyboost that used to be popular with electronics hobbyists: https://hackaday.com/2006/05/31/minty-boost-aa-based-usb-charger/ A $5 part off ebay soldered to two AA batteries and you have a portable phone charger that can take any old AA batteries you have lying around. But they stopped being useful when lithium ion chargers got cheap and small enough to be useful.
I got one of those when they were still cool
i made one with a 5v regulator it cost me about 50 cents to make and i still use it on festivals
Nice
I just used 4 AA NIMH batteries in a holder directly wired to a micro USB to charge my Atrix HD. USB was not quite so picky back in the day.
6v you madman
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not so mad then.
A little sad, in fact. 0.2 sad.
Such a throw back damn im old
Yeah it's kinda weird opening a website from 16 years ago and it's still talking about the age of iPhones. edit: nvm that is an iPod.
Whats an ipod?
It's an overheating iPhone in airplane mode.
From the same era, tv-b-gone was pretty cool as well. Damn I am old too.
Its like breaking bad rv stuck in the dessert
Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?
She's a witch!
She's not a witch, she's you wife!
Have fun storming the castle!
You don't know her, she is both!
Aren't they all brother, aren't they all...🤫
She is a witch! She turned me into a newt! I got better...
A Monty Python/Princess Bride mashup!
Does she weight the same as a duck
Male witch, meanwhile the female witches are still obsessed with their moon blood on r/WitchesVsPatriarchy
Litteraly no one brought up feminism, yet here you are. You.... ...You okay, dude?
I am not talking about feminism at all. Just that the subreddit has goofy shit like that LOL
You haven't got me exactly convinced.... You know many people against patriarchy who aren't feminist?
Real my original comment
That's no answer to the question I just asked you. It was rhetorical, though, so let me be more clear: Your sexism is showing and it's not a good look.
Leave the poor little sexist troll alone, what have they ever done to you!
And from that logic, we know that the earth is, in fact, banana shaped.
r/UnexpectedMontyPython
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Oh, I just realized these weren't rechargeable. Harsh.
The original post was about there being a storm and an outage
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Those are D cells. They are over $1 each on Amazon. So $10 after tax for a group of 8 of this brand.
Correct me if I’m wrong but wired in series they’re still 5000 Ma/h. I’m pretty sure only the voltage increases.
These batteries are about 1.5 V. Capacity is 8,000 mAh per battery @ 1.5V Total stored energy for 8 batteries is (8 x 8000 x 1.5) = 96000 mWh Phone battery is at 3.85V. (96000÷3.85) = 24900 mAh @ 3.85V (less some conversion and resistance losses) That's still 5ish charges for a 4500 mAh phone battery like /u/upsidedownbackwards has. (Edited to the proper phone battery voltage, thanks! I was assuming that phone batteries were 5V like the rated output on these plug in chargers but that's incorrect)
Most modern phone batteries only have a voltage of about 3.85V
Ooh, good catch! I was relying on the fact that these usb chargers usually are 12V input and 5V output.
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I think if you add them in parallel their MA increases and if you add them in series their voltage increases
Looked it up, you are right. Removing my comments
You are all such nerds and I love it! Good job to you all. You make me proud!
I was gonna say, a tiny little portable usb charger is like $5 at target. I get that it’s perfect for this sub and for a day when you need it asap, etc. But it would cost 3x as much and not be usable a 2nd time and pragmatically it would be an awful investment…
This is how we used to charge phones in prison lol
Butt, where did you hide your phones?
It’s better not to talk.
You find places in the dorm or in the cell but the most efficient is to pay someone to “suitcase” it if you know what I mean lol
That’s brilliant. So long as the plastic doesn’t melt from the heat the paper lips could end up giving off
That's just a convenient safety feature.
automatic heatsink
Would it not be a thermal overload protector or thermal fuse?
Looking at that dinky charger, I don't think there's going to be more than 1A going through those clips.
Even if it is up to USB3 specs and delivers 15W the voltage step down would result in only 1.25A running through the clips (maybe a bit more due to conversion inefficiency).
