Have you ever had an electric shock?

ejmaztec

I find them quite invigorating, and I've been invigorated a fair few times when pretending to know what I'm doing.

Menas

Back in the 80s I was doing a repair to an old black and white TV.
I was about to solder something and did a quick visual check to double check that I had plugged it out....I hadnt.
I jolted to get the solder and soldering iron out of range of the back of the TV but the jolt caused a drop to fall on the back of the tube. Bang.

It caused a bit of a bang allright and the ESB had to come around as the short caused the junction box on our street to blow. Fckin aincent fuse box in our house did not blow, but the street one did?
The world is lucky that Trigger is still here!

maxfresh

IPAM wrote: »

Working as a sparks Ive had loads! Worst was when I was connecting a socket in a pub kitchen. I had turned the MCB off and started connecting it when suddenly, what felt like bolts of lightning, shot through my arms... Blackedout for a split second came to with a chippy shouting at me and asking if I was ok

The other sparks in all his wisdom decided to knock on the MCB to boil the kettle :mad: I happened to be touching the brown while leaning on a stainless steel counter... Shock of my life!!

You would think if the socket circuit was on a rcd as it should be it should have tripped before you got shocked

Yup. As a sparks I've had a few shocks. Nothing major. You live and learn (most of us anyway). The worst was when I was working on a friends mothers house about 2 years ago. It was wired in the 80's by the original owner who wasn't an electrician. It was a bungalow and I was changing out old lights in the hall for new ones. As soon as I went into the attic, I put my hand down on the insulation to discover 2 live cables buried and twisted together to join them with no more than an inch of insulation tape wrapped around them leaving a lot of exposed copper. Anyway I stuck to the cable which caused me to jump and put my knee through the ceiling as well as getting a shock! When I got myself together I went and inspected all the wiring i could and discovered this type of dangerous DIY work was done everywhere (in white and yellow core cable!) and eventually convinced the owner that the house was a death trap and to fork out for a full rewire. You'd be amazed at the amount of potential death traps electricians come across every day be it a house, shop, factory etc.

KERSPLAT!

maxfresh wrote: »

You would think if the socket circuit was on a rcd as it should be it should have tripped before you got shocked

It was definitely on a RCD or RCBO, can't remember if it tripped after or not, the shock was only milliseconds, it was the stainless steel that f'ed me

maxfresh

IPAM wrote: »

It was definitely on a RCD or RCBO, can't remember if it tripped after or not, the shock was only milliseconds, it was the stainless steel that f'ed me

Ye i had a similar shock connecting a light in a stainless steel pole and my hand near my knuckles was touching the pole and my finger touched the live copper conductor :eek: ouch , lucky i pulled my hand away pretty quick.

KERSPLAT!

maxfresh wrote: »

Ye i had a similar shock connecting a light in a stainless steel pole and my hand near my knuckles was touching the pole and my finger touched the live copper conductor :eek: ouch , lucky i pulled my hand away pretty quick.

I'm lucky that I don't really remember it

Another time I got blown/fell off a ladder. I was tryin to get the lid off 2x2 galvo trunking. It was packed with cables and when I tried to prise it open I broke the insulation on the live and hit the earthed trunking with the rest of my driver! No shock but huge bang/flash an a very sore arsè!!!

ejmaztec

I'm surprised that my old man never got electrocuted to death, because for some mysterious reason, his electric drill never had a plug on it, and he would poke a small stick into the earth socket and then feed the live and neutral wires into their holes. I think he had a deathwish, which he probably got living with the rest of us.

maxfresh

IPAM wrote: »

I'm lucky that I don't really remember it

Another time I got blown/fell off a ladder. I was tryin to get the lid off 2x2 galvo trunking. It was packed with cables and when I tried to prise it open I broke the insulation on the live and hit the earthed trunking with the rest of my driver! No shock but huge bang/flash an a very sore arsè!!!

yes a fall off a ladder can be very dangerous a guy that worked for a company i worked for died after falling and landing on his head

KKkitty

Got a shock from an iron once. It had one of those fabric type flexes which had become worn and after I got the shock sparks came out. Haven't ironed since

ejmaztec

KKkitty wrote: »

Got a shock from an iron once. It had one of those fabric type flexes which had become worn and after I got the shock sparks came out. Haven't ironed since

The feeble excuse creased me up.:P

CrazyRabbit

I've been tasered 3 times. Does that count?

