• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Need pointers on how to generate an EMP

OS

OS

Lifer

I have to do a senior project for my major (electrical engineering) and I was wondering how difficult it would be to create a small electromagnetic pulse.

Pointers to any useful articles would also be appreciated.
 
First of all, I know nothing about how to do this, but here's a guess.


If you've taken any math that deals with fourier transforms, then you'll know that a certain combination of sine waves can produce a single intense spike when they are added that approaches the delta function. Using this, couldn't you set up some signal generators to produce that kind of a current in a metal rod causing a single spike in the magnetic field?
 


<< I have to do a senior project for my major (electrical engineering) and I was wondering how difficult it would be to create a small electromagnetic pulse.

Pointers to any useful articles would also be appreciated. >>

A nuclear device would easily generate such a thing. Read this to see how to build a nuclear device cheaply.
 
Older thread:

-------------------------------------


The content below is a thread from AnandTech forums. Print document.
Thread Title: Electromagnetic schematic?


Date Posted: Aug/18/2001 7:58 AM
Posted By: blahblah99
Rank: Junior Member
Can anyone shed some light on how to build a circuit/device that would put out electromagnetic pulses?




Date Posted: Aug/18/2001 1:12 PM
Posted By: Stealth1024
Rank: Golden Member
telsa coil anyone?

-------------------------
My Computer Specifications

webmaster@sbyers.com




Date Posted: Aug/18/2001 1:18 PM
Posted By: Stealth1024
Rank: Golden Member
The Dangerous Experiments Lab - 300 Watt Telsa Coil

Telsa Coil Links

Awesome picture...

Do you have any old monitors or TV's sitting around? Do you mind getting blown to bits by a massive capacitor if you touch the wrong wire? If you answered yes to both questions, take one apart, cut that massive wire going to the tube and have fun...

-------------------------
My Computer Specifications

webmaster@sbyers.com




Date Posted: Aug/18/2001 4:49 PM
Posted By: Schlocemus
Rank: Senior Member
Sounds good to me

-------------------------
Curiosity Skilled the cat.

My Junk




Date Posted: Aug/20/2001 1:04 AM
Posted By: highwire
Rank: Member
"Can anyone shed some light on how to build a circuit/device that would put out electromagnetic pulses?"

That is the essence of a radar, the transmitter side anyway. How many megawatts do you need?

And where in the electromagnetic spectrum do you want to launch this death ray? We need more information before we design this thing for you.

-------------------------
Altair 8800
Intel 8080 @ 2Mhz
B. Gates MS 8K Basic
dual 8" floppy
48K DRAM




Date Posted: Aug/20/2001 1:24 AM
Posted By: Evadman
Rank: Senior Member
Umm.. please tell me this will not be in the Megawatt range. I will have to move to another country. A tesla coil at 1.0 megawatt will be able to jump an air gap in the 1000 ft range, assuming 1000 volts per foot, which is on the very high side.

Personally, I prefer This Pic. You can see the shop lights glowing on the left

-------------------------
My system Rigs
Short Heatware




Date Posted: Aug/20/2001 1:34 AM
Posted By: Evadman
Rank: Senior Member
Wait a minute. you said ElectroMagnetic Pulses? EMP's? Are you going on a Computer killing frenzy?

Ok, time for my physics minor to come in handy. If you do this, do not hold me liable

To make an EMP blast on the Megawatt Range. That will basicly shut down a city. What fun.

You take a copper hollow tube, and fill it with some kind of fast but even burning explosive. TNT whould work, as it is a very consistant material. Then you wrap an insulator around the tube. Then you would wind approx 10 gauge wire around that in arcs about 1" apart. Connect the ends to a capacator set capable of releasing about 100f ( farads ) You would want to energize the coil about 200ns before you detonate the explosive. This will create a kind of rolling short circit between the copper tube and the energized coil. ( the coil will crate a Magnetic field in the coper tubing ) The Short circut will build on itself untill you run out of copper tube, and the magnetic field will pe "pushed" along the tube, with an EMP as the result. Frankly, It will probably kill every computer within 20 miles, with only a small explosion. Do not do this, as it will be very bad for all man kind. If you do decide to try it, make sure to stand over it, so we can get rid of you

As for making a small scale one to kill a specific target, ( too mess with your friends ) ya pretty much got me

-------------------------
My system Rigs
Short Heatware




Date Posted: Aug/20/2001 4:25 AM
Posted By: blahblah99
Rank: Junior Member
HOLY SMOKES! EVADMAN! I built your device (smaller version though) and using small amounts of gunpowder so I wouldn't blow myself up Took that sucker and a remote control plane out to the mojave desert and started flying the plane... when it got above the emp device (about two miles from where I controled the plane) I remote detonated the emp and INSTANTLY I lost control of my plane and it went spiraling down!

