Lasers vs Lightning- Which Is More Powerful?

Which has more destructive power, lasers or lightning? Today, to declare a final champion among all the elements we've tested head to head on my channel, they'll be facing off in tests against seven household objects, including a CD, a crystal ball and a safe full of cash. - Let's go!

- And since laser had to defeat lava to make it to the finals, your favorite former-middle-school-teacher-turned-to-laser-wielding-mad-genius is back; Science Bob Pflugfelder. - Good luck, Mark. - You're so positive.

And representing lightning, is Mehdi Sadaghdar AKA ElectroBOOM, who left his manners in Canada and brought some shocking bits of electric machinery. . .

to show off his mastery of electrons. - I know what I'm doing. Kind of.

- But once again, for the final encore performance, I'm not gonna be watching from the sidelines either as all seven objects will have to face my X factor method of destruction, which as always, is different for each object. So for example, this lava lamp might just get turned into an actual lava lamp. And as expected at this stage in the competition, the new trash talk commenced immediately.

- Lightning beats everything. - I'm just worried about you surviving. - And by the way, winner of today's competition gets a safe full of cash.

- Really? - Don't get excited. - Actual cash.

- I still got a rusted boat in my driveway from the last one. It's gonna cost you more to get rid of it. - All right.

Well, let's get started. - You're doomed both. - Lightning.

- And with that, it was time to start our seven item showdown of destruction starting with the contest to burn a CD from our personal collections. Literally. And Bob was going to get us started by using his super powerful military grade laser to destroy Rod Stewart's greatest hits - Hold choice.

- I'm a big Rod Stewart fan, especially track nine. - So Bob fired up both his laser and his Rod Stewart deep cut. - Woah, it's gone.

Where's the CD? - It's like the end of Avengers. - What happened?

- We had to use a replay to realize that Bob's super powerful laser had folded the CD like a taco before incinerating it in an undeniable show. - What is that? That's nothing, Bob.

- That's literally ash. - You might still be able to play that. Watch me do it.

- Mehdi out of the gate strong with the trash talk. - Yeah. Let's hope he can live up to it.

Wow, he's a mess. - Now it was lightning. So it was time to see how Mehdi planned to use the super mean looking Tesla coil that he brought to CrunchLabs.

- Time to burn my CD. I'm gonna use this giant. .

. - Did you just get shocked? - It went to the ground through my shoe.

- You're like talking slower, I feel. - It broke my CD. Poor Chris De Burgh.

- Time to see if the Tesla coil could shock the CD as well as it shocked Mehdi. And it worked beautifully, arching patterns, lighting up CrunchLabs. They were so gorgeous and like moths to a light we just had to get closer until we remembered we were working by Mehdi's safety standards.

- Wow. Like a little bit longer. And I think it would have cut all the way through.

- I think we should try it one more time. - I have second thoughts. - I never have second thoughts.

I try again, and every time I learn something new - With a scar. - I don't have a good feeling about that. - But Mehdi had used a wire to ground the CD so he could get close without having to worry.

Mehdi had become the God of thunder. - That's how you erase a CD. - And this crystal ball CD was facing its Ragnarok.

Until Medi shocked himself. But despite the second self own of the day, Mehdi had done a pretty great job at burning the CD. - Because I know what I'm doing.

Kind of. - And this is a good time to point out, even though Mehdi has made a career out of building really cool things that always somehow shock him, he does have a master's degree in electrical engineering and is very smart and actually does know exactly what he's doing. In other words, please don't try this with your own 4 ft Tesla coil at home.

- Roll the X factor. - It was time to show these boys what the X factor could pull off. - Gentlemen, prepare to have your minds blown.

- Really? A microwave? - It's not just any microwave.

It's a microwave with two googly eyes. - But googly eyes or not, Mariah Carey was in for a little excitement. - Three, two, one!

- Now, wait, I was always told you never put metal into a microwave. - This is true. Do not try this at home.

Only try this at CrunchLabs. Whoa. - The microwave put on quite a techno light show for us.

And it did a great job. - Don't breathe that smoke. - But ultimately, despite destroying the CD beyond repair, the final verdict was, I think Mehdi's was the coolest.

- Yeah, I kind of think it was. On to round two! - So now that we have the first point on the board, we got ready for a chilly round two.

