Everything in your kitchen requires high power as well as your washer dryer. Also desktop computers. And power tools.
I suppose you could wire the rest of your house to be 5V and have USB ports.
Or just don’t be an idiot, but, murphy’s law and all that.
God-tier Electrician here. Getting shocked by 480/277 volts will cause you to reconsider your life choices, volunteer at an old folks home, and in general, appreciate your life.
120 tickles, 240 hurts in my experience. Watched my boss blow the the top jaw of his kleins off working on a 15 ton unit he was fine just reconsidered a few things, wearing flip flops whilst standing in a few inches of water whilst dicking around with 480 wasn't one of them., Was a lesson I won't soon forget.
I accidentally electrocuted myself with a crushed locomotive mu cable through winter gloves. It was crazy because I could feel both my arms and my chest tense up like I wasn’t going to be able to let go of the cable. I don’t know how much power went through my chest but it was pretty freaky.
It was pretty quick but my left arm dropped the latching lid while my right arm held on. The dude across from me saw me step back in shock and was equally spooked when he saw what happened. The cable doesn’t even transmit real power, just signals. We have gigantic 480 cables we plug in that can definitely kill you and I’m even more sketched out now because you have to use both hands to plug those in, too.
>cable doesn’t even transmit real power, just signals
Weird af. Def get those high voltage rated gloves, tell your boss he just dodged multi million lawsuit if he'll give you attitude
10 months ago
Anonymous
I looked up the standard(which is quite old) and it's 0-74V DC for each pin.
So definitely a lot higher than I thought, but it shouldn't be outright lethal.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Welders manage to die now and then by welding in puddles etc. That voltage is in the decent commercial welding machine OCV (Open Circuit Voltage) range.
I will say this though, I've been shocked by the rail changing out some points when it had been raining and my gloves were wet and I was holding a hydraulic impact wrench. I think that's only like 12V, but if it's close to the source for the signal system it's enough to give you a pretty good shock.
I'd sooner believed that rail were live than any of those.
10 months ago
Anonymous
The rails sometimes are technically live.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_circuit
10 months ago
Anonymous
If there are crossing gates and lights nearby, a current is run through the rails. There's some hardware and software in those silver boxes next to the crossing that judges how fast the train is coming and decides when to have the gates and lights activate.
Naturally there is also a current if it's in signalized territory and some other cases to control switches and other equipment.
I got shocked from a server power supply that somehow didn't have it's plug isolated so when i unplugged it and touched the prongs i got a shock from the caps inside.
Felt like time slowed down and i left my body. Hole hand went numb.
It happened multiple times because A. I'm moronic and B. Whoever designed that power supply is too
Got shocked by 220V when I was unplugging the washing machine once.
Shit was while, for that split second, I can feel the electricity snaking through my arm torward my chest and heart.
Basement flooded two feet high, but for whatever reason the breaker didn't flip. Felt tingly. Was was resetting the crock sump (which is four feet off the ground).
I didn't think it was that bad, but mine was 100ft down on an extension cord made out of old temp box cable.
My moronic ass was unplugging it and I hit 2 lugs with my finger.
Was numb for a couple seconds.
It's perfectly possible, but you would need huge wires, transformers and breakers to carry the hundreds of amps required to feed appliances at non lethal voltage.
Besides, we already have GFCI and if you electrocute yourself between phases you deserve it.
nah you totally can
t. got painfully zapped touching one wire with one hand on the ninth floor of a building, with shoes with rubber soles on
if I was standing barefoot on water it could be dangerous
>Why does the outlet have to have so much power that if you stick a fork in it it kills you?
Your thinking is a misconception.
Electricity at low voltages (under 1 000 V) is not particularly violent as a brutal murder from a bullet or blunt impact. Sure, you can get severely injured from Arc Flash, but death from Arc Flash is rare at low voltages.
The real cause of death is due to the body using moving ions as signals, low frequency currents of above about 3 mA will disrupt these signals and continued exposure to the heart will cause fibrillation (abnormal heartbeat) which can then cause death.
Black person I've been electrocuted at least a dozen times from a number of sources and 120v outlets are mildly unpleasant at best. Tazer was probably the worst, followed by an ignition coil. Apparently capacitors can ruin your day but I can't personally attest to that.
>death from single or two phase outlets
You either have to be extremely moronic, suicidal, or really, really unlucky for that to happen. Hell, the most likely thing to happen if you stick a fork in an outlet is that you cause a small arc flash, scorch and melt the outlet, and trip the circuit breaker. The risk of injury is pretty small, and is generally going to be thermal burns from the fork getting red hot, not something like your heart going afib or cardiac arrest.
the things you plug into the outlet draw a lot of power.
you only need something like 100 ma of current flow through your body or 10 ma through your heart to kill you. skin's resistance is pretty high but wet hands can change this quickly.
