# So what EXACTLY will 200,000 volts do to a T-Jet?



## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

http://www.facebook.com/peteymckay?v=app_2392950137#!/video/video.php?v=1421189621785


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## NTxSlotCars (May 27, 2008)

I don't know, but $200k might get you a winning car at the fray this year.


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

Not to be a spoiler but someone already PM'd me information as to why it did what it did. I'm working on a second T-Jet Mythbusters episode but I need to secure some personal protection. I've zapped myself with this little bugger before, don't want to do it again.


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## DesertSlot (May 8, 2009)

Hey, the vid is gone!


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

Shouldn't be. Check my FB profile, still there.


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## ParkRNDL (Mar 20, 2002)

something about privacy settings. i think we have to be on your friend list to see it. you wanna be friends with all of us?  lol

i gotta say i saw the post title and i immediately thought of Tim the Tool Man Taylor... "Moar power! Unnngh unnngh unnngh!"

--rick


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

OK, photobucket version...

http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z262/FresnoPete/?action=view&current=ShockingaT-jet.mp4


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## Bubba 123 (Sep 10, 2010)

Pete McKay said:


> OK, photobucket version...
> 
> http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z262/FresnoPete/?action=view&current=ShockingaT-jet.mp4


wow!!
i'm amazed...
the "Zapper" converts 9v. DC. 2 HIGH V. AC w/ LOW amps.
thought the car w/ "Weld" 2gether, or just melt.....
tough lil' boogers, ain't they ???!!!!
Bubba 123:freak:


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## Rolls (Jan 1, 2010)

I must confess that I knew the tjet would handle the 200,000V. See, to even out racing skills on my home track, 3 lanes run at 18.5V and I then I run my lane at 200,000V. 

P.S. At first, I needed 250,000V, but I'm improving all the time...


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

OK, here's the technical skinny according to my daughters electrician boyfriend:

Since the car was not grounded the 200K volts had nowhere to go. When you zap a person with a tazer they're grounded, therefore the electricity flows from the weapon through them to the ground. It was spectacular, yes, but damaging, no. Essentially this is the same as a live person hanging from high tension lines, as long as they don't touch anything else they will be fine. 

Now, if I could find wire capable of handling this type of voltage and attach it to one pickup shoe and a ground, and zap the other one, then that would complete the grounded circuit and we would have a more dramatic result. Adam told me that immediately the comm wires would vaporize and that the magnets would shatter, more than likely ballistically. I'm not really set up for that type of China Syndrome here, so I'll take his description to heart and leave it at that. I also have one that puts out a million volts that sounds like a bull whip when you set it off, never had to use it thank God.


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## Rolls (Jan 1, 2010)

Not buying it. It doesn't quite add up. When a tazer is used on a dude in COPS who has a great pair of sneaks on, he's isolated from ground and that tazer puts a hurtin' on him. Also, the current from the 200Kvolts did go somewhere, because the tjet was hot to the touch. So what's the deal?

I think Adam's explanation brings out a very important point - the damage is done by the current that the voltage applied is able to move. That's why electricians can rewire a switch and even touch the "hot" wire if they're wearing sneaks and they use only one hand. Or hang from a power line if they don't touch anything else at a different voltage. 

So taking that reasoning to the tjet, it did see high voltage from the zapper across the pickups, but the zapper was not able to supply enough current for enough time to do serious damage. Power, which does the melting and explosive stuff, is the voltage times the current. So how much current you can move through an item at a given voltage is what matters. I think if you tied one pickup of the tjet to ground and zapped across the shoes again, you'd get the same results. In this case, the car being grounded or not is not the culprit. Unlike house wiring, the zappers and tazers themselves are not referenced to ground in any way - they just put a voltage out on one terminal relative to the other terminal.

Static electricity on things within our reach is an even more extreme example of the same deal - lots of voltage, but almost no sustained current. Things charge up to thousands of volts relative to other things, but there's not enough charge to move much current for any amount of time, so when they're connected, an instantaneous current flows, their voltage equalizes and there's no more current, so no power transferred, so no damage.


