Seen on a can of wasp and hornet spray (insecticide):
“Dielectric breakdown voltage of 47,300 volts”
I can’t for the life of me understand what that would mean in the context of a bug spray.
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It means that whatever the base material is, has an insulating factor of 47,300 volts. This means that it is safe to spray around uninsulated wires. It won’t catch fire. Unless for some reason they are conducting more than 47,300 volts.
nm double-post
Shockingly (heh, heh) a quick googling shows that this topic has come up here before.
Thanks, that makes sense.
Strange though I dont ever remember seeing a similar message on other sprays.
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18 years later and they are still claiming the same breakdown voltage.
47,300 volts over what distance?
The SI unit for volts per meter, but that’s an impractical range for insulators and such*. So megavolts per meter gives a more rational numeric range. Which is the same a kilovolts per millimeter** which then leads to stuff being abbreviated as just kilovolts.
So, perhap 47.3 KV/mm. Which seems high, IMHO, for a liquid with varied components.
Just hope that it isn’t kilovolts per mil as that’s a whole 'nother range.
- Either too many zeros or always having to put x10 exponents after.
** And millimeter is more intuitive when talking about insulating wires and such.
And note that the same question (about volts per unit of distance?) was raised in the earlier thread too, and not entirely clearly answered there either.
ASTM has specific test methods for determining the dielectric breakdown for pesticides and other materials.Here’s a defining doc in .pdf, you can try to follow the maze to discover the test method details if you like, but it will come down to use of a particular test device with electrodes spaced at a specific distance to provide the V/m value.