It's also very dependent on where the current flows through the body, and how long you're being shocked. Although, yes, being wet will make it easier for current to pierce your skin.
volts are not what kill you, its amps
>volts vs. amps discussion
I'm honestly half tempted to make a chart discussing the variables involved in the intensity and lethality of a shock. I wouldn't include voltage in it, though, beyond the question of whether or not it's at or above 60v, because it is otherwise just a variable that controls how much current is going to flow through you. There's also what you're wearing, personal skin chemistry, the nature of what you're being shocked by, etc., but that's a discussion of its own.
AC power is pretty much safe electricity because when the electricity starts to penetrate into your finger it then pulls back and does this really fast so it only damages the top sin layer
I once stuck a paperclip in the wall socket, which is 240V here.
Weirdly enough, I didn't really feel anything besides the red-hot paperclip burning my hand.
Can someone explain why that is?
I was pondering about this recently and the best thesis I could come up with is that my body's resistance was so high compared to the paperclip's, that the current just flowed through it and not through me.
The only current flowing through you would be that which goes from the receptacle, through the paperclip, into your hand and then out of your feet/shoes to try to find its way back to the source. Electricity flows in a circuit.
Often times, the circumstances with your dry skin, clothing, flooring, shoes, etc doesn't form a very conducive path for electricity to flow and you don't get a bad shock. If you had been barefoot on a wet surface, you would probably have had much different results.
AC power is pretty much safe electricity because when the electricity starts to penetrate into your finger it then pulls back and does this really fast so it only damages the top sin layer
At the top of that list: people who don't know what "electrocution" means.
Pro tip: If you can talk about it, you were just shocked, not electrocuted-
>The term "electrocution" was coined in 1889 in the US just before the first use of the electric chair and originally referred to only electrical execution and not other electrical deaths. However, since no English word was available for non-judicial deaths due to electric shock, the word "electrocution" eventually took over as a description of all circumstances of electrical death from the new commercial electricity.
but it's the volts that cause amps. depending on the resistance. so all three of them participate.
It's also very dependent on where the current flows through the body, and how long you're being shocked. Although, yes, being wet will make it easier for current to pierce your skin.
[...] >volts vs. amps discussion
I'm honestly half tempted to make a chart discussing the variables involved in the intensity and lethality of a shock. I wouldn't include voltage in it, though, beyond the question of whether or not it's at or above 60v, because it is otherwise just a variable that controls how much current is going to flow through you. There's also what you're wearing, personal skin chemistry, the nature of what you're being shocked by, etc., but that's a discussion of its own.
https://youtu.be/BGD-oSwJv3E
Actually it's resistance that determines whether you live or not.
it's almost like volts and amps are actually related
frequency of the source also matters, since people (or anything, really) aren't purely ohmic devices
also your body's actual physical response to the electricity (high enough frequencies your body doesn't respond to, still harms you because of that resistance and so burning you, but you don't get shocked)
Also don't forget that lower frequency and especially DC is more dangerous than AC. For example you could touch a hot flyback transformer at 10KV 15Khz AC and it is not going to kill you due to the skin effect.
I've been shocked by 120 and 240 so many times that it doesn't even bother me. It isn't even painful, really, just a very uncomfortable tickling sensation. The only part that actually hurts is when I arc something and it burns my hand or whatever, but that rarely leaves more than a blister and a cool scar
I was watching some videos on power supply design and the guy doing the demonstration had like three power transformers between him and the wall and he had rubber gloves on that can withstand 600 V and rubber boots. I have been cured of ever wanting to build a power supply from scratch.
Unless the output voltage is greater than mains voltage the guy's just paranoid, a normal power supply is safe after the step down transformer, that is if you're not a moron and unplug it and discharge all the caps before starting to work on it
I've actually been electrocuted by an outlet.
There was a plug sticking out, I bent down push it back in, I was holding keys and one slipped out and made contact. It felt like my bones were grinded. Anyways the breaker turned off and that was that.
darwin test.
ridding the gene pool of lesser "humans".
Yeah but you'll be able to power jack shit
Everything in your kitchen requires high power as well as your washer dryer. Also desktop computers. And power tools.
I suppose you could wire the rest of your house to be 5V and have USB ports.
Or just don’t be an idiot, but, murphy’s law and all that.
>120V
>Deadly
Maybe if you're a child, elderly, or holding onto it for an extended period.
This. I got shocked with 240v for a water heater when j was like 16 and boy that was somethin
I work with 480. I haven't shocked myself yet but I'm not excited about the idea.
God-tier Electrician here. Getting shocked by 480/277 volts will cause you to reconsider your life choices, volunteer at an old folks home, and in general, appreciate your life.
