Supercapacitor Contest: We Have Winners!

For the barrel, us a thick cardboard tube, maybe 1/2" in diameter. The projectile would be a metal ball or (better) a short (1") metal rod that fits perfectly inside the tube.

Along the barrel, in series, are electromagnets. Each one with several hundred wraps of coated wire and a capacitor waiting to be discharged into it.

Each magnet could be triggered by small (and thin) leads which are poking through to the inside of the barrel before each magnet. When the projectile comes in contact with the leads, it connects them, completing the circuit, discharging the cap, and creating a magnetic pull on the projectile.

When the projectile hits the spot where the magnet is the cap will be discharged, the magnetic force gone, and the projectile will continue on to the next electromagnet, being triggered, discharged, etc. again. The projectile will increase it's speed exponentially.

The triggers and magnetic areas will have to be spaced farther apart the further down the barrel you go, to compensate for the speed of the projectile. They have to be completely discharged by the time the projectile reaches it's respective magnet, or it will slow down the projectile instead of speeding it up.

There's my idea. Enjoy. Don't kill yourself. Sam

Or you could just pop them into a wall outlet and have them explode spectacularly.

Safety / Legality not guarenteed.

You only need 3 items to make them a FLED,Solar cell and supercap and can be thrown together in as little as 5 min.

Heres a great tutorial on how to make them: http://www.solarbug.com/tutorial3.html

They are pretty neat and super easy to make. With a bunch of caps like you have you could make a cool little display at night in your room of flashing LEDs that will last for years.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spot_welding

• Rechargeable mitten warmers!
• Anti-lock power brakes for bicycles!
• Tiny, tandem-rotor helicopters that zoom straight up in the air! With bright LED for nighttime use.
• Inductively-charged bubble-bath mood lights! (um, embedded in crystal clear epoxy or something ;) Molded into shapes! Cute blue-LED clouds, amber suns, emerald leaves, a school of multicolored fishes / sea life (with Glowing Innards)
• adding a thermistor...to control multiple color LEDs or blinking, might produce an interesting effect

• If you paralleled all of your caps, you would get 150F at 2.5V, or about 52mAh capacity. Run 3 parallel 20mA LED's for an hour?
• Yet another silly idea: Measure how long your desk is in capacitor-widths (as they would be arranged if connected in parallel). Claim your desk is X farads long...
• Yet another silly idea: Put them all in a box and label it "DANGER: 150 FARADS". See how many people avoid it.

• Experiment with 4 diodes and a very long earthed wire... the same power used by tin pot (batteryless AM radio's used in World War 1 by troops on the front line) radios could be used to trickle charge the cap, in turn charging a battery or powering some other application.
• They could be used in miniture remote control cars (the micro ones) to run a heavier load application, such as a micro camera, etc.
• Fashion electronics! glowing earings, necklaces, bracelets, funky glowing clothes and best of all, everything is rechargable!
• They could be used to store excess energy in a standard device and power unexpected behavior when full (like a stapler that ocassionally ommits a noise or wobbles around the table because it contains a micro pager motor with offset weight). It could use either a piezo electric element (man i love those things) or a geared motor or generator to produce the electrical energy.
  (We think that the stapler should shout "OUCH!" once every ten or so times that it's used.)

• eternal throwies - throwies that turn on in the dark and solar charge in the day
• solar light tracking heads - i've made plenty using stereo amps from old speakers
• solar nocturnal mind molestor - a little device to hide that beeps every few seconds to brutaly annoy someone, but one that will last forever!
• instant-charge 9v batteries - simple voltage booster circuit inside a gutted 9v battery
• solar powered evil mad scientist laboratories logo night light - need i explain?

The obvious step is to make a high farad capacitor bank out of the individual components, but is ~150F @ 2.5V really enough energy to do anything especially destrct... er impressive? You bet your sweet ass it is!

In my opinion the greatest use of the huge power discharges present in withing a large capacitor bank is the ability to change the inherent properties of materials. I'm talking about literally vaporizing solids or liquids and using the resultant compound for further purposes. Case in point? A mercury-plasma destructo-tron 4500.

Contruction simple requires two pipes with a minimal gap between them held apart by an insulating material at one end. One pipe connected to the business end of the capacitor bank and the opposite end (with necessary limiting and safety electronics) connected to the ground end. With a few drops of mercury placed in the gap and the entirety of the capacitor bank's power discharged the mercury should be converted into a (deadly) plasma vapor but the discharge force at the opposite now business end of the device (the end without the insulator) should be tremendous. This can be harnessed to either expell a conventional device or otherwise harnessed to cause further... impressive feats.

I wish you the best of luck in whatever experiment you choose to persure, but above all please be safe and take all available security precautions.