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Your funniest mess up.

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Nostrafus

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Aiight, time to relax and laugh at yourself and others.

Okay, post your funniest mistake, and or damage you've done to your own home screwing up a project.

I'll start first.

I don't remember exactly what I was making, but I wasn't paying real close attention, which I should have been, and I ended up switching the polarity of the board so when I plugged it into the wall outlet it formed a loop and hit the entire basement with a sudden jolt of 240 volts of electricity, I had to replace EVERYTHING in the basement, every breaker in the house flipped, luckily it didn't fry any of my major things, like the TV or computer or refrigerator.

It cost me a good bit, but I had a laugh and since have remembered to double check everything.

:lol:
 
My mistake

When I was about ten years old I would try all sorts of things.
I found a wrecked motor scooter in a local dump site, it had a metal thing with three wires sticking out. It was about 3 inches (75cm) long and weighed about half a pound (500g?).
I duly took it home and tried connecting two leads across my trainset 12v transformer (sat on the floor). I don't remember much before I lept backwards and hit the back of a chair a few feet behind me. :oops:
As I was sat cross-legged when I tried this I figure I did well to travel that far.

So I learned about magneto ignition systems, high voltages hurting and playing with things I don't understand. I still play with things I don't understand but I'm more cautious now :wink:
 
I had a similar experience when I was in in high school.
I was working on Air Ionizer project which boost mains voltage to 6000V to purify air. After mounting all the components I found that the circuit was not very effective. I tried all possible ways to check whether Ions are emitted from the circuit but could not figure it out. Out of frustration god knows what happend to me, I just touched the output of the circuit with bare hands and then....I found myself 4 feet away from the lab. table flat on the floor :lol:
That was the last time I remember I got a painful high voltage shock. Never exeperienced any more then...because I am more careful than was before. :)
 
I first learned about electricity playing with electromagnets. Coil a wire around a nail, hook it up to a battery and pick up paperclips and little toy cars. Anyways, it occurred to me if I can pick up these little items with a 1.5V battery imagine what I could pick up with with 120V from an electrical outlet. Sure enough the sparks went flying, created a big black mark on the wall and left me as one traumatize little boy.

I bet this happen to more than a few people.
 
Oh yeah, I did that to a guy.

I was in intervention (Kinda like a short version of in school suspension) in school 5 years or so ago, and some guy was trying to scare the teacher by getting a paperclip too close to the negative on the outlet.

So the teacher kept yelling at him and he kept being an idiot, so finally I told him it wouldn't do anything, and to unfold the paperclip, and stick the paperclip in both sockets to bridge it.

So like a dumbass he did it, I swear he jumped like 5 feet in the air when that spark shot at him. He ended up having to pay for replacing the outlet, he burned the thing up, the face was black and the outlet was broken.

Heh I don't think he ever recovered from that.
 
You've got a mean streak Nostrafus ;)

Once, back when I was but a computer newbie, my friend was talking me through formatting my hard drive over the phone. I needed the floppy drive, which I had unplugged to reach something else, so, not really paying attention to what I was doing, I plugged it back in to power while the computer was on! Sparks flew and it started smoking, luckily it didn't hurt anything else in my computer :)

Another time, I was charging a cumulative 1000uf or so of parallel caps to about 100v. Then I had one side of the caps hooked to the edge of a metal bowl, with some rubbing alcohol in it. The other wire had a screw for an electrode soldered onto it. Then you combine the two and light your alcohol (very useful, isn't it). Except then when it lit up the alcohol splashed all over, and the screw was welded to the bowl, so I quickly put it out.
 
okay then here is my funniest epirience with electronics. i was about twelve and we had something happen to the mains and we had the electrician to come over to check the mains box because one of the fuses had blown. well i was helping by holding the lid up above the box. so the electrician went to go get a multimeter to test the box or something like that and i happened to catch something he said which was along the lines of 'I better check that' or something similar.

so as he walked away, me with practically no knowlege of electronics at all casually leant over and put my finger in the fuse holder. I then discovered that 240 volts AC can easily jump gaps!!! luckily I was barefoot on dirt so i was grounded. I didn't get thrown back or anything but did i get one massive headache!!!

DO NOT PLAY WITH MAINS
(i thought for legal reasons i better add a moral :))

I never seemed quite the same from that point on!!!

Kieran
 
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