Great things have happened in garages. Google was pretty much started up in one. However, just because you own a garage doesn't mean great things will happen. Only you hold the keys to putting that wonderous space to good use. Only you can do awesome things in your garage.
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| And no, having a terabyte of porn in paper form doesn't count as awesome. It does mean you probably don't need that double or queen size bed, though |
"But," I'm imaging you crying, "how? How can I do amazing things in my garage? What do I do?"
Welcome to the dojo, young one. Come, sit and you shall learn what awesome can done in a garage. You'll want to loose any and all regard for personal safety and develop some sort of untreated antisocial personality disorder before we continue. I figure that shouldn't be to hard. No rush. I'll wait.
Done? Sweet. Lets start with lightning. Or namely, a tesla coil.
For those of you who don't know, tesla coils are those cool things you see in science fiction movies that shoot lightning bolts. Except they totally aren't science fiction, but still totally shoot lightning bolts. By lining up a pair of coils, and wiring one up to a voltage generator and a capacitance, you can shoot sparks between the coils. Make the frequencies of the resistances on the coils match, and you can get the voltage to skyrocket between the gap.
For everyone whose eyes just glazed over at that last sentence, it looks like this:
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| Thor just peed his his pants a little bit |
As proof that awesomeness can be distributed, Dr. Electric (He calls himself that. I make it a policy to not antagonize future super villains.) has the circuit diagrams for free on the web. As you might have guessed, however, the parts required to spew lighting several feet in all directions does cost more than a recent graduate from an arts college can pay for, so here's a version made out of shit someone found dumpster diving. Its still pretty formidable, getting up to 250,000 volts, which is approximately 100 times more voltage than your household current.
Plus, you liberal arts majors get practice in dumpster diving, an invaluable skill to you post graduation.
But what if lighting isn't quite your element? I get it, I get it, you're more of a fire person. Fire is also very, very cool. Now, these next set of questions are for all you budding young arsonists out there. What is cooler than fire? The correct answer is flame throwers. What are cooler than flame throwers?
Ok, the technically correct answer here is dragons. But wrist mounted flamethrowers come pretty close.
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| 10 bucks on this kid being behind the California wildfires |
In what is a civil lawsuit just waiting to happen, there are several models of DIY wrist mounted flamethrowers out there on the web. Which is fantastic, because the US department of defense in 1978 basically said, "You know what, screw flamethrowers. Water boarding is cool, but flamethrowers? That shit's horrific. We're not using those anymore." Which is doubly fantastic as there is no ban on actually owning a flame thrower in the US, with a few states requiring a permit.
This blog would be nothing if I don't become your enabler in doing something even the US military thinks is downright inhumane. You can thank me someday if we ever meet.
I think you'll melt your own face off first, but don't let that stop you.
Ok, ok, wrist mounted flame throwers and lightning spewing towers are pretty cool, but you want to go bigger. You've got better plans than these child toys. You've got a destiny. You want something that if it goes wrong, it won't just ruin your life, but ruin the lives of everyone in your neighborhood.
You want a nuclear fusion reactor.
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| The goddamn sun. In your garage. |
Now, mind you, this is sort of a "because I fucking can" type project. Fusion reactors don't actually generate more power than they require to hit critical mass, but you can say you made something hit critical mass. What more do you want from your DIY project?
Plus, this one comes with helpful warnings like, "Don't touch any exposed wires because you'll die". Even better, if you push the reactor enough, the x-rays will give you cancer right through stainless steel, so you'll want some lead protection for this. Unless, of course, lung cancer sounds like an attractive option at that point.
And what could possibly go wrong? I mean its not like boy scouts don't try this and end up giving their entire neighborhood a nice healthy dose of radiation or anything. Yay, cancer for everyone!
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