I received two emails recently. Each had a short subject line that commanded my attention. The subject line of the first was “O-M-G!” That of the second was “INSANE!”

Naturally, I thought these messages were comments on the wonders on my Hawaiian shirt du jour, so I opened them to up to feast my orbs. You can only imagine my surprise to discover that they were about other topics entirely.

The “O-M-G!” email was from my chum Charles Pfeil, who pointed me at this article on InterestingEngineering.com about a high school student who took 300 hours to build a fully functional wooden model car for a physics project.

Do you remember my recent blog about Depressing Statistics and Differential Steering? Well, believe it or not, this wooden car even has a differential! The aforementioned column comes with two videos of the model: the first shows it working, while the second shows how it works.

Well, color me impressed. I was still reeling from the thought of how much work this must have taken when I took a peek in the “INSANE!” email, which was from my chum Matt Pulzer, who pointed me at this video on YouTube.

The video in question is of someone with way too much time on his hands who decides to blow a 5000-amp fuse. Seriously? I had no idea that such a beast even existed (by which I mean the fuse, not the man, who could be my stunt double).

As Matt commented in his message to me, “There’s a great ‘Evil Scientist’ laugh in there.” All I can say is that he’s right. So, which of these two topics attracted you the most – the innocent genius with the wooden car or the scary genius with the ex-fuse?