I never cease to be informed by my subconscious mind, problem solving, and dreams at night alerting me to suppressed anxietes and concerns.
My Dad's stepfather, born in the 1880s was an electrician in the very early days. When I was a boy I remember him checking for the presence of 110VAC in a lamp by putting his index finger into the socket. His arm would give a little twitch and remark, "Yep it's working."
Of course, the risk of harm from current flowing through the human body depends on many factors.
Here's more information from SSERC (Scottish Schools Education Research Centre). https://www.sserc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/4-6_Working_with_HT_supplies.pdf
Here's more information from SSERC (Scottish Schools Education Research Centre). https://www.sserc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/4-6_Working_with_HT_supplies.pdf
I was a general labourer in the trades for a number of years. I learned that I could save time when replacing light fixtures, wall sockets, and switches by doing them live (in many cases finding the breakers/fuses was a matter of trial and error that wasted time). I still do it that way at home. It isn't rocket science if you're careful, but I don't "test" for power intentionally!
So one day I am working with an older electrician that I hadn't worked with before, and I see him wiring up a wall socket in a haphazard fashion - obviously touching the wires without any concern. So I figure he's got the breaker open. First wall socket I start to replace "BAM!" it nails me good. I said "F#$& man, I thought the circuit was off!!" he just chuckled and said "Nope". I said "How the f#$& are you not getting shocked to $4!t?" and he says, "Like this" and I look over and he's standing there with the hot and the neutral between his thumb and index finger. I go over and look and then realize it is because the skin on his hands is like rawhide. Very thick, dry, cracked.
He just grinned, showing several missing teeth, and carried on.
Blahaha... That's awesome! I thought you were gonna say he was wearing plastic shoes or something. I get like 40kV static when I take off my polyester coat while wearing my "plastic" soles shoes and then ground myself. Even more sometimes... I've seen an arc reach over an inch between me and the amp before! Pisse for current though.
I'm not entirely convinced that's a rumour. The claim is that this happened in the US Navy, and there was an official written incident report.
Note that it takes much less current through the heart to cause defibrillation than to stop it entirely. The sailor in question was reportedly alone when he tried his fatal experiment.
Snopes.com didn't turn up anything regarding this particular tale, so you can decide for yourself: 1999 Darwin Award: Resistance is Futile
-Gnobuddy
I used to hear about people dying every year from "testing" a 9V battery with their tongue. Apparently, that's horseshit. Can you die from testing a 9V battery on your tongue? • The Register
I did know someone who could reliably tell you the load voltage of a 9V battery with his tongue. Rarely ever off more than 100mV.
I did know someone who could reliably tell you the load voltage of a 9V battery with his tongue. Rarely ever off more than 100mV.
I know what you mean. Semi-arid climate here so the static gets really bad sometimes. I once jolted my dog with I-don't-know-how-many-thousand-volts on the nose and he yelped and sneezed.
I doubt the average person would die, but that doesn't rule out freakishly unlikely events - a tiny minority of people have died in the most extraordinary ways.
When I was in my early teens a stray wire accidentally applied 12 volts DC to my cheek, with the other power supply wire in my mouth...I didn't have wire-strippers, and was biting the plastic insulation off with my teeth. I didn't die, and wasn't injured, but I did see a display of white-hot fireworks that didn't actually exist outside my head - it was just my badly jangled optic nerves or brain. 😱
There's no doubt that dry skin is what gives us humans most of our resistance to electricity (both literally and figuratively!), and when moisture or punctured skin is involved, the risks go up.
I'm not keen to win any Darwin awards, so I'll leave it to someone else to find out the lowest possible voltage that can, in fact, kill you. 😱
-Gnobuddy
At the moment, I'm tinkering with a JFET circuit on a breadboard. The circuit is powered by two 9V batteries taped together and soldered to a pair of header pins that plug into the breadboard.
I can report that I have just been touching the terrifyingly high 18 volts from the battery, and haven't died yet. 😀
-Gnobuddy
I can report that I have just been touching the terrifyingly high 18 volts from the battery, and haven't died yet. 😀
-Gnobuddy
My stupid moment was playing with an electrolysis setup back in the dorm in my undergrad years. The objective is to see how much hydrogen you can generate if you’re not paying the electric bill. I had this 40 volt ungodly number of amps transformer, rectifier, bucket of saltwater, and a couple of aluminum mesh “electrodes”. Made the lights dim, and off gassed enough to look like a rolling boil. Got hot enough to make lots of oxide residue, which had to be periodically cleaned off. So I had both hands in it while running. No problem, 40 volts never hurt anybody, right? Until I pulled one electrode OUT with my other still in the solution. Felt like being kicked in the chest by a horse, saw stars, and the sound was like the anvil hitting the coyote on the head.
