Hands up all those who have had an electric shock?
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Electric shock
- Thread starter ebee
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I've had a couple of 50,000v+ ones from cars. When I was an apprentice, we had a mechanic from Mauritius that would disconnect a plug lead from a running engine, stick his finger in the end and put the tip of his nose near to the bonnet rod and just stand there with sparks jumping from his nose to the rod. It never bothered him. All us apprentices would give Abdul a wide berth when walking past him as the fùcker would do the same but grab hold of us as we walked past.
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No significant ones in recent decades, but a good few in my less-cautious youth (albeit extremely few that I would describe as 'serious') - mainly DC ones in range 200 V - 2,000 V in equipment I had constructed, and occasionally the ~15 kV from (LOPT-derived) EHT in black & white TVs!
Kind Regards, John
That sort of sums me up except maybe 4 or 5 in the last 20 years from incorrectly wired or faulty cotrols systems, including one where someone cut my lock from an isolator.
Does testing for live by flicking a conductor with your finger count as a shock?
Probably
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Na, that's what everyone does.
Maybe, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't "count as a shock"
Nowt to it, I would do that.
Yep, loads of them. Point is, not to avoid it passing right through your body, across your heart.
Only if you lick your finger to wet it first..
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I had precisely that a couple of years ago, working on a heating panel connecting it to work with Vaillant control system, had hold of the door and touch an indicator live terminal, had a sore elbow for weeks after
Three, in order of painfulness:
- 240 V AC, where a fine stranded wire had been threaded through a bit of heat shrink, and one of the tiny strands had poked through it, leaving a virtually invisible tip, like a splinter, exposed. Painful mostly because it was on a piece of equipment that was under a desk and I hit the back of my head on the desk when I got the shock.
- 400 V DC (rectified mains), in a switch-mode power supply, where I didn’t appreciate that a heatsink was live. I had modified a “class II” power supply to use inside a 19-inch rack enclosure; I removed the plastic case to help it cool, and after running it for a while touched the heatsink to see how warm it was.
- An electric fence. Definitely the worst!
Followup question: Who knew someone who died? My father did. Don’t trivialise the seriousness.
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