I was unfortunately surprised to learn that my butcher block home workbench, or more likely the varnish (looks like polyurethane to me) in many spots has a very low resistance (<0.5 ohm/in as I measure). Fried a PCB I was working on, which I took a lot of shit for, everyone assuming I'd just done something stupid. Anyways, the moral is don't assume your wooden bench is actually an insulator.

Oh, and I also don't recommend playing with a a transformer out of a microwave unless you really know what you're doing. Though it's probably safe enough, 2kV will arc pretty far through air, so you don't even have to actually touch it to have a bad day.

Moving this video to Mordhaus's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

*beg

Sending this video to Beggar's Canyon to plea for a little attention - beg requested by original submitter Mordhaus.

*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued - promote requested by eric3579.

Got it! With all that safety instruction out of the way I'm off to lightning some wood.

It is not a fractal pattern, not sure why he said that. It is more of a "path of least resistance" pattern.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichtenberg_figure#Fractal_similarities