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BZZZZ OW JESUS the electric shock thread

Started by Rizla, September 23, 2018, 10:53:30 PM

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Rizla

Proper 240v jobs off the mains. Not had one of these in about a decade. They were something we laughed off as kids, bit of fun. I remember my brother unscrewing the fuse holder on the back of the 8 track player and pressing it back in with his finger. Shocking!

In those days plugs didn't have the plastic safety sleeves they have now, so you could catch your little fingers on the live prong as you plugged in the scalectrix. Wahey!

My best one was worthy of a 70's public information film. I was wiping my countertop with a big wet sponge and the water made contact with the frayed cotton wires of the 70's toaster. Wahoo! I feel like a big bell!

Please share your stories of electric shocks in this thread.



Dex Sawash

I avoid shocks if possible.  110v american AC current has a nice tingle. Most cars don't have plug wires or adjustable timing now so I never get the 20kv DC blast any more.

Brian Freeze

I think my memory of it is possibly overly dramatic but my granny had a box of random toys and a two bar fire. I touched the metal Messerschmitt to the top bar to see if it would get hot.

My memory tells me that I was blown right across the room or at least a couple of feet but that can't be right can it?

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Nothing that dramatic, but I recently touched the element in the toaster while trying to fish out a torn scrap of bread. It didn't really hurt, but it was unpleasant enough that I unplugged the toaster before trying again.

Uncle TechTip


Crisps?

I've licked a battery and scraped my shoes on the carpet of a shop and touched a metal clothes rail. Not at the same time though.

Dunno if it's those old PSA's with kids and pylons but I'm absolutely terrified of electricity (including the above), maybe overly so. They should have come up with something better by now.

I thought a mains shock would be fatal, or extremely bad for your health. Is it not that bad?

Isnt Anything

depends where you touch it, where the exit to earth is, and what if any footwear you have on at the time

eg touching mains with your left hand while firmly gripping onto an unpainted metal water pipe with your right hand will almost certainly kill you, right across the heart

Flouncer

Quote from: Brian Freeze on September 23, 2018, 11:08:15 PMMy memory tells me that I was blown right across the room or at least a couple of feet but that can't be right can it?

Once I was in my parents bedroom watching telly; if they were watching something downstairs I'd be allowed to watch theirs. I tried to put the bedside lamp on, was feeling around for the slidey thing to turn it on, and one of my fingers ended up in the place where the bulb should have been. It did literally throw me across the room, and I'm not skinny.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth


JesusAndYourBush

About 10-ish years ago one Christmas the tree lights didn't work so I was checking each bulb to make sure they were all screwed in, and went and "screwed in" a bulb where the glass had broken or fallen off so I touched the inside bit.  It didn't do any of that throwing you across the room malarkey, just stung for a moment and left 2 little black marks on my finger.

A couple of weeks ago I got a shock while turning on the tap in the kitchen, presumably static electricity.  Felt about the same as the Christmas lights one and also left 2 little marks on my finger.

shiftwork2

Ooh.  I once had a fiddle around in a mess of cables and extension lead blocks behind a telly / VHS, trying to unplug something or other.  There was a sudden sense of being plugged in with the whole 50 Hz thing being quite palpable.  It lasted a second.  The skin of my right knee (presumably earth) had gone bright red.  Pretty awful experience however we did go back to watching Al Pacino in Scent Of A Woman immediately after so it couldn't have been that bad.

Dex Sawash


Quote from: JesusAndYourBush on September 24, 2018, 02:32:05 AM
About 10-ish years ago one Christmas the tree lights didn't work so I was checking each bulb to make sure they were all screwed in, and went and "screwed in" a bulb where the glass had broken or fallen off so I touched the inside bit.  It didn't do any of that throwing you across the room malarkey, just stung for a moment and left 2 little black marks on my finger.

A couple of weeks ago I got a shock while turning on the tap in the kitchen, presumably static electricity.  Felt about the same as the Christmas lights one and also left 2 little marks on my finger.


Were you touching an appliance at the same time? Wouldn't think there would be a mark from a static discharge.

easytarget

Before I upgraded to a mighty Peavy Rage 108 my first guitar amplifier was this 10W(?) Tiger practice amp:

It started making a weird buzzing noise (that seemed to be unrelated to my attempting to play Revelations by Iron Maiden on it) so I stuck my hand in the back to see ... if ... I could ... feel(?) what the problem was? (I don't know I was young and my unsullied life was still stretching out before me). What I found was a fucking 240V 60Hz BRITISH shock, Christ afucking live that'll open your eyes.
Unpleasant.
Non-lethal (obvs)
Educational.

Bring back the dangerous electric shock I say!

buzby

When I was a kid my dad was remodelling the kitchen. He was knocking a channel into the plaster with a bolster chisel to move a socket and unexpectedly went through the ring main. Massive flash and bang, dad on the floor against the opposite wall and a perfect crescent shape vapourised out of the chisel blade.

The closest I've ever come to a mains shock was cutting through the lead of a hedge trimmer (which gave a nice flash and bang and a momentary tingle though the handle). I've had a few sub-mains zaps in work though - 120V AC telephone ringing signal can give you  a bit of a buzz at the exchange PSU end (about 5A), and shorting a 20A 50V DC comms PSU feed with a screwdriver isn't exactly fun either, especially for the screwdriver. On older phone exchanges the mains to 50V DC power conversion is all centralised and the 50V at about 250A is carried on copper busbars running around the building - one of our installation engineers once accidentally dropped a spanner across the pos and neg busbars, resulting in being temporary blinded by the arc flash and the spanner permantly welded to the busbars (which eventually blew the supply fuse).

