Sticking a knife in a toaster

yeah um, toasters filled with explosives do! :grin:

Well, obviously to smooth passage through the space time continuum.

Yet another element in the ā€œfaaakeā€ argument: Look at the side of the toaster. Unless Iā€™m mistaken, thereā€™s no push-lever for the bread.

Do it all the time, course I unplug the toaster first.

Tragedy struck today in Brixton, when Nigel Prattā€™s flatmate brought home a vintage toaster from an East End second hand shop, unaware that it had been booby trapped nearly sixty years ago in Normandy by the retreating 17th SS-Panzergrenadiers

7 Likes

If you scroll through the last minute of the Youtube, thereā€™s definitely a frame with the entire bottom half washed out as if by the bright light of the explosion. Before that frame, the toaster is whole; after it itā€™s not. Soā€¦maybe not fake.

The original video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pt95JqXmxY

Most of his other videos are After Effects related. So itā€™s most probably fake. And also rather old. Do your research guys!

1 Like

Some clarification for everyone out there:

Firstly: These guys are Aussie, so thereā€™s a good chance they actually did it. The bragging rights are worth more than the youtube hits here.

Secondly: we have 240V ACā€¦ Stuff can go 'splodey.

Thirdly: Fireworks are illegal in Australia and even though you can find them if you ask around Chinatown or cook up some blackpowder yourself, the much more likely option is that they just stuck a knife in there.

edit: if you listen to the end of the youtube vid you can hear him saying ā€œow, itā€™s not funny c**tsā€ in a lot of pain.

1 Like

110 is a powerful tingle that will make you jerk your hand away, unless you are unfortunate enough to become paralyzed. Which may only happen in the movies, I donā€™t know. I always heard that 220 is another beast and that you donā€™t mess around with it. Deadly in short order. Is this not the case? How likely is it that someone would stick a fork in a 220 toaster? I ask out of real curiosity.

I canā€™t speak about the relative intensity of 110 and 230v mains shocks, but I have had at least 8 hits of NZ 230v in my lifetime (touch wood). All were from momentary brushes of live conductors. It is a real mule kick, and your muscles spasm hard enough to keep them aching for the rest of the day, if not all week. In one case, I could tell which leg the current went down. You can see how an involuntary spasm could cause you to seize onto a conductor for the rest of your life.

The worst was when I was removing an old bakelite plug from a wall socket. The back shell of the plug separated under twisting, and my finger brushed the conductor. In an instant, I was flat on my back, about a foot or so back from where I was squatting. At that point, I sat up, and thought uninterrupted, I reached for the plug again, taking another jolt which threw me back again into the star position.

Now I use a residual current device when working on any live electronics.

Itā€™s the amps that kill you, not the volts.

2 Likes

Yeah there is, itā€™s pushed down.

Itā€™s not that you become paralyzed, itā€™s that your muscles contract. So if you touch a live wire or whatever with your palm youā€™ll involuntarily make a fist around it that you canā€™t release, current flowing through your body the whole time. Thatā€™s why you check a lamp with a blown bulb with the back of your hand before working on it ā€” your muscle contraction will pull it away. (This applies to 120V or lower, donā€™t try it on a third rail or transmission line or anything. Iā€™ve been hit with 240V and even a momentary zap isā€¦ unpleasant.)

3 Likes

15milliamps is enough

If only weā€™d had such easy access to video when I was a kid I could have documented the time I stuck a key in a light socket.

Note: I made sure to wrap the part of the key I was holding in plastic. Iā€™m not an idiot.

1 Like

Why would a toaster need a capacitor? Why, time travel of course!

Its after effects, the blinding light for the replacement and the particles give it away. Its good work though! I wanna see it again.

An overly simplistic pseudo-truism.

You need the volts (and low resistance) for the amps to get through. A household MIG welder is low-voltage (15-20V) high-amperage (50-200A) but you can press it against your sweaty grounded body and feel not more than a vague throb (unless the tip is still heated from use.) Your body isnā€™t conductive enough to pull those available amps at such low voltage. Maybe if you stuck probes into either side of your heart youā€™d have a problem, but then youā€™d already have the problem of probes being stuck into your heart, electricity aside.

On the other hand, a taser is extremely high voltage (~50000V) and very low amperage (~3mA), and far more likely to kill you than the welder.

If you scroll through the last minute of the Youtube, thereā€™s definitely a frame with the entire bottom half washed out as if by the bright light of the explosion. Before that frame, the toaster is whole; after it itā€™s not. Soā€¦maybe not fake.

Em, to me that makes it seem more fake - it conveniently hides the transition between the take sticking the knife in the toaster and the next take with the broken toaster and everyone leaping backwards.

Plus the way half that frame is blocked out with a smooth gradient looks nothing like any rolling shutter artefact Iā€™ve ever seen, there should be a much sharper transition.

The video is made by Danny Philippou, whoā€™s got a Facebook profile full of ā€œprankā€ videos. Some of them are outlandish, like Ronald McDonald coming out of a McDonaldā€™s and attacking his car. He uploaded the toaster video on June 5.

So, yes, fake, but very well done.