LabCoatz
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WE'RE BUILDING A PLASMA WEAPON
🕑 Added 2025-07-25 07:16:13 +0000 UTCYes, we're actually doing this, and no, the image isn't photoshopped...or a handgun muzzle flash lol. I love chemistry, and I have a lot of chemistry projects in the works, but after working on the same Coca Cola project for months (and the fireworks video for most of June, which kinda flopped), I've kinda been looking for a change of pace.
Back in 2021, before LabCoatz had even 3,000 subscribers and I was only a sophomore at OU, I saw this video by James Hoopman (James H or @PlasmaFreak on YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zPXcVpDFro
The image above is from one of James' models, which is apparently composed of a 2,200 joule capacitor bank that gets discharged through an inductor and into a special chamber. This creates a massive spike in pressure and temperature, propelling a burning ring of plasma out at hundreds of feet per second! Naturally, I wanted to replicate his designs (and apparently, so did Styropyro), but at the time, I was short on money and lacking a 3D printer. The best I could do was spark a few small capacitors against a magnesium block, and the results were too lame to post. James and I chatted back and forth for a while, but ultimately, nothing came of it.
Now, I have a much larger audience, and enough people donating to afford building a much larger version of James' plasma gun...SEVEN TIMES LARGER at least (14 kilojoules), with the maximum being 35X more power at nearly 80 kilojoules per shot, if I decide to make it non-handheld and VERY expensive. My goal is to create something that is genuinely destructive: not one of those propane whoosh bottle "plasma guns", or a glorified flamethrower, but a device capable of firing bolts of actual plasma several feet! And with James still onboard to help and share his designs, this is looking very possible.
There are some hurdles to overcome though, aside from earning the extra cash. While the capacitor discharges will be quite powerful (similar to several grams of high explosive), directing most of that energy into a target will be quite difficult. "Lightning on Demand" got around this with their Lorentz cannon by firing a wire into a grounded target, kinda like a giant taser. But, my device won't be operating at hundreds of thousands of volts, so normal insulted targets probably wouldn't be affected. And besides, I want the plasma to be the weapon, not electricity!
James' design is great, but the plasma only weighs about 0.01 grams, assuming regular air density. So at maximum speed and temperature, it will probably only transfer a few joules. I could be off, but idk...even with an 80 kJ capacitor, the plasma might not do much. The US government tried with project MARAUDER and a 10 megajoule (10,000 kilojoules) capacitor bank, but the plasma (weighing up to 0.25 grams and travelling up to 3% the speed of light) "caused little to no physical damage", despite having the power of a few sticks of dynamite! It caused a massive x-ray burst that fried electronics, sure, but no physical damage?? Not looking good for 15 kilojoules...
For physical damage, my best bet would be to build an electrothermal gun (ETG), which is basically a normal gun that uses the capacitor's electrical explosion instead of black powder. Rail and coil guns are also an option, but at this scale, they kinda suck at transferring power into a projectile. An ETG could deliver a lot of energy into a target, but it wouldn't be a true plasma gun: the bullet is still a bullet, not plasma.
In the end, it's important for me to accept that this will probably never be a viable weapon. Chemicals are simply far better at generating tons of energy! A few grams of explosive in a gun can do what a 50-pound stack of capacitors can't, and a flamethrower can easily dump more energy than a research lab's largest capacitor bank.
But, you know what? If some random Joe on YouTube can put together a propane whoosh bottle, knock over some tin cans with it, and call it a "plasma cannon", the least I can do is make a real plasma cannon with a few capacitors! If James can shred paper targets with 2.2kJ, imagine what we could do with more power! Will things scale linearly? Probably not. Will this video perform well on YouTube, considering I now have a mostly-chemistry audience? Hard to say, but given the fireworks video flop and the trends from my old Tesla coil videos, I doubt it. Will I become frustrated and wish I had saved $1,500? Oh, hell yes. But I'm doing it anyway, and you'd better believe this is going to be the coolest plasma weapon to ever hit the Internet!
