Gear

Home Made Flashlight Shines Like 38 Million Candles

To illustrate the power of the Maxablaster, here’s a quote from the inventor, Ralf Ottow: It’s not a torch you’d walk your dog with […] It would probably cook your dog. Ottow took an off the shelf flashlight and, one mercury arc bulb and 54 batteries later, he had himself a beam that can easily […]

maxblaster.jpg

To illustrate the power of the Maxablaster, here's a quote from the inventor, Ralf Ottow:

It’s not a torch you’d walk your dog with [...] It would probably cook your dog.

Ottow took an off the shelf flashlight and, one mercury arc bulb and 54 batteries later, he had himself a beam that can easily light up object four miles away and has managed a nine mile range over open water. The arc bulb creates a small, intensely focused plasma light, and needs a UV filter to make it safe: early versions could cause sunburn.

The project took six months and cost $1800. You can see a gallery of images over at the Popular Science blog.

Handheld Sunbeam [PopSci via Neatorama]