-----------------------------

Have fun =)
 
Any spark is a source of broadband RF. A auto ignition system ought to work pretty well. Any source of sparks should do the trick.
 
Little Disclamer: Creating an EMP delibratly will be a violation of all sorts of laws and chances are the FCC will own you for the rest of your life.

That said, the easiest way would probably (on a small scale) to get auto starters...charge those babies up, make a faraday cage around that bad boy, to channel it. You've got one decent spark gap transformer...the one I saw had two starters, delibratly overpowered (I beleve somewhere around 15v pre in, as opposed to 12), with a foiled cone on it...it could crash computers from ~15-20ft away.

Carefull.

Armani
 


<< Little Disclamer: Creating an EMP delibratly will be a violation of all sorts of laws and chances are the FCC will own you for the rest of your life.

That said, the easiest way would probably (on a small scale) to get auto starters...charge those babies up, make a faraday cage around that bad boy, to channel it. You've got one decent spark gap transformer...the one I saw had two starters, delibratly overpowered (I beleve somewhere around 15v pre in, as opposed to 12), with a foiled cone on it...it could crash computers from ~15-20ft away.

Carefull.

Armani >>



fascinating 😀 It didn't work much further than that though, right? Sounds like something to try in an empty parking lot in the middle of the night with some old computers 😉
 


<<
Date Posted: Aug/20/2001 1:34 AM
Posted By: Evadman
Rank: Senior Member
Wait a minute. you said ElectroMagnetic Pulses? EMP's? Are you going on a Computer killing frenzy?

Ok, time for my physics minor to come in handy. If you do this, do not hold me liable

To make an EMP blast on the Megawatt Range. That will basicly shut down a city. What fun.

You take a copper hollow tube, and fill it with some kind of fast but even burning explosive. TNT whould work, as it is a very consistant material. Then you wrap an insulator around the tube. Then you would wind approx 10 gauge wire around that in arcs about 1" apart. Connect the ends to a capacator set capable of releasing about 100f ( farads ) You would want to energize the coil about 200ns before you detonate the explosive. This will create a kind of rolling short circit between the copper tube and the energized coil. ( the coil will crate a Magnetic field in the coper tubing ) The Short circut will build on itself untill you run out of copper tube, and the magnetic field will pe "pushed" along the tube, with an EMP as the result. Frankly, It will probably kill every computer within 20 miles, with only a small explosion. Do not do this, as it will be very bad for all man kind. If you do decide to try it, make sure to stand over it, so we can get rid of you
>>



Good lord something that can take out every computer and probably most electronic devices in a 20mile radius.
Can you imagine if one of those scumbag terrorists set something like that off in downtown NYC or Washington, DC?
It would be a catastrophe. While the government probably has data stored in computer rooms that are designed to survive nuclear wars, I doubt NYC has much in the way of data centers that can survive an emp pulse like that. 🙁
 


<< Good lord something that can take out every computer and probably most electronic devices in a 20mile radius.
Can you imagine if one of those scumbag terrorists set something like that off in downtown NYC or Washington, DC?
It would be a catastrophe. While the government probably has data stored in computer rooms that are designed to survive nuclear wars, I doubt NYC has much in the way of data centers that can survive an emp pulse like that. 🙁 >>



I dunno.... I think a computer case / "hard drive cover-thing" should act as a decent faraday cage.
 


<<
Date Posted: Aug/20/2001 1:34 AM
Posted By: Evadman
Rank: Senior Member
Wait a minute. you said ElectroMagnetic Pulses? EMP's? Are you going on a Computer killing frenzy?

Ok, time for my physics minor to come in handy. If you do this, do not hold me liable

To make an EMP blast on the Megawatt Range. That will basicly shut down a city. What fun.