120 tickles, 240 hurts in my experience. Watched my boss blow the the top jaw of his kleins off working on a 15 ton unit he was fine just reconsidered a few things, wearing flip flops whilst standing in a few inches of water whilst dicking around with 480 wasn't one of them., Was a lesson I won't soon forget.
I got warm fuzzies from a 240 just today. It made me sing like a female opera singer and my worker laughed uncontrollably.
I accidentally electrocuted myself with a crushed locomotive mu cable through winter gloves. It was crazy because I could feel both my arms and my chest tense up like I wasn’t going to be able to let go of the cable. I don’t know how much power went through my chest but it was pretty freaky.
Considering you're still alive it would be less than 50mA. Also how have you managed to let go of the live cable or did mate give you solid?
It was pretty quick but my left arm dropped the latching lid while my right arm held on. The dude across from me saw me step back in shock and was equally spooked when he saw what happened. The cable doesn’t even transmit real power, just signals. We have gigantic 480 cables we plug in that can definitely kill you and I’m even more sketched out now because you have to use both hands to plug those in, too.
>cable doesn’t even transmit real power, just signals
Weird af. Def get those high voltage rated gloves, tell your boss he just dodged multi million lawsuit if he'll give you attitude
I looked up the standard(which is quite old) and it's 0-74V DC for each pin.
http://www.railway-technical.com/trains/rolling-stock-index-l/diesel-locomotives/us-locomotive-mu-control.html
So definitely a lot higher than I thought, but it shouldn't be outright lethal.
Welders manage to die now and then by welding in puddles etc. That voltage is in the decent commercial welding machine OCV (Open Circuit Voltage) range.
It can kill you.
https://nasdonline.org/1849/d001793/farmer-dies-when-electrocuted-while-welding-feed-bunker.html
I didn't think the MU cables had much going through them. Just signaling and whatever so it would be 5V and some piddly amps.
I will say this though, I've been shocked by the rail changing out some points when it had been raining and my gloves were wet and I was holding a hydraulic impact wrench. I think that's only like 12V, but if it's close to the source for the signal system it's enough to give you a pretty good shock.
I'd sooner believed that rail were live than any of those.
The rails sometimes are technically live.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_circuit
If there are crossing gates and lights nearby, a current is run through the rails. There's some hardware and software in those silver boxes next to the crossing that judges how fast the train is coming and decides when to have the gates and lights activate.
Naturally there is also a current if it's in signalized territory and some other cases to control switches and other equipment.
I got shocked from a server power supply that somehow didn't have it's plug isolated so when i unplugged it and touched the prongs i got a shock from the caps inside.
Felt like time slowed down and i left my body. Hole hand went numb.
It happened multiple times because A. I'm moronic and B. Whoever designed that power supply is too
Got shocked by 220V when I was unplugging the washing machine once.
Shit was while, for that split second, I can feel the electricity snaking through my arm torward my chest and heart.
Basement flooded two feet high, but for whatever reason the breaker didn't flip. Felt tingly. Was was resetting the crock sump (which is four feet off the ground).
I didn't think it was that bad, but mine was 100ft down on an extension cord made out of old temp box cable.
My moronic ass was unplugging it and I hit 2 lugs with my finger.
Was numb for a couple seconds.
>I got shocked with 240v for a water heater
That's still only 120V to ground. Unless you grabbed both hot legs at the same time.
voltage isn't what kills you, amperage is
I=V/R
It's perfectly possible, but you would need huge wires, transformers and breakers to carry the hundreds of amps required to feed appliances at non lethal voltage.
Besides, we already have GFCI and if you electrocute yourself between phases you deserve it.
You can’t electrocute yourself between phases with a fork you’d need at least two forks
>what is live to ground
You can def shock yourself with just one wire
He means between live and neutral, live to ground will pop the GFCI if you have one.
Not unless you are grounded, which is rare in a house unless you're touching a drain or something
nah you totally can
t. got painfully zapped touching one wire with one hand on the ninth floor of a building, with shoes with rubber soles on
if I was standing barefoot on water it could be dangerous
they can they're called tamper resistant and they're to protect literal babies like you
>Why does the outlet have to have so much power that if you stick a fork in it it kills you?
Your thinking is a misconception.
Electricity at low voltages (under 1 000 V) is not particularly violent as a brutal murder from a bullet or blunt impact. Sure, you can get severely injured from Arc Flash, but death from Arc Flash is rare at low voltages.
The real cause of death is due to the body using moving ions as signals, low frequency currents of above about 3 mA will disrupt these signals and continued exposure to the heart will cause fibrillation (abnormal heartbeat) which can then cause death.
Black person I've been electrocuted at least a dozen times from a number of sources and 120v outlets are mildly unpleasant at best. Tazer was probably the worst, followed by an ignition coil. Apparently capacitors can ruin your day but I can't personally attest to that.
