Shocking Tree
Intro
It's almost Christmas (well not at the time of writing, but when I made the project). Tomorrow was the last day of school before winter break, and I wanted to give all my friends candy canes cause I'm such a nice guy. Well, you get one if you manage to complete my puzzle. T minus 2 hours, let's build this thing!
Problem/Inspiration
I wanted to leave a lasting impression upon everyone. The rules are simple. Manuever the loop from one end of the tree to the other without letting the loop touch the tree and you win a candy cane.
The Process
The plan was simple:
1. Take the guts out of those electric fly swatters.
2. Bend some metal.
3. Run some wires.
4. Cross my fingers and hope everything works because I'm not getting anywhere near that thing.
Cue the music. *Yakety Sax plays*
There were a lot more victims, but I didn't get it on camera.
Remarks
Unfortunately, some people managed to get to the end-- they initially got shocked but didn't let go. Instead, they kept the loop on the tree and pushing their way to the end of the puzzle. Were they that determined to get a candy cane? No. The HV bug zapper circuit relied on a capacitor to deliever the shock but itself was too weak to maintain a high voltage. So if some people were strong enough to overcome the initial pain without letting go and decided to "ride the tree" to the end, the capacitor would have been fully discharged and the resistance of the human skin would have been too large of a load for the HV circuit to handle, preventing the voltage from building up again afterwards. However, if someone accidentally tapped the tree, held on, but then tried to re-center the loop and play the game properly, this would give the capacitor enough time to recharge and give them another shock if they messed up afterwards.
Next time, I'm going to build a custom circuit that pulses the high voltage so I can give the circuit lots of opportunities to charge the capacitor mwah hahahahhaha.
It's almost Christmas (well not at the time of writing, but when I made the project). Tomorrow was the last day of school before winter break, and I wanted to give all my friends candy canes cause I'm such a nice guy. Well, you get one if you manage to complete my puzzle. T minus 2 hours, let's build this thing!
Problem/Inspiration
I wanted to leave a lasting impression upon everyone. The rules are simple. Manuever the loop from one end of the tree to the other without letting the loop touch the tree and you win a candy cane.
The Process
The plan was simple:
1. Take the guts out of those electric fly swatters.
2. Bend some metal.
3. Run some wires.
4. Cross my fingers and hope everything works because I'm not getting anywhere near that thing.
Cue the music. *Yakety Sax plays*
There were a lot more victims, but I didn't get it on camera.
Remarks
Unfortunately, some people managed to get to the end-- they initially got shocked but didn't let go. Instead, they kept the loop on the tree and pushing their way to the end of the puzzle. Were they that determined to get a candy cane? No. The HV bug zapper circuit relied on a capacitor to deliever the shock but itself was too weak to maintain a high voltage. So if some people were strong enough to overcome the initial pain without letting go and decided to "ride the tree" to the end, the capacitor would have been fully discharged and the resistance of the human skin would have been too large of a load for the HV circuit to handle, preventing the voltage from building up again afterwards. However, if someone accidentally tapped the tree, held on, but then tried to re-center the loop and play the game properly, this would give the capacitor enough time to recharge and give them another shock if they messed up afterwards.
Next time, I'm going to build a custom circuit that pulses the high voltage so I can give the circuit lots of opportunities to charge the capacitor mwah hahahahhaha.