Based solely on how hot the power plug was getting, and the fact the no breaker was ever tripped, it had to be somewhere between 20 and 50 amps. For somewhat less than 8.33333 milliseconds. All the 120 volt shocks I’ve gotten and even the one 277 volter seemed chicken feed in comparison.
Based solely on how hot the power plug was getting, and the fact the no breaker was ever tripped, it had to be somewhere between 20 and 50 amps. For somewhat less than 8.33333 milliseconds. All the 120 volt shocks I’ve gotten and even the one 277 volter seemed chicken feed in comparison.
You can zap yourself with an ohmmeter when measuring something inductive like a transformer, relay or choke. Flyback voltages can get high. Done it a few times when I have forgotten that.
Voltages can get high - however high is required to maintain the current that was flowing at the instant before switch off. Back in the real early days, we used to bring electric shockers to school. Powered by 6 volt lantern batteries. The more amps you can get into the coil, the bigger the jolt. My mistake with the electrolysis machine was forgetting that the transformer has a substantial leakage reactance - enough to store a few joules at that kind of current and make a nice flat DC. The same thing that makes old school battery chargers work without a capacitor.
Holy crap, the people who manage the dorms must have been a bit more laid-back than they are now. One 1/4W resistor is enough to set off the smoke alarms now.
Of course, the people managing the dorm I live in might be slightly more on edge after someone started a meth lab a few years ago (which caught fire). That was before my time, however.
More inline with the thread title, during finals week this year someone decided to make some macaroni and cheese in their microwave. They used a plastic bowl and then "forgot" to put water in it. They then must have left it on for a ridiculously long time. Three floors of the residence hall were evacuated. The smell lingered for about 8 hours. A picture surfaced eventually showing what the inside of the microwave looked like- the macaroni had was a charcoal briquette and the plastic bowl was completely melted.
I really hope that it was done as a joke, because I don't want to believe that people are that dumb.
You are right: a "fifth" was the traditional unit.
It's bigger. Obviously more current comes out that hole.
It's bigger. Obviously more current comes out that hole.
It's bigger. Obviously more current comes out that hole.
Just to illustrate the thinking, I can remember when I was a kid thinking the BIG prong side should be the hot - and the little one the neutral.
Why? A bigger prong means More Power, obviously! And that's what matters most. </kid_thinking>
Back in the late 80's I worked for a fire alarm company and we were
installing a system in a hi-rise office building in Orlando,Fl-USA.
We only had 24 hours to install the main panel and connect to the main
power and get it running. My boss would not let me connect the 120V
AC to the panel while it was live and it would take too long to find
which panel and which breaker to cut off the circuit that we needed
to connect our panel to complete our job on-time. I shorted the hot
and the neutral together and said now that the power is off, I can connect
our panel and we only have to look for a blown breaker.
Dangerous, especially after years later learning about Federal Pacific
Breaker panels where the breakers don't trip!
installing a system in a hi-rise office building in Orlando,Fl-USA.
We only had 24 hours to install the main panel and connect to the main
power and get it running. My boss would not let me connect the 120V
AC to the panel while it was live and it would take too long to find
which panel and which breaker to cut off the circuit that we needed
to connect our panel to complete our job on-time. I shorted the hot
and the neutral together and said now that the power is off, I can connect
our panel and we only have to look for a blown breaker.
Dangerous, especially after years later learning about Federal Pacific
Breaker panels where the breakers don't trip!
Many many decades ago I was at the hi fi store and the salesman bragged that you could plug the Bose 901s directly into an AC outlet and they would survive. I asked for a demo and he declined.
It's not unreasonable I guess. I have an amplifier that can deliver 70 volts RMS to an 8 ohm speaker all day long. It's hooked up to - wait for it - speakers. No magic smoke!
It works though 🙂 In my dad's house, there is a 60 odd foot run of 14/2 off of an FPE 15A stab-lok breaker that will take about 2 seconds to trip under a short condition. Locked rotor current is almost as high as a short, and when I use a table saw and the blade binds the lights drop to 1/3 brightness until the motor comes back off of the start winding. In this case, the crap FPE breaker is actually handy as it prevents nuisance tripping.