If you’ve ever been disappointed by the performance of a Nerf toy, you’re not alone. For safety (and legal) reasons the blasters come with limited power out of the box, but there’s a thriving community of modders online who’ve found ways to give them more kick. That includes Peter Sripol who hacked a Nerf blaster so that it’s now powered by explosive hydrogen it generates all by itself.
Making hydrogen is not actually that difficult. Water is also referred to as H2O because it’s made up of hydrogen and oxygen atoms in a two-to-one ratio. So Sripol upgraded a Nerf N-Strike Elite Mega CycloneShock Blaster with a simple electrolysis machine that splits water into its two elements.
The harvested hydrogen, which is very volatile, is ignited using the business end of a Taser device, producing an explosive blast that propels a foam dart much faster than the blaster’s stock spring-loaded firing mechanism can.
The longer the blaster’s electrolysis add-on is left running, the more hydrogen is produced, and the more powerful the blaster becomes. But there’s a limit, as eventually Sripol finds the explosion becomes so powerful it actually starts destroying the foam darts as they’re being fired.
But that might actually be for the best, as hydrogen isn’t exactly something you want to mess around with, and there’s certainly the risk of this entire hacked blaster going kaboom. In other words: don’t try this one at home.