[mixin visuals]

http://oldcrows.net/~oldcrow/Lugo_SWR.mpg

what do you think?

post other videos that may be fake too if you know any

[Mediaman_12]

Originally posted by mixin visuals:
http://oldcrows.net/~oldcrow/Lugo_SWR.mpg

what do you think?

post other videos that may be fake too if you know any

Very fake. Electricity takes the route of least resistance, if that happened at all it would be a fairly straight line between the two ends, not in a huge arc like that.

[::maroma::]

I vote for fake too. It seems to me that the lighting on the posts that the arc is coming from doesn't change. And I assume that an arc like that would put out a good deal of light.

[mrfrost]

Real or fake?

[gorickey]

Originally posted by mrfrost:
Real or fake?

Real, I have seen that sort of cotton/silk in person...

[Tulkas]

So absurdly fake it hurts.

[chabig]

I'm not so sure the arcing is fake. Remember, the arc will heat the air, which will rise. The path of least resistance is not necessarily a straight line. I'm sure you've seen bolts of lightning that aren't straight.

Chris

[tomdavidson69]

Fake. Electricity wants to go to earth not fanny around making pretty patterns in the air.

[xv_ronin_vx]

Did anyone see the wires above that the arc was moving towards? It would seem to be a path of less resistance than the ground beneath. The zoom action would also make this a hard thing to fake, but if it is, it's very good. I think it is legitimate.

[Eriamjh]

Cool sound.

[quandarry]

fake...when in the distance the arc doesn't look like it is.

[andreas_g4]

Fake or not, at least some guys are talkin' 'bout...

The person on the left is walking along there and doesn't seem to be interrested in that monster in any way - strange.
On the other hand, at the van there are two persons and one of them seems to take cover until the electric arc is gone.

And the blizzard looks too sharp for me, I guess it's rendered.

EDIT: Watched it again, and now I see that there are two persons on the left, too. And it looks more like that the one I mentioned is going backwards, filming the whole thing. It still looks rendered to me, but the behavior of the surrounding people makes me wonder if it could not be real anyways.

[quandarry]

yeah they are behind the truck and the guy on the left is hiding too...can't tell who is yelling at the end because they are both throwing up there hands...hmmmm?

what the hell are those swinging things with balls anyway?

[CheesePuff]

real

[faragbre967]

If it was real it would have been really cool to see.

[stevesnj]

Thats real

[GK]

real

[hyteckit]

It's real man. Must be the dry weather.

[dampeoples]

That's so fake it hurts. It's merely the jacks opening. There will be a bit of an arc, and some noise, but nothing like that. I made a movie once, using that lightning bolt thingy in iMovie 3 too, but in 11 years of electrical work, nothing like this has ever happened.

The tits are real though

[Agasthya]

Either its fake, or it happens often. There's no reason that those guys should be filming electrical wires for fun unless they knew some stuff was going to happen.

[mixin visuals]

Originally posted by tomdavidson69:
Fake. Electricity wants to go to earth not fanny around making pretty patterns in the air.

what are those machines that look like 2 antennas that electricity raises up through then?

does the same thing i think

[sniffer]

Originally posted by quandarry:
fake...when in the distance the arc doesn't look like it is.

Agreed.

BTW: Have anyone seen the "humor" clip with the guy that gets hit by a car in full speed. I couldn't really tell if was real or not.

If I only had a link..

[sniffer]

Found it:
http://content.funvids.net/content/look-first.mpeg

The original one that I saw had this "funny" background tune in it btw. Made it kind of worse.

[tooki]

fake.

Electricity normally takes the path of least resistance. Yes, it will heat up the air around it, causing it to form an arc rather than a line. But it doesn't create flame-like patterns. Just a curve.

(Lightning is jagged because of the varying conductivity in the atmosphere through which it's passing.)

tooki

[tooki]

Originally posted by sniffer:
Agreed.

BTW: Have anyone seen the "humor" clip with the guy that gets hit by a car in full speed. I couldn't really tell if was real or not.

