…or just stupid?
If I slip and if falls in, will I get shocked, or just ruin my laptop?
I would go with stupid. Not so much a risk of shock, but there’s a risk of ruining your laptop. As a bonus, if your laptop runs on lithium batteris, it could explode if the water shorts out the battery.
It’ll just be ruined. The internal battery is probably at 12 volts - not enough to injure you, but the laptop will definitely be injured if it gets wet.
Dangerous.
To the laptop.
Depends… It may not be so bad if you happened to be bathing in mineral oil…
Good. I thought it could possible by danderzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzfripzxxxrgg… xzzz …sssssssssssbrrrrrrrrr
It’s a very bad idea. Even though the laptop battery may be low voltage, it can be converted to much higher voltages by circuits in the laptop. The inverter for the LCD backlight is a common circuit that produces a high voltage. Many batteries are also hazardous if abused.
Also the humidity is hard on the laptop even if you don’t dunk it.
Laptop and I survived, but I won’t make a habit of it.
Those TFL circuits tend to be around 400 to 1000 or so volts but the current is very low so it is had to tell if it will hurt you. Batteries can fail in spectacular ways. Explosion is a little strong but overheating and rupturing of batteries is a common symptom of batteries that are drained to quickly.
My laptop horror story begins many moons ago, when I was lazily surfing around while laying on the couch, my diet coke balanced periously on a stack of magazines. My dog, who never apologized or paid for the damage, knocked over my diet coke, well out of the way of my laptop, but for one or two drops, which got into the keyboard, into the motherboard and fried the whole damn thing. I had to take that whole computer apart and extract the harddrive just to save some data.
Since then I won’t let any kind of liquid around my new macbook. I even refrain from reading the news while online, lest I begin frothing at the mouth in righteous rage.
So, um, when are you joining?
when I encounter a spare $15 on the sidewalk that isn’t attached to a fishing line.
Was there any water in the tub?
Well I think that your dog should not only apologize but pay for that diet coke
While this is true, LCD backlight inverters have a very high source impedance. They need only supply a fairly small amount of current; as soon as you put any significant loading on the output–such as you’d have by immersing it in dirty, soapy water–the voltage drops to practically nothing.
It’s the same reason you can walk around without being electrocuted by the Earth’s natural electric field, which at about 100 volts/meter, on average, puts nearly 200 volts between your head and your feet.
Good response. But being the geek I am, I feel compelled to add the following general comments (sorry):
It is very true that a HV power supply will not be an electrocution risk if one of the following is true:
-
The HVPS is regulated and has a built-in current limiter that limits the current to less than 4 mA or so.
-
The HVPS is non-regulated and has a source impedance such that the current cannot exceed 4 mA (or so) regardless of the load impedance.
But… but… it is still possible for someone to get zapped even if #1 or #2 is true. How? Capacitance. 
What if a capacitor were connected to the output of such a “safe” HVPS? Depending on the output voltage, the capacitor’s capacitance, and the capacitor’s ESR, the capacitor might have enough energy to kill you. And it doesn’t even have to be a discrete capacitor. If you stick a mile of coax on the output of a “safe” HVPS, the capacitance of the coax might have enough energy to give you a good jolt. Or… what if the load has a lot of capacitance on its input? Just something to keep in the back of your mind.
I don’t know much about static field theory (that class was way too long ago!), but even though the field is 100 V/m, your body has so much less resistance than the field that the voltage inside your body (induced solely by the field) is close to zero. Or perhaps that’s what you’re already trying to say…
That’s exactly it.
I’ve seen photos and video clips of lithium batteries blazing away merrily. They’re popular with model plane fliers because they can deliver plenty of current and are light in weight - however, if drained too fast they most certainly can catch fire. That won’t happen in a laptop, but I wouldn’t like to short a laptop battery.