LED Explosion!

A friend and I were wiring some IR LED's to use with a modded digicam sensitive only to IR light. We decided it wasn't bright enough so I did the always stupid 'watch this' and connected it to two CR123a's. The die on the LED looked like it was shooting flames and then exploded, sending chunks of plastic all over the room and leaving an incredibly bad smell.

Here are some pictures of the aftermath.

:laughing:

Done it before on accident when I shorted a resistor on a project I had put together point to point running on a 9 volt battery. Mine only went "POP" and turned dark brown though; it was a yellow LED.

Later on another identical yellow (actually amber) LED, I hooked up a 1000ma universal AC adapter with switchable voltages, plugged it in at the 3 volt setting, then quickly turned the voltage up. At 7.5 or 9 volts; it turned from amber to angry red-orange, dimmed, then made a fizzing noise and died.

Some idiots in a high school class hooked up one to a 220v line....went off like a firecracker and left a black mark on the asbestos table.

These were the same guys who would hook up to the 110v test bench(had a safety trip) and tap each other's/their own arms onto two bare leads to make their arms twitch/go numb:shakehead