Some people at the i3Detroit hackerspace had an chance come up that would enable them to catch lightning in acrylic. They produced a few Lichtenberg figures thanks to the assist of a plastic tubing manufacturer, some lead sheet as well as a lot of 1/2″ thick acrylic.
Lichtenberg figures are the 3D electrical trees discovered in paperweights the world over. They’re produced with electrical discharge with an insulator, with lightning being the most outstanding Lichtenberg figure anybody has ever seen. These figures can be developed in smaller objet d’art, the only necessity being a big quantity of electrons pumped into the insulator.
This was discovered at Mercury Plastics’ Neo-Beam facility, a 5MeV electron accelerator that’s typically utilized to provide energy for molecular cross linking in PEX tubing to improve chemical resistance. For one day, a few of the people at i3Detroit were able to take over the line, shuffling a thousand or so acrylic parts with the device to produce Lichtenberg figures.
When the acrylic goes with the electron accelerator, they’re packed up with a fee trapped inside. A quick mechanical shock discharges the acrylic, producing gorgeous tree-like figures embedded in the plastic. There are a great deal of photos of the completed figures in a gallery, however if you want to see something really cool, a lead-shielded GoPro was likewise run with the electron accelerator. You can inspect out that video below.