Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari.oz.au!bruce!trlluna!rhea!aduncan
From: aduncan@rhea.trl.oz (Allan Duncan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: 1950 vertical jitter SOLUTION (safety note)
Message-ID: <2401@trlluna.trl.oz>
Date: 25 Oct 90 22:58:02 GMT
References: <1990Oct23.181851.15787@dg-rtp.dg.com>
Sender: news@trlluna.trl.oz
Lines: 28

From article <1990Oct23.181851.15787@dg-rtp.dg.com>, by poirier@ellerbe.rtp.dg.com (Charles Poirier):
...
> This caution needs to be added to.  Some wires still have those 10,000+
> volts EVEN AFTER THE POWER IS TURNED OFF and this very high voltage can
> persist for DAYS due to charged capacitors.  These voltages can ARC through
> 1/4 inch or more of AIR.  If it discharges through your body, it will
> likely kill you.
  ^^^^^^

Not really, give you a nasty shock and maybe a small burn at the arc
point, that's all.  However, if you had an iffy heart, it might foul up.
Not worth the risk of deliberately being careless though.

A point of interest, if you plot death rate against voltage and
frequency, it has a peak at 50Hz and 240V (or thereabouts), just the
supply system in this country (and Europe)!  There are many cases of
survival of _direct_ contact with 22,000 volt lines - the usual cause of
death is burns, not electrocution.  This is because the heart is clamped
by the high current, then released when the breaker trips or contact is
lost.  50uA of 50Hz through the heart sends it into fibrillations where
it doesn't pump.  In this case the medicos use the equivalent of the
stored charge in the monitor to stop these!


Allan Duncan	ACSnet	a.duncan@trl.oz
(03) 541 6708	ARPA	a.duncan%trl.oz.au@uunet.uu.net
		UUCP	{uunet,hplabs,ukc}!munnari!trl.oz!a.duncan
Telecom Research Labs, PO Box 249, Clayton, Victoria, 3168, Australia.