peter green wrote:

> How many people here can honestly say they've never had a shock off the 
mains or off some other experiment they have been doing (the shock that
made me jump the most was actually a situation pretty similar to this
except instead of mains it was the output of a homemade inverter cuircuit
built by a friend (i won't mention his name but he is also on this list).
IIRC it measured about 700V open cuircuit but didn't have much current drive.

Ummmm, how about being an idiot and flicking one's finger through the hot flame
of a Jacobs Ladder to see how hot it was? Unfortunately I forgot that the
neon sign transformer I was using was center tap grounded (10KV 30mA 60Hz),
so I got 5KV AC for about 3 cycles. Felt like an elephant had kicked me in
the chest. Luckily I was smart enough to have a friend in the room at the time
as I fell backwards onto my ass.
(Showing off my 'handiwork'. 6' tall, drawing arcs out to 4")
It was a BARE wire J/L and sometimes the rising arc would hang because the convection
currents were not strong enough.
We had fun cutting rings of florescent tubing off a bad tube, by blocking the
arc rise with the tube, and as it heated up the arc melted INTO the glass.
Didn't know that hot glass was conductive, but did learn this later.
Immediately after the arc melted in, remove tube, and the sudden cooling would
break off a nice little ring of glass. Weird, but fun at the time.


Looked like this, but MUCH taller.
http://www.phys.ufl.edu/demo/5_ElectricityMagnetism/L_ACCircuits/Jacobsladder.html


I never forgot the 'being kicked' feeling so now I ALWAYS wear CSA approved footware
(electrical rating) and 'one hand in the pocket' when mucking with HV laser/PMT
power supplies or TV's.

Robert
6 lives to go...

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