Man Withstands A Million Volts

[securespark]

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/man-vs-weird/4od

 

[333rocky333]

I got bored with the magnet man so turned off

where did they get the million volt supply from

 

[securespark]

Sorry. Electrical bit starts 18.30.

26.10 he is cooking a sausage by plugging it (and himself) into 230V...

27.13 he starts the million volt experiment.

 

[bernardgreen]

I couldn't watch it as I have ad blocking enabled.

But as I see little birds surviving on 11 kV overheads and once had my hair stand on end by standing on a platform at a few thousand volts ( courtesy of a Van de Graaf generator ) I guess when correctly applied even a million volts will not have an adverse effect.

NOTE when properly applied meaning the body has no connection to anything that is not at the one million volt potential.

 

[ericmark]

He uses a Tesla coil to generate the voltage which he lights a florescent tube he is holding with a spark going to the tube so there are a few limiting factors.

1) No idea what voltage is at the Tesla coil.
2) The spark clearly is reducing the voltage.
3) The florescent tube is also reducing the voltage.

So in real terms he is taking enough power to light a florescent tube.

Also he is dressed in a special overall so likely the current is only flowing through his hands not the rest of his body.

In other words it's a clever trick.

 

[Aragorn84]

tesla coils run at very high frequency, way above the frequency which stimulates your nerves. Its essentially RF.

That means that you wont get a "shock" as such from a tesla streamer, it wont stop your heart or spazm your muscles or do any of the usual things we expect from an "electric shock", even at 1 million volts.

what it will still do however is the internal heating caused by the power travelling thru you, and ofcourse this can be dangerous, however this heating is also not always immediately apparent, and is clearly time dependant.

If you watched though, he was keeping the contact time very low when he was letting the power flow thru him (whereas with the chicken stick he was taking an arc for much longer periods) and i suspect given arc length and appearance that the power input was infact very low.

This for instance is about 1-2kw average power:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXN1ZOzjLAU

You notice the streamers both went much further (for perspective, the youtube coils only about 2ft high), and were much thicker in appearance than those on the TV show.

So yea, it was a trick, but for slightly different reasons.

I've seen less mental folk do the same thing with a faraday suit (basically chain mail) however i dont think the suit that guy was wearing was anything other than a standard boilersuit, if it was a real faraday suit he'd have had metal gloves and shoes to ensure no current passed thru him.


I expect his skin condition meant that his skin is very high resistance. Dry calloused skin can easily have resistances in the megaohm range, which allowed him to handle the 240v mains supply without issue.

 

[Aragorn84]

double post

 

[ericmark]

I do question the doing of what seem dangerous on TV some daft twit will try to copy.

As to RF and burns yes nasty they take ages to heal. Wave length is a problem as any aerial wire will have null points according to wave length so touch the wire at one point nothing but at another a large belt or burn.

Saw it happen with a 20 meter short wave transmission guy on key did not realise other guy was altering the long wire.

 

[ekmdgrf]

I do question the doing of what seem dangerous on TV some daft twit will try to copy.

Building a Tesla coil is quite hard. If you're the sort of person who can do it, you're probably not the sort of person who would get killed by one.

Saw it happen with a 20 meter short wave transmission guy on key did not realise other guy was altering the long wire.

That's why it's prudent for the guy on key to be the guy altering the long wire.

 

[ekmdgrf]

But as I see little birds surviving on 11 kV overheads and once had my hair stand on end by standing on a platform at a few thousand volts ( courtesy of a Van de Graaf generator ) I guess when correctly applied even a million volts will not have an adverse effect.

When I was at primary school we were told that this was because some overhead power cables are insulated and some are not. The birds can sense which ones are which and so don't land on the uninsulated ones.

Make of that what you will!

 

[securespark]

will have null points

Like a lot of countries offered us in Eurovision, you mean?

 

[Aragorn84]

When I was at primary school we were told that this was because some overhead power cables are insulated and some are not. The birds can sense which ones are which and so don't land on the uninsulated ones.

Make of that what you will!

Surely its simply because electricity needs to flow thru you to do any damage...

A bird, landing on a live wire, is not completing a circuit. Both of its legs are at the same potential, no current will flow thru its body. If you attached a wander lead to it and earthed it, then got it to sit on the wire, i'm sure there would be a different outcome.

In the same way, a fully insulated human could touch/grab/hang onto a live mains cable and nothing would happen. Its only when some other point of your body is allowing a circuit to form, for instance your other hand or leg or whatever touching some earthed metal surface, that you then get smoked.