Where Batteries Go to Be Tortured

[HardOCP News]

Sandia National Laboratories has labs specifically for blowing up stuff under the guise of “testing” it! Pfft, whatever, like that is something new. We’ve been doing that here for years…around here we call that a r-e-v-i-e-w.

Behind a 2,000-pound blast door, federal researcher Peter Roth spends his days torturing electric-car batteries. He overcharges them, drives nails into them, presses them between scalding brass plates. He dunks them in salt water, sets them on fire, crushes them, drops them, dissects them. Again and again, he watches them explode.

 

[Filthy Fernandez]

Sounds like Mythbusters to me.

He looks EXACTLY like someone you'd expect to have this job.

 

[Riftsaw]

I want that job. Get paid to destroy shit? Hell yes! Thats why I love it when my carpenter buddy asks me to help him on demo jobs.

I wonder if he needs an assistant that can handle a sledgehammer.

 

[glutto]

He should drop by my workplace for his tests. My co-workers regularly abuse the industrial batteries in the equipment they rely on, due mostly to laziness, stupidity, and incompetence.

 

[Fharakin]

Sounds like fun. Except he isn't using a .50 cal now is he?

 

[Exavior]

Sounds like fun. Except he isn't using a .50 cal now is he?

He should be though. A car could be shot at so they need to test it.

 

[beowulf7]

That sounds like a fun job. This guy even looks like he's qualified for the job - like a mad scientist.

 

[swiftB3]

He overcharged a battery made of 48 cells lashed together, then exposed it to sparks. The cells immediately began venting a tremendous cloud of gas and then exploded like fireworks, ricocheting off walls and disintegrating so completely, nothing was left but a thick layer of grit so toxic that cleanup crews had to wear hazmat suits.

..."We put in a steel ceiling after that," he says.

Bahaha. I like this guy.

 

[kaname]

I would love that job, but there's no way in hell you can get me to move back to Albuquerque. Even for being the biggest city in New Mexico, it's still a toilet bowl. But they get to do some pretty cool stuff in the Sandia and Los Alamos labs. My old high school math teacher used to work for Los Alamos and said one of his projects involved concentrating 3 times the amount of electricity used in the U.S. into a space the size of a marble, but that was all he would tell us; no reason way they were doing that.