Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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  • Donald Petersen

    Now there’s a newsletter to which I’ll subscribe.  Even without the unibrow dance it was hilarious.  But the dance, oh god, the dance…

    Okay, I gotta breathe…

  • BustaArmov

    That was hilarious. But he made a “coil gun” not a “rail gun”. Rail guns are much weirder, harder to explain, and much much more dangerous.

  • CSBD

    I see how this is so totally different than rednecks with their guns.

  • Mutation_Engine

    Technically that’s a coilgun, not a railgun. There is a difference.

  • peterkvt80

    Wonderful how he found so many ways to do it wrong. I suspect that the circuit was destroyed at the end by the lack of a protection diode. Which is a waste of a big expensive power FET.

    • BDiamond

       He does it deliberately for shits & grins. He’s entertaining.

    • dragonfrog

      If I wanted to achieve that comic effect, I’d probably just rig a small smoke bomb off camera.

    • Christopher Houser

      Judging from my own adsense numbers, he’s probably pulled in close to 5 grand from that video.

  • euansmith

    Science made cooler by a dancing monobrow… high-brow meets eyebrow!

  • http://walkingwithshimmer.wordpress.com/ Werther deGoethe

    I learned a lot (what not to do) from his “Don’t worry, it’s just ESD! (Electrostatic Discharge).” Love this guy.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtlYi1yLTVQ

    • Emo Pinata

      Beat me to it. Great video.

    • Henry Pootel

      His other videos are fantastic as well.  You kind of wonder if he really has that many things go wrong, or it’s kind of a setup.  Either way I’m amused (and educated).

      • Sam Ley

        I suspect it is mostly for the humor of it all. Though with most of my experiments and projects the video would look much the same if I didn’t take the time to edit all the mistakes out (like most people probably do).

      • Glippiglop

        It’s a give away that he’s setting himself up once you reach the point where he shoots himself in the stomach.  Enjoyable all the same though.

        • Henry Pootel

          Hehe yes the more of the videos you watch the more you realize it’s his shtick.  I must say bravely done shtick especially knowing you’re going to get a kick when you do it.’

          • Glippiglop

            I just hope he doesn’t kill himself!  The How to Make Proper Wiring Connections video is putting down some serious hurt.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRwIrbK8KDI

          • http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo

            PMSL : D

            I think that’s a tissue in his mouth in the last shot… I hope ; )

      • http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

        You kind of wonder if he really has that many things go wrong, or it’s kind of a setup.

        No, I sense that to most watchers its as obviously a setup as WWE.

        • invictus

          WWE isn’t real?!

  • Henry Pootel

    Brilliant :)

  • http://twitter.com/119ENGcom 119ENG.com

    That was way too funny!! Love the unibrow bit:):):)

  • oasisob1

    Is he single? That’s all I want to know. Sexeh monobrow. Oh and the gun was okay, I guess. Girls would make them better, using bigger coils or protection diodes, etc. 

    We should objectify all videos of men for a few weeks, months, maybe even years?

    • Ipo

       He has pointy knees. 

  • http://newnumber6.livejournal.com Peter

    I don’t know why (maybe a denied script somewhere on my NoScript?), but ever since… forever, embedded Youtube (and many other videos) don’t seem to match up right on the main page.  If you actually click into the story they’re fine, but often when I refresh the main page I’ll get a video from an earlier story attached to a fresh story that also has a video link, and if I press play I see that one, rather the intended.

    In this particular case, the preview of this video has under the headline, in one instance, showed a scene from the Flintstones, and a little later I refreshed again and, under “World’s funniest video about making a rail gun” had a shot from Hungry Hungry Hippo.

    In both cases I was extremely disappointed because both the Flintstones attempting to make a railgun and making one out of the HHH game sound like they would be AWESOME.

    But the real video was also pretty fun.

    • Steve Taylor

      > ever since… forever, embedded Youtube (and many other videos) don’t seem to match up right on the main page.

      Same for me – and I’m not running noscript or anything else in the least exotic. I’ve actually noticed the problem less often recently, but I certainly know what you mean.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=520084557 Aiden Leo Nugent

    Having spent my 50 + working years in various facets of the electrical field…..  this trivial item is a waste of time… totally !

    • wysinwyg

      working years in various facets of the electrical field

      Dude, get out of that electrical field.  Or get in a Faraday cage or something.  We’re worried about you.

      Also, fun is not a waste of time.

  • Stonewalker

    Awesome video.  This is the kind of stuff that gets people interested in science and MAKEing.  So good.

  • http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers

    He’s fantastic. I saw him on B3ta last week and was in stitches going through his videos.

  • pjcamp

    Nice standup act. I have a story that really happened.

    When I was a graduate student back in the 80′s, one of the undergraduate senior physics majors decided to build a rail gun as his senior project. He obtained a bank of massive capacitors from the local power company so he could get a nice big current. It worked quite well, propelling foil wrapped pencil erasers at a respectable speed.

    A postdoc from the quantum theory group (who shall remain nameless except to say his name was Lev) decided to take his intro physics class on a field trip upstairs to see the railgun in operation. He talked about it for a while, showed them how the capacitors charged, then wanted to point out some of the details. The capacitors had been placed behind the railgun so that would involve leaning over the rails. So he said “In order to be safe, I need to discharge the capacitors,” and with that, picked up a pair of needlenose pliers and laid them across the contacts.

    There was a sort of ethereal blue globe around the end of the pliers that spot welded some copper to them, accompanied by a loud clap of thunder that brought faculty running from the far end of the hall. Lev’s hair went up like Larry Fine’s and he levitated about a foot off the ground, coming to a landing on his ass.

    I think he had a hard time hearing for a while.

    • http://plagmada.org Tim H

      I appreciate your calling Larry Fine by his proper name without any additional explanation.  It tells me you’re good people.

  • https://twitter.com/misterjayem MrJM

    Much funnier than I’d anticipated.