Usually found in girls’ bedrooms?
I wanted to see what it felt like… It put me in a coma for over a year!
I was shocked pretty good hanging Christmas lights outside this year. Don’t know the voltage or if it was the ‘full’ dose.
I have brushed against an electrified fence before while taking a piss. Fortunately it was just my leg that got popped.
Working on an oil rig I leaned against a steel platform that had an electrified cable in contact with it. This was powered by 3 or 4 Catapillar diesels, so no idea what the voltage was. My leg started jerking and I mistakenly thought it was a simple spasm. When I jumped up on the platform though and reached out to put a 48 on the rig substructure my whole arm felt the buzz and became somewhat uncontrollable. That’s when I realized what was amiss.
yes electric fence
- 90V tip line while working on my phone line at home
As a kid I was fiddling with a lawn mower that wouldn’t start and held the spark plug wire connection at the plug while I pulled the starter cord, hard. I don’t know how many amps or volts that is but it sure as hell hurt. What was I thinking?
you were thinking there might be an ignition system problem. you found there wasn’t.
As an adult I would recommend you not replicate that with your car.
I’ve felt the tingle of 110 a couple of times, but my college roommate has bragging rights.
He fell off a platform on the Chicago El and touched the third rail. We were both so drunk we could barely stand. My memory is rather hazy, but it seems like he went from sitting on the second rail, reached back to push himself up. put his hand on the third rail, and somehow teleported back up onto the platform. We then went to the emergency room for the flash burns on his hand.
I’ve had a 120 v tingle before from touching an old freezer. If it was grounded it wouldn’t have happened.
I wish we could get it through people’s heads that it’s not the voltage you are feeling, it’s the current. A large enough voltage is necessary for experiencing a tingle, but not sufficient. All voltage does is give the current enough “oomph” to get through a resistive circuit (your body in this case). But when you are tingling, you aren’t feeling the voltage, you’re feeling the current.
Great example of necessary but not sufficient is a car battery. Theoretically capable of sending huge amounts of current through a circuit and could kill a human easily, but the potential between the + and - terminals is only 12V I believe, so a human could safely grab both ends with their dry hands and feel nothing. Therefore, a car battery doesn’t supply the necessary voltage to kill someone or even give them a tingle, even though it’s a great source of high current.
And a Van DeGraff Generator is an example of producing a huge voltage, but a nearly insignificant amount of current. You still feel a tingle and sometimes it even hurts, but it’s the current you’re feeling and not the voltage.
I’ve had DC from a car battery flow through me, that’s a weird feeling. I don’t remember letting AC hit me directly, though I have intentionally shorted power with a metal object before, which seems like it causes burns.
I understand these two ways can do it, but that another very common way is by paralyzing you for so long that you suffocate. If you don’t throw yourself off the wires, you keep getting shocked, and can’t inhale or exhale. I think this implies that the heart is able to keep beating and something is more difficult about keeping the respiration going, such as nerve signals having to travel further, but I don’t know. If anybody can confirm this or deny it I’d like to know.
The shock one gets from outlets can hurt. Bad. Once, when I was about five or six, one of my friends and I were playing with one of those old, rabbit ear-style TV antennae. We decided (for reasons even I cannot begin to guess at) to plug the two wires on the thing into an electrical outlet. Also, I decided (for equally unguessable reasons) to hold onto the ‘rabbit ears’ while we did this. I remember pain, being unable to let go, then I was laying on the floor and my mom standing over me. I never fucked around with electrical outlets again.
Been there (but in my case I was careless with the screwdriver), prefer not to do it again.
Regarding the electric livestock fence – those of you who recall a mild tingly sensation shouldn’t assume that all hotwire is alike. How it is grounded makes a difference, and the strength can vary with the variation in soil moisture. Also, most of the fencing I have been uncomfortably familiar with was adjustable. Slipping in an icy puddle and grabbing a strand turned all the way to “fry, you giant furry bastard equine that keeps pushing through the fence” to keep my balance is not a fond back-home-on-the-farm memory.
I saw the gruesome result when a horse backed into a strand of hotwire in a wet pasture; the leg touching the fence was burned all the way to the bone. I always wondered how that could have happened.
I’ve been zapped several times by household current. The worse was once when I was installing a vanity mirror with a cutout for a light fixture. Another contractor flipped the circuit back on while doing his work in a different room. I was holding the mirror by the edges when the now live wire contacted the edge of the hole over electrical junction box. Zap. I get hit while holding 50+ lbs. of glass. I could not let go of the mirror for what felt like several seconds as I stood there shaking. Luckily my co-worker hit the light switch to cut the current. There was a black lighting bolt pattern burned into the silvering of the mirror between where the wire touched the edge of the whole and where my hand was holding the edge of the mirror. After my cussing like a sailor for 10 min. straight no one would admit to having touched the circuit breaker box. I guess the power turned it’s self back on.
circuits being worked on, if not locked out (locked in an off position), should be labeled in a very visible manner for breakers/fuses/switches.
I’ve been zapped three times. I said yes to “household” but they actually occured in the theater building of my college.
–I pressed my thumb onto exposed electrical wire on a theatrical light. It hurt a lot but I was able to yank my hand away because it was a tiny slit in the wire. (this is the only one I’m sure was served by 110v power)
–An arc-lamp shotlight shorting through my arm. This was an endurable level of pain a but it happened a dozen times in one performance, I just sucked it up-- show must go on. I couldn’t unclench my hand for an hour or so afterward, that was the only lasting il effect that I know of. No idea what the power of the shock was was, but the lamp might have been powered by 220.
–An electrical fence meant to contain lifestock, It was a pulsating shocker, not a continuous current, but it knocked me over. I’ve been zapped by weaker pulsating fences, but they were nothing so I don’t count them.
I’ve felt electric fences and 110-125 V (U.S.) house current. I too have felt the kick of a lawn mower spark plug voltage.
As others have said, Van De Graff generators are awesome fun. Nothing’s better than watching the toughest kid in class get popped with six-inch arc and a few hundred thousand volts! They were always volunteers, of course, after watching me demonstrate it first.
We had an induction coil at school ( http://www.flinnsci.com/store/Scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=15651 ) that could take 3 V (two C cells) up to several thousand volts. The kids who volunteered for this experience were always good-ol-boy types who’d had experience with spark plug bites before.
Besides all the usual ways I’ve electrocuted myself (don’t hardly feel it anymore) my basement was somewhat flooded, an extension cord was underwater, and my furnace was on fire. Crawling near the cord end I could feel a tingle, but ignored it to put out the fire. I’ve heard of guys getting killed by going into flooded basements but I doubt it’s true. There are far better paths to ground in a basement than through a not-all-that-grounded person.
Not being stupid, I never touched an electric fence, and it’s a credit to my friends and children that I never conned them into touching one, either.