I was given a new chair from Target about a week ago. I LOVE IT. Only one problem though. It shocks me. If I sit really still and don’t move, I’m fine. But I mean not moving at all. No shifting. No getting up. It only shocks me when I touch the metal bars. (duh?) Can this problem be fixed? Will tying a bunch of dryer sheets around the bars fix the problem?
thanks
Try sitting in it bare foot, this might help keep your grounded, and help keep the static from building up enough to casue an annoying discharge.
Try some anti-static spray.
Bare feet are a good idea. Also lay off the polyester pants.
Actually, you have my sympathy - I always get zapped when getting out of cars. Nobody else I know has this problem to the same extent. It’s especially spectacular after dark, as great blue sparks jet out from my fingertips when I go to close the door. Ouch.
The car problem is not all that uncommon. It’s caused by the newer types of tires being less conductive, which doesn’t allow the charge to bleed off. Attaching a bit of ground braid to the frame of the car and letting the other end drag along the ground will fix the problem for you. Some people use chains or bits of wire instead of ground braid.
Nope. Try this: connect your parked car to a ground connection with a wire, then climb inside and wiggle around on the seats. When you climb out and then touch the car door, ZAP! Grounding the car doesn’t eliminate the problem.
The problem is that YOU become charged from sitting on the (plastic) seats. As long as you remain seated, the charges on your body and the opposite charges on the car seat remain together (remain cancelled out.) When you jump out of the car, you pull the opposite charges several feet apart, and the voltage between your body and the car can rise to tens of thousands of volts. See:
http://www.jci.co.uk/Carseats2.html
The easy cure: while leaving the car, hold onto a metal part as you peel your body away from the car seat. This lets the separated charges flow back together over a second or two. No high voltage appears. Another cure: always touch the outside of the car with your car keys after you’ve climbed out. The blazing hot spark will drill into the metal of the key rather than into your sensitive fingertip.
If you could somehow make either the car seat or your clothing become slightly conductive, you would spoil the whole charge-generation process right at the start. That’s what anti-static sprays attempt to do. Living in humid regions works well. I hear that some car manufactuerers weave conductive carbon fibers into their cloth seat covers.
Its true that you can build up quite a hefty charge just from moving on the seat (depending on what material your seat is made out of). In fact the only picture I’ve ever seen of static discharge causing a pump fire looked like it started this way.
Most of the time when I’ve been shocked though it’s been because of the car.
YMMV.
Back to the chair…
The problem might just be that you have metal parts on the chair and thus notice the static buildup more when you touch the metal. If the chair had no metal, the charge could bleed out before you had an opportunity to touch any metal (which of course sinks the charge quickly).
Maybe you can insulate the metal.
Another solution is to wear charge dissipating shoes. These might dissipate the charge quickly enough to prevent it reaching a potential that would cause a shock in between touches of the metal bars.
If your body happens to be charged up at the time that you touch any large, uncharged, ungrounded metal object, you will notice a spark. On the other hand, if a large ungrounded metal object happens to be charged up at the time that your uncharged body touches it, you will also notice a spark.
How can you tell what caused the spark? You can’t, not without using an electrometer to determine who is uncharged and who is not.
If you exit a car and then touch the car, then you and the car receive equal and opposite quantities of charge, but the charge on the car can vanish within a fraction of a second if the ground is moist (since carbon-filled black rubber tires are conductive.) If you get zapped after climbing out of a car, chances are good that it was your charged body which created the spark. That, or both your body and the car were responsible.
Here are things to try in the winter or when humidity is low:
Try this: every time a car pulls into a parking space while you’re a bystander, walk over and touch the car. Any sparks? Not usually.
Now try this: every time you climb out of a car, touch the car. Any sparks? Yep. Yowch!
Finally, try this: every time you climb out of a car, touch some OTHER large metal object (not the car.) Any sparks? Yep.
Now try this: climb into a car and sit there for awhile without driving anywhere. Move your body around on the seat just as you would when riding in the car. Now climb out and touch the car. Any sparks? Yep. Electric charge separation isn’t caused by cars in motion. It’s caused by polyester-swathed driver-butt being in contact with vinyl car seats.