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From: raoul@eplunix.UUCP (Nico Garcia)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics,alt.sex
Subject: Re: HELP!
Message-ID: <1012@eplunix.UUCP>
Date: 29 Jan 91 18:10:11 GMT
References: <1991Jan19.052458.7449@wam.umd.edu> <1991Jan28.190057.1874@sj.ate.slb.com>
Organization: Eaton-Peabody Lab, Boston, MA
Lines: 33

In article <1991Jan28.190057.1874@sj.ate.slb.com>, poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger) writes:
> A Van de Graff generator produces STATIC electricity. STATIC electricity is far
> less dangerous than conventional electricity, partly due to the very low
> currents that are present. The other is the fact that STATIC electricity
> tends to remain on the surface of an object as stored charges.

Does anyone else find the above statement as silly as I do? Look, charge
builds up on things because of capacitive effects and materials differences.
(Look up how a Van de Graff [sic?] generator works.) The reason static
charges cause so little grief is that although the voltages involved may be
high, the total energy/charge/current*time available from a rotten capacitor
like your body is too small to cause real damage (except to ESD chips....)
But if you do something stupid with a powerful source, like stand in a
puddle while licking a highly charged Van de Graff, there is enough energy
there to hurt you. There is nothing magically safer about it, it's like
comparing matches to firewood. The difference is one of scale, not type.

There are a couple of different ways current can kill you. One is to cook
you until you are well done, the most difficult. Another is to burn critical
nerves or tissues, such as your spinal cord or brain.  The most common by
far, I think, is to disrupt your cardiac rhythm.  If you jolt the nerves
of the heart out of normal rhythm, you make it difficult if not impossible
for them to follow the rhythms of the heart's nodes. Each muscle starts
twitching independently, and they don't all recover from their last pulse in
time to pulse together, so things stay confused. This is called cardiac
fibrillation, and this will definitely kill you. It only takes a few mA in
the right place and fashion to do it.

Followups in email, please: I think we've seen enough of this on the list.
-- 
			Nico Garcia
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