This Handheld Tesla Coil Gun at 28,000fps is Badass

Destin from Smarter Every Day tapped into his inner child while making this video. It’s always great to see somebody so excited about what they’re doing, and Destin was downright giddy when he had the opportunity to strap on a real-life Tesla Coil Gun and fire off a few lightning bolts.

Smarter Every Day has quietly grown into a huge educational source on YouTube, with over four million subscribers and view counts in the hundreds of million. Destin has garnered those results because of his genuine and infectious love of science, and that joy reached a new level when he met another local Nikola Tesla fan, Cameron Prince and his collection of Tesla-inspired projects. Of course, beyond the giddiness, Destin was on a mission to capture the lightning emitted from the gun with his Phantom high-speed camera, clicking off 28,000 frames per second.

The footage, as you might imagine, is nothing short of stunning, as the lightning bolts crawl and weave through the air, jumping from the end of Cameron’s arm like some kind of comic-book superhero. Near the end, Destin is shocked (pun not intended, but unavoidable) to see Cameron allowing the bolts to strike his hand, but ended up actually allowing Prince to zap him with the gun.

Check out the video below, this is excellent footage brought to you by Smarter Every Day.