Gave Myself an Electric Shock

[Number1]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: Number1
Simple, as you contact the source of static, the potential difference is instantly equalized bringing the voltage down to zero and the electrons can no longer travel through your body. There was not enough electrons traveling trough your body to hurt you.
:shocked:

Explain why no one dies in my classroom doing this experiment:
Two people hold opposite ends of a neon light. Person A touches ground with his other hand. Person B reaches out to touch a charged Van de Graaff (100,000 Volts on a good day) A big spark jumps 4 or 5 inches to Person B. Simultaneously (or nearly so), the neon light flashes. I guess those electrons *did* travel from one hand to the other. Also, the electrons don't really travel as much as people think. Think about it, do electrons "flow" in an AC current? Or do they wiggle back and forth? What flows?

Ohm's law applies here. Either the source is able to provide the current or the voltage drops. You should try your experiment on a high voltage 110 KV transmission line. The neon light is probably not going to be the only thing that glows once you're finished.

 

[us3rnotfound]

Wow, several people in this thread got electrocuted and posted afterward, now how is that possible?

 

[JohnCU]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: Number1
Simple, as you contact the source of static, the potential difference is instantly equalized bringing the voltage down to zero and the electrons can no longer travel through your body. There was not enough electrons traveling trough your body to hurt you.
:shocked:

Explain why no one dies in my classroom doing this experiment:
Two people hold opposite ends of a neon light. Person A touches ground with his other hand. Person B reaches out to touch a charged Van de Graaff (100,000 Volts on a good day) A big spark jumps 4 or 5 inches to Person B. Simultaneously (or nearly so), the neon light flashes. I guess those electrons *did* travel from one hand to the other. Also, the electrons don't really travel as much as people think. Think about it, do electrons "flow" in an AC current? Or do they wiggle back and forth? What flows?

i think you were trying to make a point, but it doesn't matter if the electrons traveled from one hand to the other, it's just the energy that traveled.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: JohnCU

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: Number1
Simple, as you contact the source of static, the potential difference is instantly equalized bringing the voltage down to zero and the electrons can no longer travel through your body. There was not enough electrons traveling trough your body to hurt you.
:shocked:

Explain why no one dies in my classroom doing this experiment:
Two people hold opposite ends of a neon light. Person A touches ground with his other hand. Person B reaches out to touch a charged Van de Graaff (100,000 Volts on a good day) A big spark jumps 4 or 5 inches to Person B. Simultaneously (or nearly so), the neon light flashes. I guess those electrons *did* travel from one hand to the other. Also, the electrons don't really travel as much as people think. Think about it, do electrons "flow" in an AC current? Or do they wiggle back and forth? What flows?

i think you were trying to make a point, but it doesn't matter if the electrons traveled from one hand to the other, it's just the energy that traveled.

I obfuscated my point a bit; the point I was trying to make was that there's a current that Number1 calculated, that has obviously passed through one of the people. (Well, perhaps not "through")

 

[Number1]

I have a 14.5 ft aluminum boat. My outboard motor is getting older and I removed the kill switch about 5 years ago because it would short out and kill the engine all the time. I never bothered to cover the two remaining exposed wires with electrical tape. Now one wire is connected to the body and the other one to the sparkplug wire. I estimate the voltage to be approximately 40 to 100 thousand volts on that wire.

Well, we were fishing for small mouth bass and the boat was getting too close to the shore so I pulled on the manual crank and started the engine. Unfortunately, the motor was in the forward gear. It is not suppose to start when in gear but for some reason it did that time.

Now we are traveling toward the shore and about to hit the rocks so I proceed to reduce the throttle. Unfortunately, in my haste, I turned the throttle handle the wrong way and now we are ACCELERATING towards the rocks. That?s when my left hand made contact with the exposed 40 to 100 thousand volt wire. Useless to say, it was quite a SHOCK and sent me flying to rejoin my fishing bodies in the front of the boat.

By this time, the engine is going, we are hitting the rocks with the propeller and the back of the boat is bobbing up and down and out of control. I jumped back to the back of the boat, reached for the engine choke, pulled it and killed the engine.
I then decided to fall flat on my back and pretend to be injured for added drama.

