A Youtuber Built a Laser Gun That Can Set Copper On Fire

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

In 2020, YouTuber Drake “styropyro” Anthony uploaded a video in which he built a laser gun some 20,000 times more powerful than the legal limit.
Five years later, he’s back with a new laser creation more that twice as powerful as the last one—and definitely a hazard in more ways than one.
In a new YouTube video, Anthony shows off the laser’s destructive capabilities, and even ignites a penny on fire.

If there’s one thing science fiction has to tell us, it’s that the future is full of lasers. Laser guns, laser swords, giant death-spewing laser planets—it’s lasers all the way down. Because of their undeniable cool factor, there is a long tradition of YouTubers trying to replicate these sci-fi creations. (Seriously—search for “real lightsaber,” and the videos never end.)

Now, a new video posted by YouTuber Drake “styropyro” Anthony is taking the idea of a laser gun to a whole new level—a level originally set by Anthony himself back in 2020, when he created a 100-watt handheld laser that was some 20,000 times more powerful than the legal limit of 5 milliwatts.

In the new video, Anthony admits that the five-year-old laser had a few problems. The components had to be smashed into the body and the laser drivers and cooling system weren’t really up to the job. This new laser gun wouldn’t be just a power upgrade—it’d be an all-around improvement.

Anthony started his build just like his old one—by repurposing a beat-up radar gun. He then created the necessary battery management board, and pumped up the amps powering the new laser array. According to Anthony’s math, the laser should deliver around 250 watts of power—50,000 times the legal laser pointer limit. Just 0.2 percent of the laser’s power would be considered a blindness hazard, Anthony said.

“The luminosity of this laser is especially impressive as well, having more than quadruple the brightness of my 100-watt laser,” Anthony says in the video. “Even though I built this thing, part of me still finds it hard to believe that a device like this is even possible.”

Next, as any good laser video should do, Anthony begins lighting things on fire. The laser’s impressive power can instantly ignite a two-by-four, but the real show begins once a lens is affixed to the front of the gun, funneling all of the laser’s power down to just a small point. The most surprising result of all the various burn tests is that the laser gun could even send a copper penny into flames.

“The fact that the laser literally lit a penny on fire is an astonishing result to me,” Anthony says in the video. “I’ve done all sorts of mad science experiments with pennies over the years. I’ve dissolved them in acid, treated them with cyanide, hit them with 1,000 amps, blasted them with other lasers, but none of those other methods managed to light a penny on fire.”

A “don’t try this at home” disclaimer goes without saying. In the video, Anthony’s eyes are well-protected, and that’s critical, as way less powerful lasers could wreak havoc on a person’s retinas. The intensely focused beam of light can cause mechanical, photochemical, and thermal damage—in other words, it basically burns your retinas, which is a bad thing.

So, it’s best to leave the construction of penny-combusting lasers to professionals—or in this case, a highly motivated (and cautious) YouTuber.

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