Caps can kill you dead depending on how many Farads it is. But anyone who isn't an actual moron just shorts it on itself to discharge and can proceed.
>anyone who isn't an actual moron
This might actually be what saved me
>death from single or two phase outlets
You either have to be extremely moronic, suicidal, or really, really unlucky for that to happen. Hell, the most likely thing to happen if you stick a fork in an outlet is that you cause a small arc flash, scorch and melt the outlet, and trip the circuit breaker. The risk of injury is pretty small, and is generally going to be thermal burns from the fork getting red hot, not something like your heart going afib or cardiac arrest.
the things you plug into the outlet draw a lot of power.
you only need something like 100 ma of current flow through your body or 10 ma through your heart to kill you. skin's resistance is pretty high but wet hands can change this quickly.
It's also very dependent on where the current flows through the body, and how long you're being shocked. Although, yes, being wet will make it easier for current to pierce your skin.
>volts vs. amps discussion
I'm honestly half tempted to make a chart discussing the variables involved in the intensity and lethality of a shock. I wouldn't include voltage in it, though, beyond the question of whether or not it's at or above 60v, because it is otherwise just a variable that controls how much current is going to flow through you. There's also what you're wearing, personal skin chemistry, the nature of what you're being shocked by, etc., but that's a discussion of its own.
AC power is pretty much safe electricity because when the electricity starts to penetrate into your finger it then pulls back and does this really fast so it only damages the top sin layer
I once stuck a paperclip in the wall socket, which is 240V here.
Weirdly enough, I didn't really feel anything besides the red-hot paperclip burning my hand.
Can someone explain why that is?
I was pondering about this recently and the best thesis I could come up with is that my body's resistance was so high compared to the paperclip's, that the current just flowed through it and not through me.
The only current flowing through you would be that which goes from the receptacle, through the paperclip, into your hand and then out of your feet/shoes to try to find its way back to the source. Electricity flows in a circuit.
Often times, the circumstances with your dry skin, clothing, flooring, shoes, etc doesn't form a very conducive path for electricity to flow and you don't get a bad shock. If you had been barefoot on a wet surface, you would probably have had much different results.
there is a lot of dumb in this thread
>there is a lot of dumb in this thread
At the top of that list: people who don't know what "electrocution" means.
Pro tip: If you can talk about it, you were just shocked, not electrocuted-
>The term "electrocution" was coined in 1889 in the US just before the first use of the electric chair and originally referred to only electrical execution and not other electrical deaths. However, since no English word was available for non-judicial deaths due to electric shock, the word "electrocution" eventually took over as a description of all circumstances of electrical death from the new commercial electricity.
Goodness. Thank you. Pretty amazing how many people regularly misuse that word.
volts are not what kill you, its amps
but it's the volts that cause amps. depending on the resistance. so all three of them participate.
Volts jolt, but mills kill
Actually it's resistance that determines whether you live or not.
it's almost like volts and amps are actually related
frequency of the source also matters, since people (or anything, really) aren't purely ohmic devices
also your body's actual physical response to the electricity (high enough frequencies your body doesn't respond to, still harms you because of that resistance and so burning you, but you don't get shocked)
Also don't forget that lower frequency and especially DC is more dangerous than AC. For example you could touch a hot flyback transformer at 10KV 15Khz AC and it is not going to kill you due to the skin effect.
I've been shocked by 120 and 240 so many times that it doesn't even bother me. It isn't even painful, really, just a very uncomfortable tickling sensation. The only part that actually hurts is when I arc something and it burns my hand or whatever, but that rarely leaves more than a blister and a cool scar
Yeah it's called UK style socket.
If people could easily die from this, electricians would be dropping like flies.
Professional Electricians are very careful. We have to be because of the lethal potential. THAT is why we are not "dropping like flies".
Used to take apart old TVs, I don't play around with that shit anymore hahaha.
Flyaway transformers no joke fr fr
>death proof
decent movie, but why bother making the world safer? just make humans smarter
smart people don't know have to cum inside a vegana.
They can but it means the billions of plugs in north america have to change over.
I was watching some videos on power supply design and the guy doing the demonstration had like three power transformers between him and the wall and he had rubber gloves on that can withstand 600 V and rubber boots. I have been cured of ever wanting to build a power supply from scratch.
Unless the output voltage is greater than mains voltage the guy's just paranoid, a normal power supply is safe after the step down transformer, that is if you're not a moron and unplug it and discharge all the caps before starting to work on it
I've actually been electrocuted by an outlet.
There was a plug sticking out, I bent down push it back in, I was holding keys and one slipped out and made contact. It felt like my bones were grinded. Anyways the breaker turned off and that was that.