Fun with electricity
One day I decided it would be a good idea to dismantle my sister's beloved tape deck in order to nick the motor. Why? Because my parents were too hard up to buy me a proper Lego motor to go with all the Lego Technic kit I'd accumulated by collecting cereal box tokens (true story...*sniff*).

With some ingenuity, I then managed to build this into an amazing battery-powered Lego car-type-thing of my own design, complete with adjustable gears. Top stuff.

The dumb part?

"Hmm...I wonder if I can make the car faster by connecting it directly to the mains?"

wires + mains cable = BANG

I was sat there for what seemed like an age afterwards, looking at my soot-blackened fingers and trembling slightly. Partly from shock, but also partly from the dawning realisation that I now had to explain to my sister why the motor from her tape recorder was fried, and its cable melted...
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 15:40, Reply)