If I only had a link..

Did you notice that in the corner of said video, there's a Clio award trophy?

(The Clio Awards are awards for TV commercials.)

tooki

[hyteckit]

Okay, you guys convinced me it's a fake.

But that guy who got hit by a car while crossing the street is real man!

[tooki]

My comment about the Clio award refers to the guy getting run over video. It is fake. It's not customary to kill the actors in TV commercials.

tooki

[sniffer]

Originally posted by tooki:
My comment about the Clio award refers to the guy getting run over video. It is fake. It's not customary to kill the actors in TV commercials.

tooki

Lol! Actually the site I found it on now stated something about it being fake. I just leaved it out to see the reactions here. Although I didn't know what to believe first time I saw it.

[hagheid]

Yes this is a real fake

[Lerkfish]

Originally posted by tooki:
My comment about the Clio award refers to the guy getting run over video. It is fake. It's not customary to kill the actors in TV commercials.

tooki

tell that to Vic Morrow (/bad joke)

[Lerkfish]

I am confused why anyone would look at it and think it could be real. Obviously faked, if for no other reason than the arc is uniformly backdropped by a dodged shadow to make the shape of the arc more distinct.
Look at it again. why would there be a shadow in the sky behind the arc? If anything, it would hard to make out the edges of the arc because it would be emitting light universally and blurring its path visually, especially from that far away.

[Kenneth]

It can't be!

[chabig]

I don't see a shadow behind the arc.

[Lerkfish]

Originally posted by chabig:
I don't see a shadow behind the arc.

move it still frame by still frame.

there is the arc, there is the light blue sky. Along the edge of the arc is a darker outline.
If you'll notice, this shadow edge is of a consistent thickness around the arc, an artifact of transferring the fx to the original footage.

If it were a naturally occuring phenomena, the shadow edge would not be uniform, and in fact would likely not be there at all...you'd see the arc, a brilliant flash, against the light blue sky. there wouldn't be any DARKER area between them, but rather an averaging fusion of the very light arc and the slightly darker sky, NOT a shadow that was about 3 times darker than the sky.

at least, that's what I see.

[mdc]

either this is a regular occurence, or the two people in the bottom left hand corner are deaf and blind. if i saw this happening i would be standing there freaking out probably, not just standing around.

either real or fake, it is still pretty damn cool

[mathew_m]

Listen to Lerk, he's an expert on these kinds of things. Hidden shadows and such...

Oh yeah its fake but pretty cool nonetheless. What's it selling, beer? Who knows nowadays.

[SomeToast]

Real.

And an analysis of the video.

I don't know why the arcing is perceived as unbelievable... you see the same behavior at a smaller scale with a Jacob's Ladder.

[Kilbey]

Originally posted by SomeToast:
Real.

And an analysis of the video.

I don't know why the arcing is perceived as unbelievable... you see the same behavior at a smaller scale with a Jacob's Ladder.

Well, I hope that settles that discussion.

[chabig]

If you'll notice, this shadow edge is of a consistent thickness around the arc, an artifact of transferring the fx to the original footage.

I'm still not sure I see what you're talking about. But I suspect it's an artifact of compression, not FX.

either this is a regular occurence, or the two people in the bottom left hand corner are deaf and blind. if i saw this happening i would be standing there freaking out probably, not just standing around.

Those are clearly employees of the power company. They obviously anticipated this event, that's why it was recorded. I'm sure if I took you up in an airplane and did some of the things I used to do as a test pilot, you'd be pretty freaked out too.

Real

Chris

[gorickey]

Originally posted by chabig:
I'm sure if I took you up in an airplane and did some of the things I used to do as a test pilot, you'd be pretty freaked out too.

I would LOVE that....what time can you fly by and pick me up?

[Lerkfish]

Originally posted by SomeToast:
Real.

And an analysis of the video.