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

Hey, I dunno, I just know once I put this thing in my back pocket armed and when I sat down it went off. It was like sitting on a bee hive. The only person I've ever used the 200K on (besides myself) was my old pal James Hicks, I got him once when he was reaching for my beer after being told to get his own. He never saw it coming and it pretty much launched him out of the lawn chair. My wife used it to zap one of our cows once that was using her clothes line to scratch itself. Good thing cows are slow, she got back through the fence before the cow caught her. I don't know what a cattle prod puts out but this was a pretty good jolt, and cows don't have much of a sense of humor.


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## noddaz (Aug 6, 1999)

*Umm, wrong ground...*



> Not buying it. It doesn't quite add up. When a tazer is used on a dude in COPS who has a great pair of sneaks on, he's isolated from ground and that tazer puts a hurtin' on him. Also, the current from the 200Kvolts did go somewhere, because the tjet was hot to the touch. So what's the deal?


With a Tazer the current is traveling from one contact on the Tazer to the other contact on the Tazer.
The ground you are standing on does not come into play....
Now with an electric fence that is a different story... 
Don't ask me how I know...:freak:
Hey, for something funny, look up people playing with electronic dog collars on You Tube...

Scott


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## noddaz (Aug 6, 1999)

*Got any...*



Pete McKay said:


> Now, if I could find wire capable of handling this type of voltage and attach it to one pickup shoe and a ground, and zap the other one, then that would complete the grounded circuit and we would have a more dramatic result. Adam told me that immediately the comm wires would vaporize and that the magnets would shatter, more than likely ballistically.


Got any spark plug wires? Some of those will handle 80k volts... And they can be cheap...:devil:


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## DesertSlot (May 8, 2009)

Love the tazer stories!


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## 440s-4ever (Feb 23, 2010)

The electrician boyfriend has a fundamental misunderstanding of electricity. 

From a physics standpoint, work was performed as evidenced by the heat. This is very very different than a lineman hanging from a high voltage wire. If that amount of power was performing work, you'd have a crispy lineman. 

Likw noddaz says, the T jet was in fact grounded to the taser battery. One pole of the taser is +, the other is -, just like a slot track. 

What you ran into is ohms law. High voltage, low amperage, low resistance. Direct mathmatical relationship between those three, standard multiplication and division. Take the amps down super low and the volts can get super high. High volts are good at jumping gaps, so in order to use the human body as a conductor, the volts are sky high. 

Look at the battery in a taser, it's not really capable of doing much (low amps). Yeah, the sparks are impressive, and yeah, the human nerve system responds to very small amounts of electricity. But if there were enough amps in a taser to hurt the metals in a Tjet, they'd fry the human nerve system instead of momentarily overwhelming.

make any sense? Despite the impressive display of high voltage, there's actually very little electricity flowing. 

SUPER cool experiment. Thanks for sharing.


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## 440s-4ever (Feb 23, 2010)

On a side note, I found your comment about working better interesting. 

It probably did. That high voltage will bust thru corrosion and make little clean spots that conduct very well. The brush and shoe contacts were possibly improved.


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## bobhch (Apr 22, 2007)

440s-4ever said:


> On a side note, I found your comment about working better interesting.
> 
> It probably did. That high voltage will bust thru corrosion and make little clean spots that conduct very well. The brush and shoe contacts were possibly improved.


So, A taser is a High Performance T-Jet machine...don't tell Honda this or he will hurt himself for sure...doh. :lol:

Pete,

Great experiment as it made everyone thing a bit.

Bob...Volts x Amps = Watts...zilla


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## Bill Hall (Jan 6, 2007)

Volts x amps = what?


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## bobhch (Apr 22, 2007)

*Doooooooooooooh*



Bill Hall said:


> Volts x amps = what?


I am not alone...hahahaha as the link below states my possition on this issue.

http://ebtx.com/mech/ampvolt.htm

Uh is it Volts x Watts = Amps????

Bob...I just turn on the switch...zilla


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## jobobvideo (Jan 8, 2010)

can't believe he did it on top of his track


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## tjetcar (Jul 7, 2009)

i do know the next time i get jumped by a t-jet to have a ball bat and not a stun gun


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