Shrunken Coins

When I was an undergraduate there was a rumor, probably apocryphal, that most of the staff in the Electric Power Engineering program was missing a finger or two due to mishaps when dealing with high-voltage equipment. High voltage is scary stuff. One of the stranger things I’ve seen related to high voltage is this technique for shrinking quarters using magnetic fields induced by a high voltage capacitor bank. The coin is crushed but retains its surface features. Here’s an explanation of how this works.

Note: if shrunken coins aren’t weird enough for you, read the pages on Tesla coils and Lichtenberg Figures. This is real-life “mad scientist” stuff.