Experiment: Will a Person Getting Zapped With a Tesla Cannon Power a Light Bulb?

Matt Inman with the blog "The Oatmeal," who has helped lead the online charge to raise funds to buy the property in New York that was once Nikola Tesla's lab for use as a science center, is now channeling Tesla himself.

Armed with a Tesla Cannon, which Discovery News describes as a portable Tesla coil, Inman and Matt Harding, who maintains a popular YouTube channel, set out to test Inman's new toy. With Harding as the test dummy holding a fluorescent rod light bulb, Inman zaps him with the Tesla Cannon for a good 15 seconds.

"Yes, the current is lighting the bulb. And yes, it hurt," Harding wrote on the video's description.

Discovery News reports the current from the coil is traveling from Harding's body to the floor, "following a path of least resistance."

Watch the clip:

As an update on the Tesla Science Center project as a whole. Last month, TheBlaze reported Inman began a online campaign to fundraise money to help purchase the $1.6 million piece of property on which sits the Wardenclyffe lab. The goal was to raise $850,000 -- the rest would be matched with a state grant -- but with 18 days left in the campaign, the project has more than $1.2 million pulled together.

In an interview with TheBlaze, president of the Nikola Tesla Science Center Jane Alcorn said the matching funds from the state were appropriated toward the project in 2009. Alcorn clarified that the grant was part of a "capital fund" and will function to reimburse the project for the allocated amount after the land is purchased. She said the funds come with no strings attached and that the museum has details to work out in terms of how they will continue to fund the facility when it is complete, but admission fees and renting out an auditorium are on the table as options.

Alcorn said they are trying to raise funds beyond even the cost of the land so they will be able to move forward with creating a science center on the property as a whole. For 17 years, Alcorn and her small team with the non-profit have been trying to scrape together the money for the project.

"I'm a pretty tenacious person. If you believe it, work hard enough and don't give up, you can achieve the dreams you have," Alcorn said. "This project is proof of that."

Still, she said it really only gained the steam it has seen in the last month, thanks to Inman taking on the cause.

"This could not have happened even six months ago," Alcorn said. "It was a perfect storm. The right case, right catalyst and the right platform.

"We could not have done what happened without him. He generated interest through his website and his followers."

(H/T: Huffington Post)