My two fishing bodies are now looking at me and have no idea what happened. I will never forget this fishing trip and neither will they.
I only got the electricity trough my hand and it was really painful, sort of like getting tasered I would imagine. The prop got the worst of it but we were able to make it back to the car no problems.

The moral of my story, exposed spark plug wire are BAD, especially in an aluminum boat. It could have been much worst.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Number1
I have a 14.5 ft aluminum boat. My outboard motor is getting older and I removed the kill switch about 5 years ago because it would short out and kill the engine all the time. I never bothered to cover the two remaining exposed wires with electrical tape. Now one wire is connected to the body and the other one to the sparkplug wire. I estimate the voltage to be approximately 40 to 100 thousand volts on that wire.

Well, we were fishing for small mouth bass and the boat was getting too close to the shore so I pulled on the manual crank and started the engine. Unfortunately, the motor was in the forward gear. It is not suppose to start when in gear but for some reason it did that time.

Now we are traveling toward the shore and about to hit the rocks so I proceed to reduce the throttle. Unfortunately, in my haste, I turned the throttle handle the wrong way and now we are ACCELERATING towards the rocks. That?s when my left hand made contact with the exposed 40 to 100 thousand volt wire. Useless to say, it was quite a SHOCK and sent me flying to rejoin my fishing bodies in the front of the boat.

By this time, the engine is going, we are hitting the rocks with the propeller and the back of the boat is bobbing up and down and out of control. I jumped back to the back of the boat, reached for the engine choke, pulled it and killed the engine.
I then decided to fall flat on my back and pretend to be injured for added drama.

My two fishing bodies are now looking at me and have no idea what happened. I will never forget this fishing trip and neither will they.
I only got the electricity trough my hand and it was really painful, sort of like getting tasered I would imagine. The prop got the worst of it but we were able to make it back to the car no problems.

The moral of my story, exposed spark plug wire are BAD, especially in an aluminum boat. It could have been much worst.

I just had a kill switch replaced on the motor of our little john boat. I about shit myself when I saw how much that sucker cost! (Including labor, it was close to $200; including new spark plugs.) The only thing that gave me a better feeling was that I had diagnosed the problem wrong. Sometimes, we'd get it to start & it'd run for 15 to 30 seconds, then die. When it wasn't running, neither plug had any spark. That eliminated one of the coils. That left the power pack. I was pretty close to just purchasing the power pack. That would have left me as the owner of a motor with the same problem & an extra power pack. (Electrical parts are virtually never returnable.) I even asked the guy at the parts place, "could it be the kill switch?" "I really doubt it - not if you can get it running, but then it dies on its own & won't restart, apparently, until it cools off. If it was the kill switch, it wouldn't behave that way."

 

[Number1]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: Number1
I have a 14.5 ft aluminum boat. My outboard motor is getting older and I removed the kill switch about 5 years ago because it would short out and kill the engine all the time. I never bothered to cover the two remaining exposed wires with electrical tape. Now one wire is connected to the body and the other one to the sparkplug wire. I estimate the voltage to be approximately 40 to 100 thousand volts on that wire.

Well, we were fishing for small mouth bass and the boat was getting too close to the shore so I pulled on the manual crank and started the engine. Unfortunately, the motor was in the forward gear. It is not suppose to start when in gear but for some reason it did that time.

Now we are traveling toward the shore and about to hit the rocks so I proceed to reduce the throttle. Unfortunately, in my haste, I turned the throttle handle the wrong way and now we are ACCELERATING towards the rocks. That?s when my left hand made contact with the exposed 40 to 100 thousand volt wire. Useless to say, it was quite a SHOCK and sent me flying to rejoin my fishing bodies in the front of the boat.

By this time, the engine is going, we are hitting the rocks with the propeller and the back of the boat is bobbing up and down and out of control. I jumped back to the back of the boat, reached for the engine choke, pulled it and killed the engine.
I then decided to fall flat on my back and pretend to be injured for added drama.

My two fishing bodies are now looking at me and have no idea what happened. I will never forget this fishing trip and neither will they.
I only got the electricity trough my hand and it was really painful, sort of like getting tasered I would imagine. The prop got the worst of it but we were able to make it back to the car no problems.

The moral of my story, exposed spark plug wire are BAD, especially in an aluminum boat. It could have been much worst.

