Just a reminder, this thread is 8 years old.
It’s got the wrong answer, though. A static shock hurts precisely because it burns-- The current itself won’t hurt you at all. If you suspect you’ll get a static shock from a doorknob or whatever, you can take a key or coin or something out of your pocket, and use that to touch the doorknob. You’ll still get the full current through your finger, but since the hot spark is in contact with the key, not your finger, it won’t hurt.
Lightning is air molecules forming a plasma. Plasmas can have a wide range of temperatures, and I think air plasmas are pretty hot, but this is an unusual case of a plasma created by very high voltage and direct current. Sparks are basically the same thing. But what you feel temperature-wise from touching a spark is the heat generated by the current meeting resistance in your body. It is no longer a plasma as it enters your body. I suppose with enough energy your body could become a plasma too, but you would cease caring about temperature, and everything else at that point.
Using a key also means the current is conducted into your body over a larger area, so I can’t agree it’s proof at all that it’s the heat, not the current, that causes the pain.
Since you can’t really separate the high localised current from the heating of the point of entry there’s not really any way to know, except physiological expertise, or measuring the temperature increase at the point of entry.
Also “the hot spark” would be unlikely to be the cause of the pain, it’s a tiny volume of hot gas, and gas contains very little energy. If it’s temperature that causes the pain I’d expect it to be the direct heating of tissue at the point of entry where the current is concentrated in a tiny area.
During winter, at work I use a key to avoid getting shocked. A lot of the charge collects on the key relatively slowly before the spark, so the total current out of my fingers during the spark is smaller, in addition to being over a larger area.
It doesn’t hurt, but I can still feel it. So I suspect it is the current, not the heat, that hurts.
I entirely forgot about this thread (if that’s not obvious). I still work in the same place though and the ESD lab is still next door.
Skinny writes himself a note
Thanks folks
So this business about a spark not having a temperature (cause it supposidly contains no molecules) is wrong…Right?
I disagree. A spark could be considered the voltage, the current, the molecules in a plasma state, the light emitted from the plasma, or any combination of those. The question isn’t that clear.
Well, I disagree with you. 
Seriously, a spark is a spark. I get that there are components of a spark, that these components may be different temperatures and that temperature may even be irrelevant for some components or some sparks.
But we’re not the Nobel committee and we’re not drafting legislation. Surely, we can read between the lines to find a way to reasonably answer “What’s the temp of a static charge spark?”
(Especially after 8 years)
You know what? You’re right. It’s time to settle this.
The answer is 5.
Would that be a ‘metric’ 5? Because I came up with 6-7/8. 
Avoirdupois
Mr. Skinny seems to have lost the note. He’s not very good at getting back to threads, is he?
:rolleyes:;):)
maybe he didn’t loose the note. a spark might have set the note on fire.
Well, I said “lost”, the past tense of “to lose”. You said “loose”, an archaic form of some form of past tense for “to let loose”, “to release”, “to let go of”, or something like that, which I can’t remember the proper grammatical term for. Your misspelling suggests a likelier scenario. It was windy when he was walking outside. He let loose of it, and it blew away. Let’s keep bumping this every year or so until he remembers. Maybe he’ll come back again in a few years, with the answer.
OK. Finally got a (non) answer. The folks I work with say they’ve never measured the temperature, but it would depend on many variables - the humidity in the air, the length of the spark gap, and the voltage across the gap.
They were able to say that the reason one doesn’t get burned is because the contact with the skin is only for a nano-second - so not enough time to do any damage to the skin.
I was hoping to get a more factual answer, but there you have it.
I have searched around the web and find numerous temperature ranges for sparks, arcs, plasma…
Are all of these just estimates or have they actually been measured? If they are measured, how was this accomplished? I am trying to find a way to measure the temperature of a spark but all I find are range values with no indication of method.
Any ideas?
Temperature is a macroscopic property - that is you need some matter to average it out. Parts of the spark will be 1000s of degrees and parts will be not - just like a rainbow. You can use a spectrograph to take a picture and an analysis of the spectrum will give you a broad range of temperatures (same as a flame).
As to why it would not burn you ----- it just does not have enough energy. Its like dropping a rice seed on someone from the top of the Eifel tower versus dropping a potted plant. Although, they will be travelling at pretty much the same speed (okay neglect air-resistance / terminal velocity for this example) - the rice wont hurt you.
This sounds like the best approach. Examine the spectrum for how closely it conforms to a black body spectrum. If it fits well, there’s your temperature. If it kind-of fits, the temperature is less well-defined. If it doesn’t fit at all, then it’s reasonable to say that a spark doesn’t really have a well-defined temperature.
The instantaneus temperature of a tribèlectric spark is room temperature. It also lasts for microseconds to milliseconds, not nanoseconds.
The spark has positive and negative charges that drift in opposite lodes; this motion is work that is simply imposed on the temperature of the medium. As the spark lasts for finite and longer time, this work is gradually transferred and equiparted to the medium itself which warms up. As the medium itself does not incandescently break down into plasma, it stays only as hot as several thousand kelvins. Temperature includes a distribution of motion, so when I say the medium isn’t a plasma, I mean the average motion; of course it includes some molecules that are at a plasma. If you confine the spark in a furnace or tube you can get èlectric arc or collider temperatures.
Bill Beaty is mostly a’talking out his arse. There’s no such thing as a “perfect vacuum”; a vacvum includes the far-field of matter everywhere so it has nonunary refractive index and nonnihilary mass; the Lamb shift imposes a 1GHz component everywhere and Zitterbewegung imposes a 10ZHz component everywhere. If you put a vacvum-breakdown voltage it’s your èlectrodes that break down and make the medium. There’s no such thing as a perfect insulator either; watter has a conductivity thanks to aýtoionism.