You take a copper hollow tube, and fill it with some kind of fast but even burning explosive. TNT whould work, as it is a very consistant material. Then you wrap an insulator around the tube. Then you would wind approx 10 gauge wire around that in arcs about 1" apart. Connect the ends to a capacator set capable of releasing about 100f ( farads ) You would want to energize the coil about 200ns before you detonate the explosive. This will create a kind of rolling short circit between the copper tube and the energized coil. ( the coil will crate a Magnetic field in the coper tubing ) The Short circut will build on itself untill you run out of copper tube, and the magnetic field will pe "pushed" along the tube, with an EMP as the result. Frankly, It will probably kill every computer within 20 miles, with only a small explosion. Do not do this, as it will be very bad for all man kind. If you do decide to try it, make sure to stand over it, so we can get rid of you >>



I totaly forgot about that post. That was basicly from a Popular Mechanics article 🙂
 


<< I dunno.... I think a computer case / "hard drive cover-thing" should act as a decent faraday cage. >>




A good theory, but the case (computer/hard drive/etc...) would need to be closed, surrounding the whole device. I would guess that because the case is made of several pieces, it would not work too well.

Of course, I don't know details of the EMP (voltage, power output and such). Also I am not a Faraday cage expert.

Just my 1.5 cents (too tired to put in a whole 2)
 
in fact, wires coming out of cases will act like antennas for receiving the damaging pulse. That's why it's so hard to shield completely against EMP.

 


<< in fact, wires coming out of cases will act like antennas for receiving the damaging pulse. That's why it's so hard to shield completely against EMP. >>



Yep, I worked in a faraday cage and although it not a single piece design the cables going in where mostly fibre optics, except the power supply of course and I have no clue how they protected that.
 
They had an article about that in a Popular Science magazine that I saw. I think you have to run high voltage electricity through a coil, and then set off explosives inside the coil so that the coil will touch the outside of the chamber (which serves as an alternate ground.) The explosives have to explode from one end of the coil to the other, not simultaneously. I think that's how the magazine said it worked, and if I find the magazine, I can elaborate.
 

hehe, prof said that as long as I can control the magnitude of the EMP (IE, I don't flood the campus with an EMP :Q), they'll probably let me do it. 😀
 


<< hehe, prof said that as long as I can control the magnitude of the EMP (IE, I don't flood the campus with an EMP :Q), they'll probably let me do it. 😀 >>


I can already picture the headlines: "Teenager destroys equipment in a 10 mile radius with self-made bomb." 😉

Be careful 😛
 
How about "calculation slip up leads to massive blackouts on East Coast"

"I kinda thought something was wrong when I worked out I needed 16 metric tons of military grade uranium for this device" University Student OuterCircle* said after the massive aftermath of what is quite possibly the worst disaster to hit the United States of America. OuterOblong, working on a University project later discovered that he had divided by Plancks mass instead of multiplying leading to a device of immense power rather than the small controlled detonation he was hoping for. "I was just glad I went out for lunch while the unit was charging up" he later commented to police..."

*Names of some people have been changed to protect their privacy
 


<< I have to do a senior project for my major (electrical engineering) and I was wondering how difficult it would be to create a small electromagnetic pulse.

Pointers to any useful articles would also be appreciated. >>

Why not ask the FBI, as I am sure they would LOVE to speak with you. First, define small, because small to you may means millions of deaths to others.
 


<< Why not ask the FBI, as I am sure they would LOVE to speak with you. First, define small, because small to you may means millions of deaths to others. >>



Grow up. Do you think for a second that I can just drag a canister filled with TNT onto campus for an in class demonstration? Or that I can get enough power out of a wall socket to cause "millions of deaths?"

You know for some reason, my electrical engineering professors don't seem nearly as concerned as you. Of course being the genius you are, maybe you know more than they do. Gotta love it when people get their "science" education from movies and video games. I mean playing starcraft and using a science vessel character makes them experts in electromagnetism.

You know what, I think you should go tell the FBI. Then they might "LOVE to speak with YOU" about wasting their time.
 
Bwhahaha! thanks for the laugh OuterSquare. I needed that 🙂

Make sure to keep us updated on your project. I for one, want to hear how it goes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top