Off topic a bit, but How does this thing work?
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050727234509990007


Dnk...

Presumably some type of capacitor bank discharged in a very short time. Peak currents can be extremely high for a very short time.

Pulsed high energy can do some really interesting stuff:
http://teslamania.delete.org/frames/shrinkergallery.html

O.K., who likes their toast really well done?

I'd go with the capacitive store idea as well. Even a very small capacitance can demonstrate this. An old trick was to charge an electrolytic capacitor up on the B+ line of some piece of equipment, then discharge it across the lid of a can or some similar object. The crack is produces is quite loud even for the relatively small charge involved (e.g 250V on a 32uF capacitor = 8000 coulombs).

My guess is they are experimenting on EMP or electric cannon type of weapons.

Probably an investigation into using pulsed power to compress metal cores for simulated nuclear tests.

They had the story about this in our morning newspaper. When I read about it my fist thought was it will show up right away in the ECN forum and I was right. Wonder if that aluminum cannister is a chapter 3 wiring method.

I watched a tv show a couple of years ago about an American police officer developing a little 4 wheel projectile, which he launched at high velocity from under his patrol car to stop vehicles in high-speed chases. The cart spooled out a wire connected to a capacitor bank charged to several hundred kv. As it went under the car in front, an aerial discharged the voltage into its monocoque, wrecking its engine management computer and making it stop.
A bazooka would work just as well.
Alan

This isn't right. Current = amps, power = watts ... you can't compare them like that.

Describing it as a "giant power multiplier" doesn't help, either! Energy storage and maybe a current multiplier (current transformer) would work.

Bazooka, as in Bazooka Joe gum?

Give the criminal some comics to read, and see if he will stop and collect those 50,000 points just to get those cool X-ray glasses?

That's a novel idea Alan.

Dnk......

This describes the machine a little more.
http://www.lanl.gov/news/releases/archive/01-101.shtml