Lance

First of all: Flash caps are no good for a railgun. The voltage is nowhere near high enough and you will just succeed in welding your projectile to the rails. They will however work very well for coilguns.

If you're planning on using these caps in any circuit that requires a fast discharge time such as a coil or rail gun then the vcr caps wont work. They will fail fairly quickly.

In photo-flash boards the 1.5 is pulsed through a transformer via the little transistor you see. For your first project I would recommend simply using the board itself to charge the caps rather than building a new power supply. You Don't even have to remove the cap from the board. Just solder some wire to the cap's leads.

Douglas' date=' Lance: The voice of experience and knowledge can tell you this: There are many power supplies that can be damaged by hooking a large capacitor directly across the terminals. At best you might have a shut-down condition or blow a fuse. If you do something like that with a wall transformer, it is usually permanent. If your power supply isn't carefully protected, and a lot of hobbyist power supplies aren't, placing a discharged capacitor directly across the leads can zap the rectifier diodes, the series pass transistor, the three-terminal regulator, and in some cases even the wire itself before the capacitor charges. There is also the fact that it is difficult to protect fairly high current low voltage power supplies.

[/quote']

 

Funny. I consider myself to have quite a bit of experience in this area and I have NEVER had any power supply fail from charging a capacitor with zero protection. The only power supplies that would have any problem with this were badly made. Even common wallwarts wont have any problem with this.

 

Keep in mind that all components also have a surge rating that is much higher than the continuous rating. Although it may seem to you that the a diode is receiving currents above it's rating usually the current is still below its surge rating.

 

Wall transformers are simply a transformer and a bridge with a cap in series with the output to limit current.

Also, considering your experience level, I would advise NOT attempting to charge any capacitors directly from mains, regardless whether you're using resistors and diodes.

I think the short answer to charging a capacitor is you really don't need anything other than the supply voltage itself. The long answer depends on how safe you want the set up to be (safe from component harm and bodily harm).

What were you planning to do with the charged cap?

Also, keep in mind that electrolytic caps do not like reverse voltage and will violently fail similarly to if you over volt them.

Most power supplies he has access to will have some internal resistance. Adding an external resistor is pretty pointless. He shouldn't be using a power supple capable of supplying lots of power when he doesn't know what hes doing with it anyway.

Yours is much more graceful but I still like mine better.

Meh.

Keep in mind the caps can only charge up to the charging voltage. Don't expect to charge 400V soda can caps with a 3.4V wall wart.

Any environment where you're learning what you want to learn is better than one in which you're learning what would be the ideal for a factory worker.

Why wouldn't it be? We are only human because we call ourself human. If they call themselves human then they will be human. Of course they may decide not to call us human and make up a new name for us.

Any, because they sell enough to keep the site going.

It doesn't take much to keep a site going these days. You can get a decent hosting plan for $5/month.

oh boy do i feel sorry for homeschoolers

 

I got this as a result of another ad:

 

http://www.christianbooks.com

 

Apologia Educational Ministries

-----------------------------

High school science curriculum

designed specifically for the homeschool

What makes you think all, or any, use that curriculum?

This has the appearance of reasonableness.

 

Vegetables are the best source for Everything

However' date=' there is nothing in meat you can't get in a better, more potent, fresher, more easily absorbed and safer form through a vegetable/fruit/grain diet. On the other hand, there are plenty of critical vitamins and essential oils and minerals which you don't get an adequate amount of on a high-meat diet.

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Not quite. All digestible forms of B12 are only found in meat.

 

So as an argument against being a vegetarian, its a flop. While a change of diet can be a bit of an adventure, changing to a vegetarian diet does no harm. You cannot say the same thing in the reverse direction. In this case, he is already sick, so improving his diet can only help.

 

Almost correct. Leaving ANY major group out of your diet is dangerous, that includes only eating meat which is just as stupid. Don't tell him it does no harm when you have no clue. You have no idea what is causing his infections, don't fix it if its not broken; you're only asking for trouble.

 

90% of Food Poisoning is from Meat

Note also that most cases of food poisoning' date=' including toxins (seafoods, including 5000 cases a year of poisoning for shellfish alone), botulism (chicken and beef), parasites (pork & wild-meat), deadly nerve diseases like Mad Cow (beef, pork, lamb) and heavy bacterial infections causing ulcers (hamburger) are directly because of MEAT diets.[/quote']

 

This is a flawed argument. Bacteria and and parasites can't live on plastic either. Does that make plastic more healthy than meat? This is one of the reasons I tend to shy away from preservatives; if bacteria and mold won't eat it why should I?

I would highly recommend you do NOT abruptly change your diet in any way, much less change it to a diet where you're going to be missing a whole lot of essential vitamins needed to fight the infections that you're getting.

I would also highly recommend NOT taking any medical advice from anyone but a known doctor. You will just end up making your problems worse.

- Hamsters' date=' they're just fat, poorly formed nub-tailed gerbils.[/quote']

 

You really have to wonder that the hell the guy was thinking who invented hamsters.

Go for it.

I would but I don't know any good riddles.

12"

I like having the ice maker in the door, my only beef is that it jams every 0.5 uses. I like electric seat/mirror adjustments because they are just plain fun and good for impressing friends.

Other than that I agree.

One thing I hate is electric hand dryers you see in rest rooms. They are the work of the devil.

Many of the people who cant afford a car can afford luxuries such a TV and a nice house. Strange.

Arguably a car isn't really a need anyway. Bike anyone?

Dimes; they have a higher value-volume ratio.

"If neither "avoirdupois" nor "troy" is specified, the international pound (avoirdupois) is meant and is by law the only proper definition in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada;"

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound

they dont weigh the same the pound of feathers weighs more because gold and feathers are not weighed using the same measurement.

Not quite. Although gold would be measured in troy pounds and feathers in avoirdupois pounds, when comparing the two you can only assume that the person who measured them out would not be stupid enough to use two separate scales.

I hereby nominate Damion for the notion that drinking semen is a viable alternative to eating meat.

Yep. These guys spend tons of time in the gym so they have massive muscles. Not to mention that most of these guys have been playing since they were little kids.

Well considering this is a thread about your lack of throwing ability in comparison to NBA players in the middle of a science forum I don't see why the absence of humor should be a requirement to posting.

By the way, no, they do not use a smaller ball. Unless, of course, you have been watching female games in which case they do use a slightly smaller ball. NBA players simply have ungodly strength which I tried to mention in a less direct and boring way but you failed to understand.

I don't think we should be putting names in here of people that are still around.