I don't know why the arcing is perceived as unbelievable... you see the same behavior at a smaller scale with a Jacob's Ladder.

ah well, if so, then I stand corrected.

[Eriamjh]

A thread from the dead: I had to dig this up when I came across the absolutely cool "Art of Coin Shrinking" page.

The video above is definitely real. Read about it here.

Thought this one was cool too.

Physics can be fun!

[JoshuaZ]

Wow, fun with electricity. Like when your friends are trying to jump a car and you see a big spart fly up. Good times.

[meelk]

"omglolsohnoes that video is so fake! lookit the shadows!"
do you people listen to yourselves? Everyone runs around on the internet like they are goddamn experts inventing false reasoning for things that are CLEARLY real. You can tell by looking at the equipment involved those lines arent just sitting in someones back yard, and the people involved are CLEARLY employees of the electric company, theres a damn truck there that oh gosh, looks like a damn truck those people drive! Also, both people on the left and the guy on the right appear to be wearing the same kind of protective headgear.
I'm so tired of the incredible level of cynical ability to the point of stupidity the internet has nurtured in people.

[ghporter]

Actually, I DO have some experience with high voltage electricity and how it behaves. At really high voltages, electricity can do some really "interesting" things. In this case, the arc between the two points ionized and superheated the air between the points. Ionized air is much more conductive than normal air-it has basically become polarized. The ionized air, being superheated, began to rise so the arc continued to follow it until its temperature fell to something close to ambient and the ionization dissipated.

What interests me about this thread and the variety of negative analyses of it is that so many people figured that 40,000V acted just like 120V. It doesn't. Look at the spark you get when you scuff across a carpet on a dry day. You build up tens of thousands of volts worth of static by doing that. It takes approximately 20,000VDC to jump a distance of ONE INCH. AC acts a bit differently, but takes even more voltage to jump a specific distance, though once it starts, an AC arc can sustain itself for a while because of how it affects the air it goes through.

Normal house current is set at the relatively low 120VAC (in North America) for safety reasons (as well as other practical reasons). You should never see much more than a tiny spark when you plug something in at home because of this. But before it gets to your house at 120V, it's generated at a much higher voltage and transfomed up to ludicrously high voltages for efficient transmission over long distances. This is because resistive losses are directly related to the current through the circuit, and by transforming up to extremely high voltages, the same amount of power can be transmitted at very low currents. As the power gets closer to your house, it goes through transformers that step down the voltage. Transformers preserve the power going through them, so as voltage goes down, the available current goes up. Eventually there's a transformer near your house that provides two legs of a 220V feed, both referenced to the same ground and neutral, and both phased 180 degrees apart-this is how the same feed to a house can power 120V lights and a 220V electric clothes dryer.

Ok, lecture's over.

[nerd]

What ghporter said.

I was in Farmington, NM for work a couple months back and my coworker and I hear an arc. We both look up to the power lines (7200v ones) next to the building we on the roof of. 2 of the phases are swinging towards each other and arcing. Only the wires between these 2 poles did this. It wasn't windy that day either. The lines did this about 6 times before a breaker tripped. I tried to get down the ladder in time to get the camera but was to late.

The only thing we could think of was there was a big load on only one phase and it cause a magnetic field to generate at that portion of the line. I'm not an expert with electricity, maybe some of you guys can chime in here. Anyways, it was very impressive seeing that size of arc in person. It wasn't more then 100 feet away from us.

Brad

Edit: Spelling for wataru.

[Eriamjh]

It's common for people who have never seen an event to come up with logical reasons on why it must be fake. Look at 9/11. Look at the moon landing. Look at the video. It's unfathomable that it is real because we have never seen anything like it (like when Star Wars was brand new).

Besides, the thread is over a year old. I just remembered it when I came across the page that explains it. It's just cool!

[wataru]

Originally Posted by nerd

I hear an ark. Anyways, it was very impressive seeing that size of ark

This is an ark:


These are arcs:

[nerd]

okay, okay..........

[wdlove]

It is certainly very cool to look at.