I work on arcade machines as a hobby, so I know the ZAP you can get from these even when unplugged, in the thousands of volts.
I just watched a music video where a guy emerges from the water carrying a CRT TV, and I just thought “I wouldn’t do that”. I’m assuming even if the capacitors discharge, if the TV is fully submerged the discharge would be quickly spread out over a huge area, but I’m not sure.
Could you be hurt by jumping into a pool holding a tube chassis which hasn’t been discharged?
Discharge the cap before you ever go into the water with it, maybe? If the capacitor were discharged in preparation for the video shoot, there’d be nothing to worry about, right?
ETA: Or it’s a dummy prop monitor and doesn’t even HAVE a capacitor, never been plugged in, etc.
I would assume that if submersion in water were to cause the capacitors to discharge, it would happen seconds, certainly no more than minutes, after the submersion, so a CRT that has been in water for some time would be relatively safe to remove, at least in terms of electrical discharge.
as your body quickly went down into the water the tv could be a bit more buoyant and pop up hitting you in the face.
Re monitor safety I was always struck by how delicate CRTs were portrayed to be in movies or TV shows were they were depicted as screens of delicate glass that would easily be shattered by someone huriing a shoe or a clock at them.
We took an old B&W TV out to the back yard in the 70’s and threw a hefty hammer at it from several feet away. The hammer simply bounced off the screen several times until we finally shattered the outer glass.
Sorry I should’ve made it clear, I wasn’t asking how safe it was that they did it because I assume it’s either a prop or was safely discharged, I was asking how safe a non-discharged monitor is.
This would be my guess too, but I’m wondering if you jumped IN with the tv if it was not discharged, if it would be safe.
Electricity, water and humans are a far safer mix than Hollywood would have you believe. The discharge from the capacitors would have the choice of moving the distance from pole to pole of the capacitor through the water inbetween, or move through various metal parts, and the water inbetween said parts, or move through other metal parts, the water inbetween inbetween those parts and you, and through you. I expect the other paths would sum up to a sufficiently lower resistance than the path through you to render it utterly safe, electrical shock wise.
Also, isn’t there a physics law about the strength of the charge dissipating over distance by a factor of the cube root? So, if you’re touching it, you get the full charge, but if you’re at distance X, you get the cube root of the charge, distance 2X, you get (ow, brain hurts) cube root of the cube root, and so forth.
I am curious how water (not distilled, but say standard pool water with some minerals dissolved in it, so it will carry a charge) compares to the human body, which is mostly water, but has a lot more minerals and fun stuff. I suspect the human body makes a better conductor.
Either way, I make it something of a personal rule not to do anything questionable around an undischarged capacitor.