- Solid block of ice. - I'm gonna make a swan sculpture out of it. - I don't want to spoil anything but I'm feeling good about my chances on this one.

- You'll do a chainsaw? - And Bob was up first with the super powerful laser. - Alright guys, let's go.

- And as he worked his laser across the surface of the ice, the dripping water indicated that his laser was weak. - Is it even doing anything, Bob? - Hey, this is how light works.

- And honestly, he's right since ice is more or less transparent. The laser passes straight through and doesn't bounce off or get absorbed by anything, which means it doesn't build up enough heat to cause any damage. So this time Bob focused his laser on one spot and held it there.

- Oh. Uh oh. - And it started to create a rough surface on the ice which allowed the laser to finally interact with something and build up some heat, eventually.

Boring a hole all the way through. Oh, that is cool actually. - Actually, it looks very bullet-like.

- It's a bullet that kills you in half an hour. - It was time for Mehdi to back up all that trash talk. - Let me show you how it's done.

I'm going to use a welding machine and run 650 amps of current through this. Like I was saying. - Basically, Mehdi's plan was to use the build up of heat from electrical resistance to create a hot rebar knife through icy butter.

- Oh, you've got a sizzle. - Give me more juice. - Wow, that's red.

- Now, watch this. - You're bending the rod! - And it worked really well until it didn't.

- What happened? - Wow, It's black in the middle now. - I think your ice is too cold.

- So Mehdi added a little bit of elbow grease to try and saw his way through the ice by using the parts of the rebar that were still glowing hot. - A little bit from that side. - Despite his best efforts resulting in a little melting but much more reheating and then subsequent bending.

- Stop it. No arching! All right, I'm done.

- Ooh, so close. - It was a failure, but it was a cool failure. - Enough of these jokers, it was time for the X factor.

- This boys, is how you win a competition. - Actually kind of excited to see this with - With the red hot nickel ball. - It's a very satisfying sound.

- The question is, can I make it deeper than Mehdi did? Go, go go. - The core of the nickel ball had been heated to 2000 degrees and it was slowly but surely making its way down the ice.

- It's going the distance. - Is it? - But unfortunately for me, the laws of thermodynamics had other plans.

- Oh no! It's full of water. It's stole all of its energy.

It takes a lot of energy to heat up water. - I guess there's a clear winner. - Is there a clear winner?

- Really there were no clear winners in this group. - I have a solution. This is how we're going to solve this.

- So we decided to add a little gravity and whoever's block broke the cleanest must have done the most damage. So they'd be declared the winner and devastatingly for the second round in a row. Dang it.

- Oh Canada! - Oh, you're getting all nationalistic on us. All right.

2-0. Next challenge. - So we moved on to lamps and this one was going to be a little bit different.

- This is a Science Bob lamp. - This is a Science Bop lamp. - Because this time we wouldn't be trying to destroy lamps.

We'd be using our chosen elements to create lamps. - For my lamp, I have got some ultraviolet reactive slime. I'm gonna hit it with a sparkle pattern, ultraviolet laser filter.

It should look pretty cool. Kill the lights. - I can't see, Bob.

- Activate the laser. The world's first slime laser lamp. - It was some of the prettiest slime I'd ever seen.

- That's kind of interesting. - And I wonder what it would look like if you attacked it with the CrunchLabs vortex cannon. - It does a little dance.

- Can I play with the laser? - No, don't play with the laser. Ultraviolet lime laser lamp.

- That was not on my bingo card. - You did well Bob. I mean it sucks.

- Try that one, lightning boy. - Lightning boy was about to whip out the Tesla coil and this fluorescent bowl. - I'm gonna do Nikola Tesla's dream of wireless power and power this with that super large Tesla coiler.

- Is this like a good distance for us? - If it is safe for me, it's safe for you too. - Why do I not trust what you say?

- But when we turned it on the electric field created by the Tesla coil in the air - It's alive! - actually causes the fluorescent tube light to glow. What's happening is the gas particles in the tube are getting excited by the electric field which breaks them into charged particles, releasing energy in the form of light.

And it made it look like the coolest actual light saber battle ever. - Now I'll just go less crazy this time. Light it up.

- Mehdi, stop breaking things. - I've learned my lesson. I just wanna see how bright it gets okay?

- That was delayed? ! - Once we got the lightning man a light bulb that was too big to use as a light saber it was undeniable that it was a pretty cool trick.