I just had a kill switch replaced on the motor of our little john boat. I about shit myself when I saw how much that sucker cost! (Including labor, it was close to $200; including new spark plugs.) The only thing that gave me a better feeling was that I had diagnosed the problem wrong. Sometimes, we'd get it to start & it'd run for 15 to 30 seconds, then die. When it wasn't running, neither plug had any spark. That eliminated one of the coils. That left the power pack. I was pretty close to just purchasing the power pack. That would have left me as the owner of a motor with the same problem & an extra power pack. (Electrical parts are virtually never returnable.) I even asked the guy at the parts place, "could it be the kill switch?" "I really doubt it - not if you can get it running, but then it dies on its own & won't restart, apparently, until it cools off. If it was the kill switch, it wouldn't behave that way."

I did replace the kill switch originaly and it was quite expensive. The new kill switch lasted for one or two seasons and also failed. I figured moisture was getting inside the switch and caused arking. When I realised that pulling the choke killed the engine just as well as that switch, I never bothered to replace it. I even have some electrical tape covering the exposed wires now.

 

[Goosemaster]

IF the voltage was +84v you are fine.

IF it was -84V then it sucked out your soul and you need to shock yourself at the peak value to achieve a respectable level of liquidity in American markets.

 

[huberm]

i used to work in power generation and all of the safety studies and videos we watched always said that more people die getting shocked by 120V (Ie pretty much anything in your house) than any other way. Reason is they get shocked and think nothing of it because they're still alive. Then later on down the road, say the next day, their heart fibrillates and they die.

I recommend after getting shocked going to get checked out at the hospital.

 

[olds]

Originally posted by: Jinny
you'll be fine, i electrocuted myself when i was putting back on the cover of the power outlet. nice shock, numb for a few seconds.

If you're dead, how are you posting?

OMG! ZOMBIE, RUN!

 

[olds]

Originally posted by: us3rnotfound
Wow, several people in this thread got electrocuted and posted afterward, now how is that possible?

DOH!

 

[0roo0roo]

http://www.videosift.com/video...-the-Shock-of-His-Life

 

[Dessert Tears]

Originally posted by: huberm
Reason is they get shocked and think nothing of it because they're still alive. Then later on down the road, say the next day, their heart fibrillates and they die.

Do you know the mechanism for the delay before death? Does the electric shock trigger a persistent arrhythmia that decays into fibrillation?

 

[Bignate603]

If you got hit on just one hand you'll be fine. If it passed through one hand to the other you'd be having problems by now most likely.

I've gotten a few pretty good zaps by stereo equipment before. It made my arms tingle afterwards but it wasn't too serious.

 

[BillGates]

Originally posted by: us3rnotfound
Wow, several people in this thread got electrocuted and posted afterward, now how is that possible?

Yeah, I was going to point that out too. Morans.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
The guys at my last job had all kinds of stories of getting poked. One of them was working up on some metal shelf on a hot day so he was all sweaty; one hand got stuck in something while the other was on the shelf and it went right through, shaking him back and forth and cutting up his hand but he was fine.

Is it just me, or does this post sound like some kind of bad porn story?

 

[us3rnotfound]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
The guys at my last job had all kinds of stories of getting poked. One of them was working up on some metal shelf on a hot day so he was all sweaty; one hand got stuck in something while the other was on the shelf and it went right through, shaking him back and forth and cutting up his hand but he was fine.

Is it just me, or does this post sound like some kind of bad porn story?

lmao

 

[imported_Devine]

I've done that before, but it only tingled to me. I was just wondering wtf was going on as I unplugged my computer.

 

[huberm]

Originally posted by: Flatscan

Originally posted by: huberm
Reason is they get shocked and think nothing of it because they're still alive. Then later on down the road, say the next day, their heart fibrillates and they die.

Do you know the mechanism for the delay before death? Does the electric shock trigger a persistent arrhythmia that decays into fibrillation?

i have no idea, thats just what I remember the safety videos saying

 

[funkbass81]

Originally posted by: NakaNaka
Hi. I was pulling the tv out of the surge protector a couple hours ago and I gave myself a pretty decent electric shock. I felt the current shoot up my arm kind of like a ripple, definitely the hardest shock I've ever given myself. Now a tv is what, 125 volts or so, probably not enough to do any real damage right? My arm muscle is a little sore and I have a very slight headache. What do you guys think? Normal and should be gone by morning? Any chance of lasting damage with a household appliance level of electricity? Thanks

:music:

Guilty as charged
But damn it, it ain't right
There is someone else controlling me

Death in the air
Strapped in the electric chair
This can't be happening to me

Who made you God to say
"I'll take your life from you!!"

