• Question: Why can we not do this at home?

    Asked by to Tom C, Karl on 17 Jan 2017. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Karl Byrne

      Karl Byrne answered on 17 Jan 2017:


      Some of the demonstrations in the lecture are really dangerous and we spend a lot of time when organising the lectures making sure that we perform them in a safe manner. there’s a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes to make sure that we don’t injure or endanger the crew, the presenter and the audience.

      One demo in particular that we wanted to make sure that people didn’t try at home was the nail through the lithium ion battery. We did the demonstration in part to show just how dangerous this can be (more specifially why damaging batteries can be dangerous- relevant when looking at some of the recent reports of exploding phones!) This runaway reaction produces a lot of heat and toxic smoke. So much so, that we carried it out on the roof, inside a box and with everyone in the vicinity wearing masks with filters.

      So please, DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!!

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