- Lightning lamp. Not bad. All right, gentlemen, for my lamp, I'm doing a lava lamp as in a lamp that's filled with actual lava.

- Does Kevin the backyard scientist know you're doing this? - No! This is our little secret, Bob.

- But the question was, could I actually get any in the lamp? - This is the moment of truth, can Mark do it? - Because I only have one pour.

And the anticipation had us feeling like Christmas morning. Speaking of which now's the perfect time to mention that if you want a Christmas morning reaction like this or this or this then a CrunchLabs Build Box subscription is the answer because with the Build box, not only do you get a super fun toy that you get to put together every month, but you do it alongside me while I teach you all the incredible physics behind how it works. We're right there in the trenches, building, learning and succeeding together.

So the principles really sink in. So if you're a kid and you're looking for something to put at the top of your Christmas list, or you're just looking to be the household hero by giving it to someone else, use the link in the video description or head to crunchlabs. com where we're giving away two free boxes as our holiday special.

Now, back to my precision lava pouring skills. But had I poured too much? Ultimately, I felt like the lava gods would be pleased.

- While it is beautiful it's arguably less practical. - So it's time to pick a winner. - I'd like to point out something - you didn't make a lamp.

You destroyed a lamp. I made a lamp. - I suppose even the lava gods agreed with Bob's logic, which meant laser was on the board with one lightning with two and the X factor with a very sad zero.

Which meant I'd have to change that in the lipo battery round. - Alright, here we go. More questionable science.

- And it did blow up. But it did, it gorgeously. The laser burned right through the batteries casing and quickly burned off all the excess energy left stored inside the battery.

- Laser did some sweet damage to that thing. - Definitely did. - And once it was actually dead, we were able to see the many battery layers of smoldering wreckage the laser left behind - Bob, can I just point out how you kind of look like a fly right now.

- Do I? - For lightning I'm gonna let the battery destroy itself by connecting its lead with a very low resistance wire that will allow it - A classic Mehdi starch to an otherwise interesting plan. Because by connecting the leads, he's created a path for the electrons to flow with essentially no resistance.

This basically causes a stampede of electrons trying to squeeze through the wire so intense, it generated a bunch of heat that melted the connections on the flimsy white wire in an effort to scale up that flimsy white wire so that the battery would have to fail from the inside. He fashioned himself this giant mad scientist switch. - This is a huge switch!

- This looks really fun. I'm not gonna lie. I'll step back, that's for sure because only one thing would die today and it actually wasn't the battery.

- It was Maddie's winning streak. - Is it getting warm? - I don't know if it's the sun.

Let's see what's wrong with the battery. - So Mehdi attempted to Macgyver his way to a solution, but he was shocked to find out that these batteries had a fail safe internally that prevent them from sorting themselves out. - Maybe use the knife.

- So in the end, the only thing that was actually destroyed was the knife. - These batteries are not safe, man. - So now the X factor was up.

- This is how you do it, boys. - And I was going crossbow. Now last time my fatal flaw was aiming at a target that was physically impossible to hit.

- Dang it. - So this time I was picking a distance that would be physically impossible to miss. - Dang it.

- It's gonna be a long video. - The puncturing metal dart did what Mehdi couldn't do by connecting all the layers of the battery - First try, right there! First try!

- causing the electron stampede - So slow! - that resulted in beautiful flames. - Well, boys?

- Take it yours. It's yours. - There's nothing in there.

- And thus, for the first time X factor was on the board. And according to this crystal ball, we were about to destroy, I saw many more points in my future. - Laser versus crystal ball, Bob.

I feel like lasers pass through glass. - Yeah. I don't know why I'm here.

- Bob, have a little confidence, buddy. Some of the greatest discoveries in scientific history came from that aha moment we might be about to find the cure to cancer here. - Okay.

- Feeling inspired, Bob gave his laser a shot and once it hit the crystal ball - It's beautiful double rainbow! - It was a beautiful light show. But the infrared camera indicated that the only effect Bob had - I might be turning the wall into lava.

- You're laser, you're not lava Bob. - I'm both. - I don't know if we cured cancer.

- It didn't even notice the globe. - Meanwhile, team X factor had no doubts about its upcoming hole in one. - This, while it might look like a normal golf club, it's actually a firearm.

- Googles. Where's my goggles? - Three.