FYI...when a US security guard tells you to leave, you leave.

ronan45

Have had a few 220 Volt shocks. Its kinda like a sharp sting and your arm clenches. I felt a kinda vibration in the shock if that makes sense. Leaves you with a slight numb pain in the general area of the shock. Not nice but i think a paper cut is worse :pac:

KKkitty

ejmaztec wrote: »

KKkitty wrote: »

Got a shock from an iron once. It had one of those fabric type flexes which had become worn and after I got the shock sparks came out. Haven't ironed since

The feeble excuse creased me up.:P

I'm to dePRESSed to talk about it

Lingua Franca

I'm sure it left you feeling flat. If it happened to me I'd be steaming.

ejmaztec

KKkitty wrote: »

I'm to dePRESSed to talk about it

There seem to be two different kinds of wrinklies now, old people and people without irons.:P

Richard Hillman

never a big one. I used to work in a shop. When the cages arrived for deliveries they were covered in cling film. The 1st person to touch the cage after the film was stripped off got a big static shock. Was funny when it happened to customers :pac:

Johnnio13

Worked with an electrician on the J1.
We were fitting the service to the house and my boss was in the basement wiring up the board, I was working on something or other and the other irish guy in the kitchen was wiring up the cooker. He passed the wire for the cooker down the pipe, it came out at the service box and blew the boss and the ladder he was standing on across the room. It was like something from a movie.

4zn76tysfajdxp

The field next to my primary school had an electric fence around it, which was reachable through the fence in my school. I was dared to touch it once and when I did, the jolt I gave was so harsh I was convinced someone had punched me in the back of the head.

ghogie91

Cooking breakfast extremely hungover one sunday morning

Father had the back of the plug off the george foreman so i put it back on to push the plug in the then switched on the george foreman. After a while i noticed it wasnt heating up so i realised the back had fallen off the the prongs wernt in the socket completely. Stuck the hand to it to push them all in forgetting the plug wasnt turned off

Got that tight feeling in my chest for the split second i was stuck to it, it then threw me back about a foot or two, arm didnt feel the same for a couple of weeks, the auld ticker was going 90 all day long

Bookworm85

Penn wrote: »

Used to live in a one-bed apartment. Burst pipe in the apartment above caused water to leak into mine, so I contacted landlord, people upstairs etc. There was one of those perspex bowls around the pendant bathroom light which was full of water. Took it off, took out the bulb. Started cleaning the socket.

Didn't realise that the lightswitch had actually been on but the bulb went off. While standing on a chair, I ended up sticking my finger into the socket (wrapped in tissue paper to dry to socket) and got a good shock from it. Managed to grab the back of the chair to prevent falling off it. Arm felt weird for a few hours after that, but I was lucky enough.

Did something similar about 10 years ago. The parents had some fellas in to re plaster the spare bedroom. My brother and I were painting it a few days later and tried turning on the light when it started to get dark. Flicked the switch and nothing happened so I went and got a new bulb, unscrewed the old one. I tried putting the fresh one in (it wasn't a screw in one, one of those twist & lock) but wasn't engaging. Gobsheen here decided to stick a finger in to try and push back the two prongs in the socket..... BOOM! fell off the chair and landed on my ass. I think I saw the future in that moment!!! Obviously the bulb had died while the switch was still on! Spent a day and a night in CUH because my heart was going like the clappers and there risk of internal bleeding or something. Good times

ScumLord

When I were a child I tried to change the lightbulb in my room, we had bunk beds at the time so I climb to the top one and had to lean out because the light was in the middle of the ceiling and the beds were at the wall. I got zapped and then dumped on the ground. Needless to say I have a irrational fear of lightbulbs now.

jmayo

ghogie91 wrote: »

Cooking breakfast extremely hungover one sunday morning

Father had the back of the plug off the george foreman so i put it back on to push the plug in the then switched on the george foreman. After a while i noticed it wasnt heating up so i realised the back had fallen off the the prongs wernt in the socket completely. Stuck the hand to it to push them all in forgetting the plug wasnt turned off

Got that tight feeling in my chest for the split second i was stuck to it, it then threw me back about a foot or two, arm didnt feel the same for a couple of weeks, the auld ticker was going 90 all day long

Hey you just might have found a cure for hangovers.

