> 1c. Favorite prank in pre-eng lab classes was charging large caps up to 600V
> and tossing them to a friend. We survived though we could never resist the
> temptation to catch the cap ;-)

When I was an apprentice, the company used many capacitors made by Philips, and
two particular capacitors we used were in the same size can. One was an 8uF 350V
which was used in a marine transceiver the company built, and the other was a
64uF 64V used in an audio amplifier. The favourite trick of a couple of the
apprentices was to charge an 8uF cap up to 500V using an insulation tester, then
one apprentice would come up to one of the women on the production line who was
fitting 64uF caps into PCB's. he would engage the women in conversation while
another apprentice approached on the "blind" side with a charged capacitor
carefully held in his hand. He would drop this in the box of 64uF caps, and then
both apprentices would wander away. A couple of minutes later there would be a
yelp from the woman as she reached for the next cap to put in the circuit board.
After this happened two or three times, they got very wary of any approaching
apprentice, and would look through the box carefully, as they found the odd
capacitor out generally had a slightly different colour insulation tape on it.
It then became a game of one apprentice approaching and talking without another
one dropping anything in the box, and watching the search after he left.