I have no idea what’s going to happen next.
Normally, when I do a video, I have a script and a plan.
But this time, no such luck.
This is the high voltage test lab at the University of Manchester
and the idea is that we’re going to hit one of those
with more than a million volts from one of these.
I… I should probably get back down.
This is the UK’s largest multipurpose high-voltage lab.
We basically test, design and do research on all kinds of electrical assets.
We also do use the lab for teaching.
We have an impulse generator that can go up to 2 million volts.
Historically this lab would have been used to actually test
how lightning affects an aircraft,
but we’ve never tested a drone before.
And a drone's actually made of composite materials, plastics.
Is it going to fry the electricals?
Is it going to fry the battery?
Or is it going to be fine?
>> What you think's going to happen?
I think it will blow up.
I probably shouldn’t say that, should I?
This is the kind of capacitor that you might buy at a local electronics shop
to put in a circuit.
And this is the kind of capacitor that they use here at the lab.
Each one of these red boxes can store 100,000 volts, and there are 20 of them in this tower.
So when the trigger fires, all that power is going to go through the resistors in front of me,
up, down through that little brown wire to the single point.
Then it’s going to go through the air, as lightning, to the ground rod.
There’s just going to be a drone in the way.
Oh, here we go.
Here we go.
It's charging.
We’re at a million.
Come on...
Yes!
I think we got it(!)
Ohh, look at that!
Yeah, it’s not even very hot.
That’s actually a little bit disappointing.
I was kinda hoping...
-- Oh, it smells, though. Can you smell that? -- Does it?
I probably shouldn’t inhale that, actually.
Burnt motor.
What I would do is... let me just take the battery out.
Yeah, let’s take the battery out.
Battery’s intact.
Battery’s still running.
Let’s try switching it back on.
I’m going to stand back, just in case...
Let go...?
No. The internals are dead.
Battery’s good!
The entry point is coming through the motors of the propeller, which is made out of metal.
And it seems to have exited out of a point which is almost the handles.
Even though they are made out of plastic,
there’s still a sharp point which means they have a high electric field.
So you still will get an exit point, which is what's happened.
But all that current has gone through the motors and all the electronics, which has
pretty much fried it.
But it seems to have skipped the battery!
The reason why the battery is protected,
the battery does have a metal casing around it, if you kind of think about it.
So it’s basically a Faraday cage.
It’s a Faraday cage, so that has probably protected the battery,
Right.
But everything around it has been fried to bits.
All right.
What I would recommend is almost having something sticking out from the top.
Almost like a metal electrode again, so like a lightning interceptor.
So that attaches to that point, and you can have an exit point.
We'll try and see if we can put a metal tape and a protruding part outside,
which will hopefully attract the lightning so it doesn’t go through anything else.
Let's do it! That’s why we have a backup drone.
A million volts.
All right.
Here we go!
- The propellers! - The propellers!
It’s on its feet and the battery’s still lit.
Have you lost communication?
Yeah. It's off. “Aircraft disconnected”.
All right. Let's bring it in.
Go for it, Tom. You first.
Okay, so it blew the propellers off.
-- Man, they went! -- They did.
I can’t see any visible points...
On the last one there was charring on the plastic.
So we’ve got the picture, similar to last time,
seems to be attaching to the propeller and coming out… there you go.
It’s completely missed the lightning rod, hasn’t it?
Yes.
At the end of the day, this actually will tell you that lightning can be unpredictable
at the same time.
And in all fairness, it did hit the propellers again, and comes out the same point.
What are the streamers?
When you have a high voltage, streamers are what go up to answer the streamer that's coming
from the cloud. -- Right.
When both of those connect, then you get a channel.
-- Should have a look at the slo-mo? -- Absolutely.
-- There you go. -- There’s the strike...
And there’s the streamer!
-- The streamer’s still there. -- Look at that!
The channel’s already formed, so the current’s already going through.
Again, you can see little glowing embers, the motor that's burned out.
All right, so. Battery back in.
No.
No, it’s dead.
So the lesson is, if you’re going to fly your drone in a lightning storm...
-- Don’t. -- Don’t.
-- Thank you! -- No problem, Tom.
-- Thanks, guys! -- Cheers, Tom.
Thank you to everyone at the University of Manchester’s high-voltage lab.
Pull down the description for more about them, and please, don’t try this at home.
If you have a high-voltage laboratory at home.