Two. One. New hole in the wall?

Now you know what you're up against. - I see shards of glass. I'm getting back.

- I don't see it being that strong. - You're gonna regret those words, Mehdi. Three.

Two. One. - Yeah, it was super ineffective.

- That feels very disappointing. - Well there are some crack here. - You know what I'm thinking?

- So I called in an assist. It's like loosening the jar of Pickles from my buddy Isaac Newton. - I thought everyone got one try.

- You guys might want to step back. Three. Two.

One. - Oh my God. - Oh no, I'm literally destroying the floor.

- At best, you could argue that I turned this crystal ball into a bowling ball. - I think that's a win for Glass. - Bob and I are no match for this thing.

It's up to you. - It would all come down to whatever insane invention Mehdi had brought in. - We brought in a huge capacitor that can deliver 100,000 amps as much as one lightning strike, as much energy as a 50 caliber sniper rifle.

- I think we get the point. - It can power 100,000 homes for a microsecond. Three.

Two. One. Zero.

- And the test run we set up, - Gosh, that was loud. - showed that he might have this crystal ball in the bag. - I've never done something like this before.

Three. Two. One.

I didn't expect that at all. - None of us did. - But maybe that's because we'd finally harnessed enough energy to destroy that dang crystal ball.

- No way. - Metallicized glass. - Well, Bob, I think we've got to give this one to Mehdi.

- So does that mean he cleans it up? - Winner cleans up. Sorry, Mehdi.

- Mehdi, added another to the score as we moved to the watermelon round. So Bob let us know what he was planning to do with his adorable little friend. - We're going to go all James Bond on this guy and go right down that.

- Googly eyes now suddenly seem much more sinister. - Well, they were sitting around. I figured, why not?

- We're going to leave this to you. - Here we go! Three.

Two. One. - But the highly trained "00-Melon" didn't seem like he was going to crack.

So Bob turned up the heat. - Actually, that was kind of fun. - Oh no!

It's like LASIK. - Oh gosh, that looks horrible. Well, would you want to see what it tastes like?

- But all that and it only cut the watermelon about an inch deep. So I had to apply a little old fashioned elbow grease. - You said you work out?

- Clearly. - Wow, that looks gross. - Oh.

- It has a hint of laser. - Yeah! - Refreshing.

100 degree watermelon. - Gordon Ramsay, watch out! - Next up, was lightning.

- You remember what I did to the crystal ball? - I do. - Remember what I did to the crystal ball?

- I do actually. - I'm gonna do the same thing to this poor watermelon; paint the room with watermelon. - This was one that might require the bulletproof safety barrier.

- Let's make the watermelon vapor melon. - Three. Two.

One, Zero. - On second thought the barrier was overkill. - That didn't do anything!

- I call that an electro bust. - You cracked the watermelon! - You cracked the watermelon!

- You did what a knife could do. - Oh my God. - That looks disgusting.

- I think the watermelon absorbed all the shock from the explosion. And I wonder how it tastes. - And my intrigue would take some explaining.

- All right, for the X factor. You know, if you have a soda bottle and you shake it up, it has a lot of pressure and wants to expand? - Sure.

- I'm basically gonna take a really cold liquid that will give off gas and do the same effect and stick it in the bottle. - I literally did this in an earlier video with you. - I don't know what you're talking about.

- Let's go to the clip, - Wait, you can't call it. - So back at the house while Science Bob distracted the crowd with liquid nitrogen powered exploding water melons - Stop the clip, cut the clip. Stop it!

- Before I get interrupted again, let me put on the most important touch. - It's a cyclops. - And then the second most important touch which is the activating mixture and then hightail it out of there behind the safety glass because this water minion was going to go off any second.

- Now, this is real boring until it's time. - Oh, something's lifting up there. - Smashing success.

- Wow. It smells amazing in here. Woah, look at the ceiling.

Well? - Yeah. I know.

- You guys don't even need to say it. - Fine. Fine.

Take it. - What's up? X factor!

Only one round left. You got three points. I've got two points.

Bob's got one. Adding in the two point finale, it's anybody's game except for Bob's. You can technically tie at best.

- And we'd all have to break out the big guns as we moved into our safest round yet cracking open a reinforced vault filled with cash. Whoever stacked the most money would win this round and potentially the whole championship. - Finally a challenge worthy of a laser.

