Sharing some electric shock experiences

[Infraviolet]

I was in my teens when I got my biggest one, a 400V DC one, from a camera flash capacitor. I knew there was high voltage in there, the remains of a disposable camera, and wanted to get it out and see if I could make tiny arcs with it, but hadn't given the cap time to discharge before I got out the pointy screwdriver to pry open the casing. The thing that gave me the real surprise was that I got the shock while holding the camera's PCB from the sides (must have been copper right to the edges escaping from under soldermask), rather than just the obvious metallic soldered bits which I thought, at the time, to be the only conductors that the cap would be able to energise. Paralysed a whole arm for about a second, then there were quite a few minutes to hours with the hand and forearm feeeling somewhat unnatural.

It seems capacitors are the pretty common theme on this thread, including being shocked by them even when you knew they were there. after my shock I learnt enough to tear down disposable cameras and get the high voltage bit I wanted whilst knowing how to get rid of the big electrolytic before bringing the hands anywhere near it, so I could get the high voltage I wanted to try things with but at the low current I knew couldn't be too nasty. Less memorable, more amusing, shocks followed, some entirely deliberately self inflicted, once I had 400V dc at negligible current directly from the camera circuits' step-up transformer output.

Also: this might be controversial, but a little bit of a dictionary definitions argument comes up here. I didn't follow the link to the article, but the 11KV shock in wolverhampton, well if the man was "electrocuted" how does he then go on to give a past-tense quote about his experience. I had always worked under the definition that if anybody, however severely injured, can ever report about what it was like, it was an electric shock (or electrical burn...). To call something an electrocution, is it not the case that the person undergoing it, by definition, does not live to tell the tale?

[IanB]

Also: this might be controversial, but a little bit of a dictionary definitions argument comes up here. I didn't follow the link to the article, but the 11KV shock in wolverhampton, well if the man was "electrocuted" how does he then go on to give a past-tense quote about his experience. I had always worked under the definition that if anybody, however severely injured, can ever report about what it was like, it was an electric shock (or electrical burn...). To call something an electrocution, is it not the case that the person undergoing it, by definition, does not live to tell the tale?

If you follow the link to the BBC news article, you find that it was the BBC journalist who made this mistake. You can't even trust the BBC to have good editors these days.

[themadhippy]

To call something an electrocution, is it not the case that the person undergoing it, by definition, does not live to tell the tale?

That was also my understanding,but the goalpost have moved and the definition of  electrocution is  now death or sever injury from electric shock

[EPAIII]

Mothers need to be made of stout stuff.

My one (and only) electric shock happened when I was three years old and stuck a butter knife into an electric outlet. I guess I learned my lesson.

That was my age at introduction to electricity via a shock too.  My mom threw away a bad extension cord.  I dug it out of the trash and plugged it in.  The frayed end was the plug...   She said she heard a big bang, ran into the kitchen to find me sitting on the floor with a shocked look [pun intended] on my face, my hand blackened and a cloud of smoke rising in the air.  Probably, I think, I mostly got a slight burn from the arc.  But she said I was hooked on all things electric after that.  So I credit my entire career and hobbies to that shock.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I've had my share over the years, nothing too serious luckily. One near miss - I once replaced all the caps on the secondary side of a SMPSU and then realised it had been powered on the  whole time!

[Sal Ammoniac]

One popular prank people liked to pull in my college physics labs (that I never indulged in) was to charge a doorknob capacitor to some high voltage and toss it to an unsuspecting fellow student. The strong instinct to catch the tossed capacitors resulted in nasty shocks.

[chris_leyson]

I once pulled the eht lead off a BW crt to get a nice arc to the chassis while the TV was powered up. Wondered how long an arc I could get and gradually increased the distance to the chassis. Suddenly the shortest path to earth was directly to my hand. Was thrown backwards across the room and luckily didn't hit anything in the way. Sat there shaking and sweating. Explains why I avoid CRTs.

[chris_leyson]

The other equally dumb thing I did was feel around inside an HF transmitter automatic antenna matching unit. They were tuned up at 15W or 20W or so and they usually failed poor SWR match because of a badly soldered litz wire termination on one of tuning coils. The badly soldered coil would usually run warm and could be found by using the back of you hand. One time I forgot to switch off the RF and managed to generate a nice arc between a knuckle and a coil termination. I thought "wow that's cool" and thought  nothing of it. Woke up in the middle of the night thinking 'wow my hand hurts'. There was a blister the size of a small marble and it took about a month to heal up. Good job it low power.

[Phil1977]

One popular prank people liked to pull in my college physics labs (that I never indulged in) was to charge a doorknob capacitor to some high voltage and toss it to an unsuspecting fellow student. The strong instinct to catch the tossed capacitors resulted in nasty shocks.

It always was great fun to let charged foil capacitors of 100nF to 1uF laying around the laboratory and wait until someone grabs them at the wires... It was kind of the year 2000 style of an electrical safety briefing.

[themadhippy]

It always was great fun to let charged foil capacitors of 100nF to 1uF laying around the laboratory and wait until someone grabs them at the wires

In the early days of my career i worked a lot with micc (pyro) cable ,it also makes a decent capacitor that can hold the 500v test voltage from a megger for a fair bit of time,needless to say you soon got in the habit of shorting the ends out before terminating,and became quiet good at avoiding stuff being chucked at you by others on site who'd accidently come into contact with the bare ends

[Bud]

My wrist accidentally touching 700V on the plate of a RF tube amplifier. I was thrown by good 6 feet from the amp, smell of burned flash in the room. A 2 inch long scar on the wrist from dragging across the plate remained for the next 5 years.