If you were going to make a replica of Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, you might stop short of installing a Tesla coil capable of generating over 80,000 volts of electricity inside it, because gee, that sounds dangerous, right? Me too. That’s why we’re so lucky to live in a world that also contains the folks over at Hack A Day, for whom “Gee, that sounds dangerous” is not a sentence to give pause, but a rallying cry to see how far one can push a strange, and quite possibly bad, idea. And that, folks, is how an 80,000-volt Tesla coil got inside a homemade replica of Thor’s hammer.
Well, the whole story is more complicated than that, actually, replete with shipping disasters and redesigns after the hammer got a little…well, melty is the only good word for it. You can read the details of all the blood, sweat, tears and Uru metal that went into over at Hack a Day. The end result, though, is an oversized replica of Thor’s hammer that comes alive with three inch lightning bolts, courtesy of a battery-powered Tesla coil that lives in the hammer’s head.
Kudos to Caleb Kraft for proving that you don’t need a team of dwarves to fashion a magical hammer that makes those who would stand against you think twice. All you need is a litte elbow grease, some technical know-how, and a couple friends willing to help make your dream of a hammer that generates lightning bolts a reality.
And kudos to him also for doing the ‘light bulb in the mouth’ gag, because you know Thor does that bit all the damn time in Asgard, even if everyone but The Warriors Three are totally sick of it.
(via Hack a Day)
- If we only knew which one of the galaxy connected to this interstellar bridge housed Asgard
- Being mocked by Thor takes, like, forever
- No one let Baby Thor get his little mitts on this piece of equipment
Published: May 3, 2013 08:35 am