The World's Largest Super Soaker Is the Coolest Thing You'll See Today
Remember all those summers you spent as a kid chasing your sunburnt cousins around with a super soaker. Multiply that by 100 and you’ve got Mark Rober's summer water fight.
The former NASA engineer spent six months designing and building the world's biggest super soaker, and it's awesome. Powered by nitrogen gas (rather than your own strength) the massive super soaker can fire water at 2400 psi. That’s eight times more powerful than a firetruck hose. Watch the gun do some serious damage to objects around Mark’s house, smashing glass, cutting watermelons in half and eventually seriously soaking a bunch of kids in his backyard.
Rober’s channel is brilliant, with each project he takes on, he explains the science and engineering behind it in such a down to earth way, you can’t help but feel like you could have a go. He also provides really cool context for each of his videos. In this case, he did a Skype call with the original inventor of the Super Soaker, Lonnie Johnson. Johnson, also a former NASA engineer, was inspired to make the toy after some experimentation with water propulsion he did at home. In 1984 he invented the first super soaker and they have been going strong ever since.
Rober’s seven foot long, official Guinness Book World record holding super soaker is totally insane. It looks perfect with a bright yellow paint job and has all these additional cool, engineering inspired features, like an easy refill access area and interchangeable nozzles. If you feel inspired to take on a similar project, the links to equipment and instructions are up on the channel.
Via Mark Rober