- Any concern about lighting the money on fire? - Lots. I'm assuming the money's down here.

Therefore, I will cut in here and I walk away with all the money. - Let's roll. The police are coming.

We only got two minutes. - Let's pull off this heist. - And Bob's laser immediately started tearing deeply into the recesses of the vault and we wondered briefly whether it would make through the thicker mechanism.

But we didn't need to worry at all as it cut through them like paper. We did need to worry though about the sparks. - Oh, I feel like there's some burning cash in that safe, Mehdi.

- The question was how much cash Bob would be able to salvage after he opened the door. - You might have welded it back. - And so this operation depended on me to act as the muscle.

And Mehdi. But after one final struggle, Bob finally opened up the door to his. .

. - There is literally nothing left in there. - That's not true.

Look, I see a dollar. Not all is lost. - You have a corner of a dollar!

- You did it, Bob! - So Bob's final score was 25 cents and we moved on to see what lightning could do. - What's the plan, Mehdi?

- 750 amps of current cut through this like butter. - Can you top 3000 watts? - Mine is 31,000 watts?

- That's way bigger than that, Bob. - Okay. - Let's do this!

- That's bad. - Why did I pick lasers? - That was beyond me because frankly, Mehdi's was stunning.

- It's like a real life light saber. - It glowed brighter as it got hotter and hotter, making even quicker work of the vaults latching mechanisms. But eventually it got so hot that Mehdi's gloves almost melted off his hand, which of course he had to show us up close.

- Careful, man. Careful. - Ultimately, he made much quicker work than lasers.

But he also burned through the money much quicker than laser had. - My money! Come on, man.

- That's too late. - Which meant Mehdi recovered even less than Bob. - Fortunately, neither one of you guys got any money, which means the stage is now set for the X factor.

We'll do cool sound effects with that. All right, gentlemen, you might notice the safe is sitting on a big red X. That's because for my final X factor, my plan is to go with 170 ft of pure unadulterated gravitational potential energy.

Let's hook it up. - Oh my God. - Don't help him.

- It had come to this because I couldn't be sure this would crack it open. But. .

. - Yeah! - I think gravity's gonna win this one.

- If I even got $1 out of this thing - The safe doesn't stand a chance there. - That's really tall. - I could win the entire championship.

So let's do it. - Okay. Ten.

Nine. Eight. Seven.

Six. Five. Four.

Three. Two. One.

Go! - That was a big smash. - Wow!

Let's go! Wow. - At least your money is safe in the safe.

- But how many dollars had I gotten out of there? - The door is cracked open. I could definitely get in there.

I feel like I wanna run it one more time. Three. Two.

One. - The safe door flew off the hinges, like a leaf falling off a tree, or a bird flying through the wind, or. .

. - My money! - That's right.

My money. - Oh too bad, your money is blowing away. - I didn't think about the wind.

Oh, these were like hundreds! - Put it in your pocket, here. - With all the interference from the win, it was hard to get a final tally, but I was pretty sure I could count more than $1.

- Well, I'm nothing if not a generous host. Here is a little something for your efforts. - Thank you, sir.

- Sorry, gentlemen. There can only be one winner. I'm just happy it was me.

- Hey, there are some electronics in there. What is that? - Oh, watch out man.

Those could be live. - What did you put there? - Now, you might have been just as surprised as me that the X factor actually won.

But what should not hopefully surprise you after watching all the videos I've been making on my YouTube channel for 12 years, is that learning science and engineering doesn't have to be sucky and boring. Which is exactly why I started a toy company called CrunchLabs with the express goal of helping kids think like an engineer through monthly toys that get delivered to your door where you put it together with me. And have already shipped millions of these boxes the data is in 87% of kids rated an eight out of 10 on a fun scale out of 10.

But here's the dirty secret. More than three out of four parents said their child gained a new passion around STEM and engineering from the boxes. Our secret sauce here just like on my videos is hiding the vegetables.

So everyone leaves feeling stoked about the outcome. On top of that, each month, your box has a chance to contain the platinum ticket and if you get it, - Oh my God! - Well, then you're coming out here to CrunchLabs to build with me and my team for a day.

So if you want to embark on this monthly journey with me and get a Christmas morning reaction like this. just go to crunchlabs. com or use the link in the video description where we're giving away those two boxes free as a holiday special.