An Australian man who describes himself as “a 50-something year old first year uni physics dropout” has an unusual hobby – he makes lightning in his shed.

Lighting Yourself


Attention: All the photos presented below are real ones, not photoshoped. Please don’t try to mock up at home without any protection.

Technically, the lightning in the photos is generated by a device called “Tesla coil” which is used to develop very high voltages pioneered by Nicola Tesla over 100 years ago. In its simplest form it is an air cored transformer driven by discharging a high voltage capacitor through a few of the primary turns. This sets up a high frequency resonance in the secondary coil. This resonance occurs between the inductance of the tall secondary coil and the capacitance of a rounded metal object (typically a donuts shaped toroid) and a very high voltage results in streamers directly into the air or sparks to nearby objects.

The Modern Thinker 2009

Lighting Yourself

The photo below shows the “Sombrero” . Well it was meant to be a crown really.

Lighting Yourself

The photo below shows an ‘electric kris‘. The kris is an Indonesian curved dagger.

Lighting Yourself

Here the recreation of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam

Lighting Yourself

Red color spark – Using a colored filter gives the sparking and streaming electricity a red glow

Lighting Yourself

Multi-colored sparks – Not satisfied with just having sparks of one colour, the addition of a rapidly rotating color wheel creates a multicolored light show

Lighting Yourself

Tesla in the moonlight 2009

Lighting Yourself

Car Theft Protection 2007

Lighting Yourself

Longest sparks 2007

Lighting Yourself

“Eye of Sauron” Rotating long breakout point 2007

Lighting Yourself

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