BTW for anyone who has a shocking fetish I know where you can get some defibs.
Ok business is slow nowadays and a sale is a sale.

asherbassad

Plazaman wrote: »

Was checking that a plug on a TV was properly plugged in but never knew that the lead was frayed and wires exposed.

One minute I was watching Litttle House on Prairie, the next I remember I was lying in the middle of the room twitching on the floor with my tounge bleeding from biting it and a trousers full of píss.

Beats watching Little House on the Prairie.

Abi

Only one or two little zaps, nothing major. The last zap I got was a few months ago, one of my pets had been nibbling on the cable for the TV that I hadn't noticed. The same pet did a number on the cable for the fridge and gave himself a zap. Little bollox.

Agricola

I was putting up a lectric fence in a field afew years back. The bull that was in the field sneakily managed to creep up behind me without me noticing. When I turned around to look at him he was doing that ground scratching thing and snorting. I started to back away completely forgetting about the fence behind me and got a massive wallop off it. For a few seconds I didnt know up from down and thought the bull had run around and got me from behind. Feckin Ninja bulls.

jugger0

I put my dink on an electric fence after whizzing on it and experiencing nothing, don't know what i was expecting but my jimmies were severely rustled and i will never ever do something like that again.

L.Jenkins

The Jammy dodger wrote: »

Ah I see ok.

Do peoples bodies then react differently to certain shocks?

Little late to be replying now, but in some cases yes. It depends on the voltage and current. Someone with a heart defect could be severly affected by a mild shock as current nearly always flows across the chest.

While a mild shock can really hurt, always assume it can kill as electricity is merciless.

Skyflyer1234

had one back the years as a child was dared to touch an electric fence haha typical irish thing to do.

Paging whoopsy, paging whoopsy.

BBDBB

Once when I was trapped in 1955 and wouldnt ya know it, I needed to get back to 1985, only after ensuring that my mum and dad danced at the under the sea dance at their college. Anyway, I drove my DeLorean in an electric storm and my good friend and scientist Doc managed to use a passing electric storm to strike the town clock and charge the flux capacitor just as I was driving under the wire at the right speed. So I was very lucky that the car got electrocuted but I didnt, oh and I also invented rock and roll.

Mr. CooL ICE

Only one mild accidental shock, but a few others which were intentional.

When I was about 8/9, my friend's dad had an old hand-operated generator with crank wheel. For the craic, we would put our fingers on the terminals and turn the wheel and see how long we could hold for. Felt like my fingers were made of worms. Incredibly stupid, but better than being bored while it rained.

When I was 15, I took apart a disposable camera to try to figure out how it worked. I shocked myself in the process. After winding up the flash capacitor, I would put a £1 coin against the terminals by the flash which resulted in a loud bang and two black dents in the coin. I brought it into school and robbed some iron filings from the science room and poured them on top which resulted in iron filings being thrown everywhere. Anyway, people thought this was cool so were trying to touch it to see how bad it was. After each person jumped back in pain, the next macho person thought "it can't be that bad" and would do the exact same thing. Bart Simpson and the electrified cupcake sprung to mind.

My only accident happened when I was fixing an amplifier and decided to pick it up (while the cover was removed) by holding it around the power switch, forgetting that it was plugged in. My arm shot up in the air. Shouldn't have been too bad, but by fixing it, I was bypassing the fuses with a solid wire because I was too lazy to buy replacements.

Capt'n Midnight

When I got last winters ESB bill :eek:

Capt'n Midnight

davet82 wrote: »

Have you ever been electrocuted?

yes i licked a double A battery, who hasn't?

cunning use of a thinly veiled "I has a long tongue" post


(PP3's give a better buzz)

david

Never any substantial shock but...

When I was 7/8yrs old I licked the two terminals on a 9v battery and my tongue went numb. :P

I've also fallen for 'booby trapped' electronic lighters that shock you. Almost as annoying as when someone turns up the adjuster to flame thrower territory.

Capt'n Midnight

1210m5g wrote: »

Voltage isn't the real danger, it's the current that causes the most damage. 50mA for a sustained time is enough to kill some people, where as you could get hit with 20000 volts and survive (with burns)

"It's volts that jolts and mills that kills."

