Fun things to do with Electricity
When I was growing up, I walked a fine line between above-average intelligence and absolutely zero common sense. On one fateful night, we happened to be out wondering around just after dark, me and a few friends, with nothing but a clothes hanger to entertain ourselves with.
It was around this point, that somewhere behind a rural Safeway supermarket, an incomprehensible feeling of magnetism drew our clothes hanger towards a set of uninsulated, overhead power lines. It was this overwhelming feeling that somehow they belonged together, and that every moment they were apart was agony.
So we set about unbending this clothes hanger, straightening it as best we could, leaving a little L shaped bend on the end of it to assist us in swinging it. I stood under the power lines, swinging this clothes hanger and tossing it into the air – bolting away from it the minute it left my finger tips.
Nothing happened. Twenty or thirty more times, still nothing happened, and we slowly began running less and less. It turns out that throwing an unbent clothes hanger 30′ into the air and getting it to come into contact with two separate power lines at the same time when it’s only a fraction longer than the distance between two said power lines is easier imagined than done.
We eventually just stood under the lines, not moving, taking turns at tossing this clothes hanger skywards, our excitement waning. If they so wanted to be together, why were they making it so hard?
Finally after a good many tries, the clothes hanger touched both lines at the same time. What followed was quite possibly one of the most awe inspiring events I’ve seen in my life – not entirely unlike what I imagine it’d be like to be teleported suddenly a million miles closer to the sun.
From where we were standing, there was a huge bright blue flash. Tiny blue shards of clothes hanger shot in every direction, raining down on us like little white-hot raindrops. It was beautiful, now they could be together always.
We later went home to play some Super NES, but for some strange reason there was a power outage.
