# @stem_antics on Instagram

- **Type:** Video
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DZkyZsYPS_u
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/66891690-stem-antics-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/862ed070ac.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-06-14T17:33:26.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Stem Antics (@stem_antics) — https://gondola.cc/stem_antics

## Caption

A pattern that looks alive branching across a plank of wood is really a record of electricity solving a maze in real time.

Lichtenberg figures form when high voltage is driven across a wood surface coated in a thin electrolyte film, usually water carrying dissolved salts. The science underneath is a feedback loop:

	•	Current flows through the conductive moisture, dissipating energy as heat through resistive (I²R) losses
	•	That heat boils off water and pyrolizes the cellulose and lignin, charring the wood into carbon
	•	Carbon conducts far better than damp wood, so current crowds into the freshly burned track
	•	The charred tip becomes the preferred path, extending the channel and starving its neighbors

This is positive feedback made visible. Each branch that carbonizes lowers its own resistance, pulling more current and growing faster, while nearby regions are robbed of the current they would need to compete.

The branching geometry is not random decoration. It follows the same mathematics as dielectric breakdown and diffusion-limited aggregation, where growth probability at any point scales with the local electric field gradient. The result is a fractal with a non-integer dimension near 1.7, the same family of structures that governs lightning channels, river deltas, neuron dendrites, and the veins in a leaf. Nature reuses this template anywhere a system must move flux through a resistive medium as efficiently as possible.

Two electrodes, positive and negative, grow branching fronts toward each other. When the tips finally meet, the circuit shorts and the burn ends in a flash.

It is also one of the deadliest pursuits in the maker world. The transformers involved deliver lethal current at voltages that stop a heart instantly, which is why the figures are admired far more often than they are made.

Order written in fire, governed by a field.

#stemantics #physics #fractals #electricity #woodworking

## Stats

- **Views:** 7,819
- **Likes:** 231
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- **Comments:** 2

## Tags

fractals, woodworking, electricity, physics, stemantics

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