Featured Image Credit: The Slow Mo Guys / Getty
An iconic YouTube channel captured 50,000 volts going through a wire at a whopping five million frames per second.
YouTube's The Slo Mo Guys have built their reputation on creating fascinating science-y videos in slo-mo to observe the tiniest details - everything from how Nintendo zappers work to what happens when you put a CD in the microwave.
Now, the duo has set out to discover what 50,000 volts travelling through a piece of wire looks like when captured at 5 million frames per second.
"In this video, we're going to be using high voltage and see what happens when said voltage goes through a metal wire," Gav from The Slo Mo Guys said.
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"The idea is to completely over [...] energise the wire until it basically explodes," Dan added.
To demonstrate just how dramatic the action is, the pair began filming at 80,000 FPS, but all that's visible is a massive explosion resembling the Sun. Then, at 617,000 FPS, the entire wire noticeably lights up in just one frame.
"Firstly, all in one frame, the whole wire, there's like no travel across any of that," Gav described, noting that the heat then 'vapourises' the wire and creates an electrical 'discharge' of electricity similar to lightning.
Moving to 1,750,000 FPS revealed even more detail. In roughly three frames, you can see the wire 'heating up at once,' though they clarified it's actually just vapour.
"There's less detail in the image but more temporal detail," Gav claimed.
Then, at 5 million FPS, the YouTubers adjusted the exposure settings to minimise the light explosion caused by the voltage surge.
"It's crazy how there's no actual travel down the path of the wire. It just, like, slowly fades up uniformly across the whole thing," Gav confirmed.
Later in the footage, the duo pointed out how the wire can be seen 'dematerialising into tiny particles'.
"That is wild, what a crazy moment in time," Gav concluded.
Finally, when they reverted to 1 million FPS with high exposure, the pair observed a 'shockwave' of energy that burst across the wire. Remarkably, it creates a 'dome' shape of light so intense that it nearly 'inverts the pixel values back to zero' in the footage.
Safe to say, users have been loving the slo-mo footage.
"That is PHENOMENALLY cool footage! The way the wire expands into a cylinder and you can see the shockwaves from the exploding high-resistance contact bits at the ends wash through the floating bits of wire-gas in both directions is my favorite bit," one viewer wrote.
"As an electrical engineer who primarily does arc flash and short circuit studies, this is immensely satisfying," another added.
"It's so fascinating - you're showing the world physics on increments of time rarely, if ever, seen by humans. This is strange physics territory which can lead to discovery. So awesome, literally awesome," a third user claimed.