If you hold your arm up to a CRT and then turn it on or off the hairs on your arm will stand up, thousands of volts - no problem.


keeping one hand in your pocket makes you look casual , but reduces the risk of having a path through your arms across your heart

if you are really unlucky a few mA of AC across the heart will cause it to fibrillate , less than needed to trip an ELCB


if you ever have to touch a wire, after turning off the power and checking with a phase tester, use the back of your fingers so any muscle spasm doesn't cause your hand to grasp the wire


good few shocks, and far too many off touching the plug of equipment that has been switched off and unplugged - if reparing mains electronics try to wait for a few hours.

if repairing a switched mode don't, unless it's unavoidable as they are evil lethal bastards that will lull you into thinking they are off and then kill you. Now that CRT's are going extinct the piece of equipment that is way out in front as the most likely thing to kill you is an SMPSU.

seven_eleven

Yes, I was at a big cliffside overlooking the sea. There was cows in the field so there was obviously an electric fence along the cliff edge. As I was admiring the view, I placed my 2 hands on the fence/wire and leaned on it without thinking.
BOOM

Weirdest feeling I have ever experienced. It was like somebody kicked me in the chest full force.

Capt'n Midnight

CardBordWindow wrote: »

I had some pheasant chicks under a red light a few years ago.

LOL

had to read that twice

Hank Scorpio

Was fixing a game console thing a while back and had the cover off, some of the wires inside were unprotected. I stuck my hand in there was it was still turned on and got a bad shock. I just stood and dazed at the wall for a few seconds wondering what had happened, very bizarre feeling

Plumpynutt

Never had a bad electric shock, but I shocked myself with a plug when I was younger. Very weird sensation

Bruthal

1210m5g wrote: »

Voltage isn't the real danger, it's the current that causes the most damage. 50mA for a sustained time is enough to kill some people, where as you could get hit with 20000 volts and survive (with burns)

Well that is sort of mythical stuff. The current through the body is proportional to the voltage, so shock level received is directly dependent on voltage amongst other things. No one will be electrocuted by 12v because it cant put 50ma through the high resistance/impedance of a person, but a car battery can put thousands of times that level of current through a starter motor because of its very low resistance.

230v can kill, but requires good contact from live to neutral or earth to the skin in 2 places usually, and sustained.

Contact with 20,000v mains would almost always be fatal.

Bruthal

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

if you ever have to touch a wire, after turning off the power and checking with a phase tester, use the back of your fingers so any muscle spasm doesn't cause your hand to grasp the wire

Another half myth which is a dangerous one. If you are in dry runners or any footwear for that matter, in dry conditions, a person touching a live terminal and nothing else will not perceive any shock at all, and so could wrongly believe the terminal is dead.

Intensive Care Bear

robbie7730 wrote: »

Well that is sort of mythical stuff. The current through the body is proportional to the voltage, so shock level received is directly dependent on voltage amongst other things. No one will be electrocuted by 12v because it cant put 50ma through the high resistance/impedance of a person, but a car battery can put thousands of times that level of current through a starter motor because of its very low resistance.

230v can kill, but requires good contact from live to neutral or earth to the skin in 2 places usually, and sustained.

Contact with 20,000v mains would almost always be fatal.

I am aware of all this, i was just explaining it in a very simple way. Also there has been a few recorded cases of people surviving extremely high voltages, i know these are very rare and i was using that as an extreme example (some people were implying 230v meant certain death)

Capt'n Midnight

robbie7730 wrote: »

Another half myth which is a dangerous one. If you are in dry runners or any footwear for that matter, in dry conditions, a person touching a live terminal and nothing else will not perceive any shock at all, and so could wrongly believe the terminal is dead.

I wasn't suggesting that test live wires that way :eek:

only that if you have to touch wires, after testing, that could conceivably be live don't grasp them

robbie7730 wrote: »

No one will be electrocuted by 12v because it cant put 50ma through the high resistance/impedance of a person, but a car battery can put thousands of times that level of current through a starter motor because of its very low resistance.

230v can kill, but requires good contact from live to neutral or earth to the skin in 2 places usually, and sustained.