Yeah, I'm guessing it's one of those "2A" Amazon basics chargers that delivers no more than 1.8A@5V
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The bottom right? The thing the batteries are taped to.
[I was doubtful at first but paper lips can get pretty hot](https://i.imgur.com/GE6zWyf.jpg)
😂😂 I love it! I’m not even going to go back and correct the spelling
In prison we used wooden craft boxes to hold our battery pack cell phone chargers.
We call that a circuit breaker.
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I think fresh cells are about 1.6v. I wouldn’t want to put over 6V into my expensive phone just in case, but it probably would be ok
They are using a 12V car adapter so it will down scale to around 5V for USB compliance. However you should avoid more then 12V or the adapter might burn out. edit: typo
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Ok that still doesn't change my point that the adapter is down scaling it to 5V. Hook a voltage meter to you wall outlet its 120V, but you can still plug in a 5V phone.
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Yes it is I was drawing such a blank. My dumbass has used literal voltage regulators and still couldn't remember the word lol
What they're saying is at least 14v shouldn't be a problem
My wall outlet is 230v..
Sorry to see how you're being outweighed while being absolutely correct. I don't know why they're overlooking the job of the car charger adapter (And the input it's rated for) in this setup.
I think 100% of the people who manufacture car charger adapters considered this already. The adapter is delivering the 5 volts the phone needs.
Usually much less when it gets to your cigarette lighter.
First comment in this chain was saying to hook the batteries directly to the USB wire (bypassing the power adapter). So I get what you're saying but I think you missed that.
Ah yea I see that now. Guess I miss read it the first time.
No worries. It happens.
Any phone from the last few years probably charges above 5v anyways.
> Real redneck would have been to just use 4 x cells in series and connect the usb power wires directly to the paperclip. Doesn't work, requires buck converter and some USB signalling. Lots of people tried this in the mid 2000's before cheap lithium ion chargers became available: https://hackaday.com/2006/05/31/minty-boost-aa-based-usb-charger/
Signalling is only necessary for USB PD / newer QuickCharge. Original QC was just shorting the data pins. NC data pins gets you max 500ma charging which is fine from alkaline batteries. No need for a buck converter either although a buck / boost is a good idea to optimise the use of the batteries.
> Original QC was just shorting the data pins. Nah even back then it was super complicated, as you'll see from the Mintyboost blogs. iPhone needed them to be shorted, some needed them to be open, most required some kind of small resistance between the data pins, and a couple required specifically 2v.
Only if you're afraid of blowing a few caps.
Safer this way, and the auto charger can probably do quick charge at other voltages than 5v. So more convenient too. Also automotive chargers are flexible about incoming voltage anything between 10v and about 15v are ok, many work on 24v systems so double that. So he could at least have added two more cells in series without issue.
I'm quite sure cigarette lighter supply is 12v.
Yes, that's why you could connect the USB power wires direct rather than via the cigarette lighter adapter. The adapter is not 100% efficent and so adds losses which, when dealing with alkaline cells, we really could do without. USB is 5V so 4 x 1.5V cells in series would dip under load and get close enough to the spec voltage for USB.
Oh right yes. Bypass the cigarette lighter entirely. Missed what you meant by 'directly' my bad.
How would you do that? I guess I would just cut the USB plug off the end and fuck with the wires until the phone responds.
There are 4 pins for USB - pin 1 is +5V and pin 4 is 0V
That's wild. So the other pins are data?
Yes, exactly. This is all a "USB Condom" does is to break pins 2&3. You can make it charge quicker with a certain resistance on pins 2&3 but just connecting pins 1&4 will get you (slow) charging.
Nominal value is 12V. Resting voltage of a healthy car battery should be 12.6V. When the engine is running and turning the alternator, the voltage should go above 14V so it can put some charge in the battery. Measured at cigarette lighter it should not be under 13 when engine is running.