Flash before my eyes
Now it's time to die
Burning in my brain
I can feel the flame

Wait for the sign
To flick the switch of death
It's the beginning of the end

Sweat, chilling cold
As I watch death unfold
Consciousness my only friend

My fingers grip with fear
What I am doing here?

Flash before my eyes
Now it's time to die
Burning in my brain
I can feel the flame

Someone help me
Oh please God help me
They are trying to take it all away
I don't want to die?


Someone help me
Oh please God help me
They are trying to take it all away
I don't want to die?


Time moving slow
the minutes seem like hours
the final curtain call I see
how true is this?
Just get it over with
if this is true, just let it be

Wakened by horrid scream
Freed from this frightening dream

Flash before my eyes
now it's time to die
Burning in my brain
I can feel the flame

:music:

 

[Adam8281]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
...
It only takes .23 watts total power to stop the heart.
Less total power than that in a 1.5V AAA battery. It has to cross the heart though. Which is why the rule is to always keep one hand in your pocket when working with live wires.

How does the hand in the pocket help it avoid the heart, unless you mean keep your hand in your pocket as opposed to saying the pledge of allegiance? J/k, but seriously, what is the path of the electricity with a hand in the pocket? Down one arm, across the shoulders, down the other arm into the pocket? How is this different than if the hand weren't in the pocket? Couldn't it still just come into one hand, across the shoulders, and out the other hand?

 

[So]

Originally posted by: Adam8281

Originally posted by: Modelworks
...
It only takes .23 watts total power to stop the heart.
Less total power than that in a 1.5V AAA battery. It has to cross the heart though. Which is why the rule is to always keep one hand in your pocket when working with live wires.

How does the hand in the pocket help it avoid the heart, unless you mean keep your hand in your pocket as opposed to saying the pledge of allegiance? J/k, but seriously, what is the path of the electricity with a hand in the pocket? Down one arm, across the shoulders, down the other arm into the pocket? How is this different than if the hand weren't in the pocket? Couldn't it still just come into one hand, across the shoulders, and out the other hand?

One hand in your pocket means that you are only touching the live wires with one hand. Much less likely for you to complete a path through your heart than with two hands. If you short two live wires with only one hand, you're probably at worst going to get a burned hand, not a stopped heart.

 

[bonkers325]

Originally posted by: sandorski
Increased Flatulence, explosive Diarrhea, uncontrollable Urination, all 3 occurinng at once leads to Death.

im 2/3 the way there

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: Adam8281

Originally posted by: Modelworks
...
It only takes .23 watts total power to stop the heart.
Less total power than that in a 1.5V AAA battery. It has to cross the heart though. Which is why the rule is to always keep one hand in your pocket when working with live wires.

How does the hand in the pocket help it avoid the heart, unless you mean keep your hand in your pocket as opposed to saying the pledge of allegiance? J/k, but seriously, what is the path of the electricity with a hand in the pocket? Down one arm, across the shoulders, down the other arm into the pocket? How is this different than if the hand weren't in the pocket? Couldn't it still just come into one hand, across the shoulders, and out the other hand?

By keeping "one hand in the pocket" you have less of a chance of the electricity crossing the heart if you accidentally grab onto a wire with your free hand (or anything conductive for that matter). If you were to grab a wire with your other hand, you'd create a path with less resistance for the electricity to flow through, so when getting shocked it would take it. The electricity has a much greater chance of crossing the heart when you grab a wire with each hand.

 

[hanoverphist]

Originally posted by: Ticky
Note: if you ever get a REAL shock, got to the ER. It's very possible to drop dead after an extended period of time.

that is true for 220 and above, but a wall pack at 15a and 120v wont kill ya. if it did, id have been dust 30 years ago. after a few years of getting that 120v zap its like a little 12v tickle now. 220 will still jump start the heart, and id likely go to the doc for it. the two times i got zapped with 220 it was 20a 220vac so i was taken to the emer room since it was on the clock. no dmg, just made my heart race for a few minutes and made my arm sore for a bit.