Contact with 20,000v mains would almost always be fatal.

if you are wearing a ring and it somehow shorts a car battery you'll loose the finger when it goes red hot

you don't need sustained 230V to kill you , just one small blast could cause your heart to fibrillate and it's game over if you aren't rescued in time

20,000V mains ? you don't even need to make contact because it can jump :eek:

Bruthal

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

I wasn't suggesting that test live wires that way :eek:

only that if you have to touch wires, after testing, that could conceivably be live don't grasp them

If you have to work on cables, its hard to with the backs of the fingers. And as said, touching them with back of fingers wont tell you its dead, unless you touch a neutral along with the wire in question. Proving its dead by testing is the way.

if you are wearing a ring and it somehow shorts a car battery you'll loose the finger when it goes red hot

Thats not an electric shock though.

you don't need sustained 230V to kill you , just one small blast could cause your heart to fibrillate and it's game over if you aren't rescued in time

By sustained I would mean longer than instant, as in from maybe 1 second onwards. So a 1 second long shock would be sustained, as the vast majority of shocks people receive are a few milliseconds duration, usually far less than a second anyway.

Brief almost instant contact and then release with 230v rarely results in death though, usually because it is not direct 230v Live to Neutral/earth contact across chest. Almost all people will survive brief/instant contact. If they didnt, there would be far more fatalities, including most posters in this thread:D

20,000V mains ? you don't even need to make contact because it can jump :eek:

No but direct contact can be made. It might jump 2 or 3 inches to earth as 20kv will be about 12kv to earth. It can arc out a few feet once it has jumped and the gap is increased.

old hippy

I put my fingers in an uncovered socket when I was a kid & the shock threw me across the room. Very scary!

SuperInfinity

I've intentionally been shocked countless times by electric fences. Just hold a piece of grass to the wire, don't touch it directly, and the grass will take the vast majority of the sting. That's how they're tested. Just a tiny tingle is all you'll get. Cool also is if you hold hands with someone else the shock will pass through them also.

I may be mentioned already, I'm not going to read the entire thread sorry, but putting your free hand in your pocket when touching a potentially dangerous wire is also a very good idea and used by trained professionals. The current will mostly go through the path of least resistance (in this case your arm), and so most of it will miss your heart.

Recently I started to constantly get significant shocks from trolleys at the grocery store. I searched on it online and found out that no I wasn't going mad, the trolley picks up a static charge as you go through the supermarket and some people are sensitive to it. The solution is to hold your hand on the metal part of the trolley, this way the charge gets neutralized from the trolley down you to the ground as you're going along instead of building up to a "big" charge. Only really occasionally do I get shocks now and they're barely perceptible. Either I became more sensitive to it, or perhaps more likely is they did something to the floor.

splendid101

I was at a folk concert once and got a massive electric shock. I was so surprised that I shouted out "Judas!"

Bruthal

old hippy wrote: »

I put my fingers in an uncovered socket when I was a kid & the shock threw me across the room. Very scary!

Getting thrown across rooms is another sort of mythical thing. People often jump, lose balance etc because of getting a shock, and then thinking about it combined with the fright, believe they were thrown, but the actual muscle contractions required to throw people across rooms is not feasable with 230v.

A proper electric shock with good contact from 230v, will leave a person rooted to the spot.

splendid101

SuperInfinity wrote: »

I've intentionally been shocked countless times by electric fences. Just hold a piece of grass to the wire, don't touch it directly, and the grass will take the vast majority of the sting. That's how they're tested. Just a tiny tingle is all you'll get. Cool also is if you hold hands with someone else the shock will pass through them also.

I may be mentioned already, I'm not going to read the entire thread sorry, but putting your free hand in your pocket when touching a potentially dangerous wire is also a very good idea and used by trained professionals. The current will mostly go through the path of least resistance (in this case your arm), and so most of it will miss your heart.

Recently I started to constantly get significant shocks from trolleys at the grocery store. I searched on it online and found out that no I wasn't going mad, the trolley picks up a static charge as you go through the supermarket and some people are sensitive to it. The solution is to hold your hand on the metal part of the trolley, this way the charge gets neutralized from the trolley down you to the ground as you're going along instead of building up to a "big" charge. Only really occasionally do I get shocks now and they're barely perceptible. Either I became more sensitive to it, or perhaps more likely is they did something to the floor.

Does it matter which arm you put in your pocket?

I think the static electricity also depends on your shoes and clothes.

I had a metal mp3 player once that used too build up static electricity on my polyester jacket. I used to get shocks through the ear phones, directly into both ears. Thought I might have been killed by it sometime.