Shock vs. Electrocution

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Years ago in school,a friend of mine and I would go to the carpeted area during break time and scuff our feet around on the carpet to build up a static charge and shock eachother..One day I got the smart idea to use the static charge from the classroom's TV screen...So I scuffed my feet around,and wiped my hand around on the TV screen to get all the static charge from the front of it... Then reached out towards my friend's fingertip..
:hot:
I think we both jumped about 3 feet in the air,and it sounded like a small firecracker! There was a bright spark about 2 inches long between our fingertips.. :bigeyes:
Never did that again..
 
Kids and electricity

Reading Q's post made me think back to when I was three or four, (I wasn't in school yet). It was just after the December holidays and the x-mas lights were in boxes getting ready to be stashed away for another year. I was so fascinated watching my dad wire the lights and he was wacky about it. He would cut the length so the bulb counts were perfect and sometimes a little black tape got used. ;)

I sat on the floor pulling his electrical tape off the wires and just randomly wiring them up what ever way a three year old kid would? :xeye: I inserted the plug into the receptacle and POW I get my first electrical shock and I think I popped a fuse in the panel? I put the stuff back in the box and checked out my Ma in the kitchen having a smoke, drinking coffee, washing dishes and listening to the radio. She knew nothing and everybody else was at work and school.

I never said anything until I was around twelve when I became "electrical kid".

I'd guess that I have had 60~70 electrical shocks in my life. I don't know if I should say it but it is true. It kind of scares me to think about it. I think that is an abnormaly high figure BUT around here, could be nothing?

Oh yeah, I worked with a brick layer that would graspe 240V tight, one in each hand and laugh! He scared me a little though I did find it amusing. :clown: He couldn't feel a damn thing and some said it was because he had leather hands but I think it was because of his leather brain? :)

Cheers,

Shawn.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Shock vs. Electrocution

TomWaits said:
John L.,

What the heck is going on in the pic of post 15? :bigeyes:
I would love to live next door to a freak that had that going on in the backyard! That's not you doing that, is it? :scratch:

Shawn :)

you wouldn't enjoy the noise and the ozone....:eek:

Nope... it's a pic from yrs. or so ago when I was on an HV mailing list... some guy claimed his was BIGGER than mine... and apparently he was right! :devilr:

the largest coil. I ever built was about 5 feet tall and only sprayed sparks about 3' long.... we passed the spark thru 15 fraternity brothers in college at a frat party back in the '70's...I won't mention what else we were doing ...;) It would light up flourescent bulbs at quite a distance away though...not to mention spew loads of rf noise...

However, I DO have a spud gun that'll launch potatoes about 150' into the air with a quick shot of WD 40 as fuel :D
 
It ain't always the high voltage that can get you, though, you know. As a young electronics technician working in the US Air Force in the seventies, one day I was working on a filament transfomer problem, or I guess really a blown fuse in the filament line. So, somehow got across 6.3 volts alternating current at 8 amps, and could barely get my self turned loose from the stuff. I recall it physically hurt pretty bad.

Another time, one of my so called friends had charged up a capacitor in a piece of equipment that was on the workbench, he used a megger, and I came along, one hand on the metal chassis and the other with a wrench to take the wires off the top of the capacitor, and smack. That one I felt my heart actually change beats. Since then, I have always been nervous around energized equipment, but thats good.

I agree with a previous post, that the real problem is you do some things on a repeitive basis, and for some reason your brain thinks you turned it off, like you have done a hundred times before, but you didn't....
 
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