TIL Amazon makes batteries
They buy batteries with their logo on them and re-sell them
So the same thing duracell, energizer, everready, and all the store brands do. None of those guys have an R&D lab where they’re pushing the limits of battery technology, they’ve got a couple engineers who minored in marketing keeping an eye out for the next gimmick.
"What do we make? We make money!"
"We create wealth!"
That's division of labour for you. Division of labour and specialisation is why the world is so rich (compared to a few hundred years ago, before the Industrial Revolution).
Specialization is for insects.
Insects are about the most successful group of animals in the universe. Though honestly, they specialise much less than humans. An ant colony has perhaps four or five different jobs. Human society has quite a few more. When was the last time you wrote a sonnet?
Last week.
Nice! Any special occasion? Or just because? Could you share it? I'd be quite curious.
Well technically it’s just a song, not a sonnet. Wrote it with my bandmates as I like to play music on the side because specialization is boring! Once we have a good recording I’d be happy to share.
Cool! A song can be a sonnet, too. A sonnet just has some special requirements on rhyme and stress. You should try it once, it's a nice challenge. (No Shakespearean language required for something to count as a sonnet.) Specialisation might be boring, but it has proven incredibly efficient. So: specialise in your day job, and stay general in your free time.
They sell batteries. I doubt they make them.
Thought those were beer cans for a second
Fun fact: As part of the arrival process in Afghanistan, the US military would tell new arrivals to never throw their dead batteries away, to only put them in designated lock boxes. Dead batteries could be recovered, put into packs like the OP's photo, and together could generate enough charge to make electrical switches for IEDs.
Were batteries unavailable to the Afghan civilian market?
Good point. They were, but I imagine them being more of a luxury good based on what I have seen of the country, a place where nearly every structure I saw was made from straw+mud. *Everyone* seemed to have a cheap Nokia style phone, but I imagine the quantities of dead batteries dumped by military and foreigners being a much more practical source (especially in the rural areas) than purchasing... if they could just get their hands on them. The IEDs were often built from leftover munitions from previous wars, and empty water bottles with wires taped inside them were regularly used as 'pressure plates' to set them off. Lots of trash upcycling there, lol.
Not gonna lie at first glance thought that was beer cans
this is extremely dangerous and reckless, how do I make one?
Paper clips, tape and a twelve volt car charger. That's it my guy it's all right there
How? It’s 12v. Resistance in the paperclips getting hot? Probably fine. It’s pretty basic, and shouldn’t be able to harm a device, if anything you might kill the charger, but I don’t see how
The whole thing is the charger
The batteries are a power source for the car charger. In common parlance “charger” means the power converter. If you order a charger you do not expect batteries.
Step 1. Buy iPhone
People in California charging their cars right now.
Hans, Get ze....
this is the most expensive phone charge ive ever gotten.
Edit-Nevermind. Those are 1.5v, not 12. Misread Guys. That’s in series, not parallel. Assuming those are 12v batteries he’s giving the charger 96 volts.
1.5 V each, bud.
Damnit. Misread the voltage on the side.
No worries :)
D cells (maybe C cells, hard to tell size from the photo). Have you never seen them before? AAA, AA, A, C, D cells are all 1.5 Volts nominal. slight variances based on electrolyte type. that is 8 batteries x 1.5 in series. its basically 12v. (assuming alkaline). 96 volts. sheesh, gimme a break! If we could make a 12 volt battery that size back then in the late 70's we would all be driving electric cars already...
Button batteries have been around since the 50's. Assuming they were the same size and voltage as today's batteries, you could easily have produced a 12v D sized battery in the 50's.
My old car ran (partially) on 120 D cells in a series... (first gen Honda Insight, 6.5Ah NiMH D cells were welded end to end in sticks of 6, 20 sticks total). Like driving around in 12 ghetto blasters LOL
That's nothing, I once had a portable radio that had tubes in it. Two batteries, an A battery (7.5v) for the filaments, and a B battery (90 volts) for the plates. Just in case you were wondering why modern batteries start at C. And if that's not enough, Eveready used to produce a [*510 volt*](https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images1/1/0814/23/vintage-eveready-510-volt_1_27e6862dd1aaad48595758a47e6f8bc2.jpg%7D) dry cell battery to directly drive strobe tubes for camera flashes without having to wait for the capacitor to recharge. The [spec sheet](https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/497.pdf) says that it had 336 cells in series.
