@barney: Yes, His technique is actually rather subtle:
- Profess to be exploring something simple, as in "How exactly does a fluorescent lamp turn on?" - this familiar lighting device that most people will have been accustomed to using for years.
- He clearly does not seem to know, but persistently begins to blindly explore the subject, bumbling along, using increasingly more dangerous and life-threatening tests - which merely serve to illustrate the ingenuity of the lamp and starter devices.
- Each time he does one thing dangerous, he reacts appropriately, but seems to learn from it and eventually does it the "right" (and safe) way, explaining as he goes, as though he has just learned that safe practice.
- I love it when the Tesla coil (one of the lab props in the background) suddenly appears on his desk, because he is then clearly demonstrating the interesting science of induction involved.
- He eventually gets to "figuring out" how the starter switch works, but he's nowhere near finished yet, because he wants to exactly replicate the successful switching.
- The role of the ballast coil is "deduced"/explained, and then how modern-day lamps have done away with the starter and ballast, consolidating them into a single electronic ballast switch.
- But how to start the lamp? Both filaments in the lamp have now been blown!
- "I don't have a ballast, or a starter. I need to find an inductor. Oh, yes. Say hello to my little ultra transformer." he says as he bends down and picks something up from the floor - it's a large rectangular red object!
- He then proceeds to manually short two high-voltage wires together, replicating the role of a starter (which he does not have, of course).
I at first watched and cringed as this seemingly well-intentioned idiot started risking his life. Then it became clearer to me that he actually knew exactly what he was doing and that this was in fact a highly instructional video. but he still pretended to be ignorant. By which time, most viewers will have become glued to the video wondering whether he
was going to kill/injure himself, but also, becoming increasingly interested - "Ahh, so
that's how it works!". This, of course, was the object of the exercise, and the video can be replayed to review what might have slipped one's attention on the first pass.
I reckon he might be a science teacher and makes these well-crafted vids for the world at large and for his students, because to do it in a lab demonstration could be potentially dangerous to them. A student wouldn't be likely to forget such a video very quickly.
His safety tips are eased in carefully as well - in this video at an rate. Having apparently just googled the term "fluorescent lamp", he even mentions the dangerous mercury content of the lamp - "If you break one of these, make sure not to inhale the gasses."
There
are no "accidents" in this vid. It is all carefully staged for max effect.
His blog at <http://www.electroboom.com/> is worth a read. A lot of good stuff in the archives there.