The 'throwing across the room' thing is the current causing muscle contractions, the same thing that stops your heart if the current passes across your chest from one hand to the other.

Dr Rock

As a child, monkey enclosure at some zoo near Barry Island or Skegness or wherever we were that year.

L'l Dr Rock says to his cousins 'well of course that electric wire that keeps them in, that' not actually live now, they teach them it will give them a shock when they are young, then they are scared of it. Then they don't need to keep it on anymore. Look, I'll prove it...'

ZAP! My hair stood on end and you could see my skeleton through my body and I flew twenty feet in the air. Well, what happened was it felt like my cousin had punched me hard in the back. I woke up on the ground. My cousins laughed, and we went off to annoy a tiger.

Emma Raducanu

When I was doing a First Aid course, the instructor had some great stories, one of which involved someone drilling into the ground on a buliding site, hitting cables and being shocked so badly, all his skin turned black for the rest of his life. He later killed himself.

I thought this just happened in cartoons but can a really bad (but survivable) shock really do this?!

biggytitbo

I remember back in the day if we didn't have a plug (because amazingly, appliances didn't come with one until relatively recently), we'd just jam the two wires in the socket with a couple of matchsticks. Did the job, until the house burnt down in the night and killed everyone.

Surely, surely the SI unit for the sound of an electric shock is "GZZZT."

mothman

'Bout twenty years back, working in a building near Grays Inn Road, we had a problem with a leaking pipe out back on the ground floor. The facilities people got a plumber in, he was poking around in some crumbling concrete when he stuck his screwdriver - mercifully an insulated electrical one - into the main power trunk for the building. First we knew of it was we heard a massive CRUMP. We worked on the ground floor so blithely rushed towards the scene of the explosion. The plumber was sitting there quavering in fright; the tip of his screwdriver was glowing red-hot.

yesitsme

I don't go seeking them out, I'm not some sort of weirdo but when the come I quite enjoy a good belt, let's you know you're still alive.

The other week I reached down behind little un's bed, somehow the back of the plug for her bedside lamp had been knocked off.  I'm glad I touched it rather than her.

Nnnnngggg.

buzby

Quote from: biggytitbo on September 24, 2018, 09:14:59 AM
I remember back in the day if we didn't have a plug (because amazingly, appliances didn't come with one until relatively recently), we'd just jam the two wires in the socket with a couple of matchsticks. Did the job, until the house burnt down in the night and killed everyone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N0ATdDdwKg

biggytitbo

Quote from: buzby on September 24, 2018, 10:13:45 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N0ATdDdwKg


I wouldnt be surprised if that advert gave people the idea to do it in the first place (also the inspiration for Casualty)

Brian Freeze

Dr Rock has just reminded me that I pissed on an electric fence once.

It wasn't an accident but once I'd found out what I wanted to know, I didn't need or want to do it again.

Flouncer

Every now and again I go on a PIF binge. Last time I found this - it's apparently Irish though they all have English accents. Max Wattage, the electric detective, tells us about the dangers of electricity using the medium of rap. If I was a kid watching this, I'd be inclined to disregard his advice and start breaking into substations just to avoid being this uncool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B908knwHR10

yesitsme

There was a story a few weeks back about some Irish (I think) lasses who got struck by lightning.  They claimed they survived because they were wearing plimsols and the 2mm thick sole had absorbed Thor's handiwork before it glued them to the floor.

I'm not sure how scientific that story is because my ex-copper mate tells a story about two likely lads who were trying to strip railway lines for scrap.  To stop them being subject to the laws of physics they'd put on Marigold gloves.

My mates says when he got there they were still on fire.

Rizla

Was it the EU that put paid to the parctice of selling appliances with bare wires? Spoilsports.

When we were teens my pal was trying to plug in a guitar amp but the plug had no back, so, having pushed in the earth wire prong with no issues (and thus opening up the little apertures for the other 2) he tried to use his thumbs to push the live and neutral pins into the 4-gang. He quickly realised his mistake.

wooders1978

I was removing and replacing a broke light switch cover admiring how good a "like a pro" job I was doing until I accidentally touched the live wire and gave myself a right old judder - thinking about it "a pro" would probably have switched off the leccy before commencing work

Sebastian Cobb

I had an fm tuner that took its power from the amplifier by a 2 pin plug. I got shocked on a couple of occasions reaching round the back and trying to plug it in by feel.

buzby

Quote from: Rizla on September 24, 2018, 12:50:22 PM
Was it the EU that put paid to the parctice of selling appliances with bare wires? Spoilsports.
Nope, it was the The Plugs and Sockets etc. (Safety) Regulations 1994, which predates the EU's  equivalent Low Voltage Directive.

Sebastian Cobb

The problem with that regulation is when one of your cheap shitty appliances that uses a cheap non moulded plug has the plug disintegrate and leave the business end in a socket you don't have any spare plugs lying around (mk ones obvs), so have to tape the thing back together with insulation tape.