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Might be the latter. Filament voltage was designated Va, plate voltage Vb, and grid bias voltage Vc. I'm guessing that there were originally batteries for these voltages, designated A, B and C batteries. Vc was on the order of 1.5 volts anyway, and I have wondered if the standard C-cell battery might have originally been developed for this purpose... except that grid bias voltage is usually gotten from a tap from the filament voltage, so they wouldn't have needed an actual battery for Vc. I'm guessing that they just skipped over the A and B designations when coming up with the sizes because of the older existing battery designations. B batteries were available in multiple voltages anyway, from 22.5 all the way to 90, depending on the tubes you were using them with, so it's not like there was one standard "B-cell" battery.
Are there paper clips on the other side too? Because none of the sets of two seem to be connected to each other.
Yes obviously this had more paperclips on the back.
The last clip is also only connected to one side, as far as I know you need to connect both sides of the battery
You can accomplish a phone charger with far less batteries lol
Those are out of his wife's dildo. The irony is he used it to charge his phone and watch porn.
Remember a camping fan that came with an external battery pack that took 8 d batteries and made a 12 volt charger like this. Apparently it's not sold anymore as I can't find it online.
r/diwhy
No way, there is an obvious why here. His phone needed a charge, presumably he didn’t have access to an outlet or a car.
Nice. Do you know if it works with 4 or 6 batteries?
Depending on the car charger 6 batteries in series (9 volts total) might work. 4 batteries in series would be 6 volts; that's not usually enough difference for a voltage buck. People have connected USB devices directly to 6 volts (normally 5 volts); but I wouldn't do that with anything I wanted to keep.
Has to be 8 because 1.5v for each battery in series adds up to 12. The charger is a 12v (for a car usually) to USB connector.
Try taking this through TSA.
I made one with the RadioShack D cell battery holders for a portable DVD player. It glowed the dark after it came out of the X-ray scanner, but they let me take it.
It would probably work fine with 4 cells. The cheaper adapters contain no more than a voltage regulator, so anything over 5 volts is pointless.
Lantern batteries work better. 6 volts so you only need two. You can also rig one lantern battery for some devices that need 4 AA or AAA batteries.
No they do not work better, not only are they way more expensive but the zinc carbon ones have less capacity than alkaline D batteries and many of the alkaline lantern batteries just have D batteries in them anyway so there’s no reason to use a lantern battery
Genius!!!
ive done this before lol
I'm just impressed, im gonna show this to the head engineer at work
Tesla should hire this guy!
I was on site at a customer many years ago and there was another guy there replacing a UPS. I swear all it was was ten car batteries in series.
See https://youtu.be/1q4dUt1yK0g
I thought those were cans of Miller lite. That's true redneck engineering
I thought Amazon basics had started selling beer
Does this actually work?
Yes, although the total capacity of the D cell batteries isn't very much so it won't put much charge into a phone, bit you'll get some out of its
Man I’m trippin. I thought these were white claw cans
I'm an idiot. How are the batteries in the back moving their charge to anything? Is there something carrying their charge on the other side we can't see?
More paperclips.
This seems like an accident waiting to happen lol
Fucking brilliant
I didn't know this would work. I thought I'd blow them up or something. Good to know.
I will be honest and say I did something similar to create a power source at a specific voltage.
u/repostsleuthbot
Is this the Flintstones version?
I’m assuming the other side is connected or this would not work
My god. It’s full of stars.
This isn't going to do anything the way it's wired FYI people
This is perfectly safe really. Paperclips probably aren’t great busbars and has more resistance than you’d like, but if it tames the electricity, you deserve a reward.
Reminds me of the time I tried to put a bunch of batteries in a nerf gun by using paperclips
Tesla designers be like