GreenDustHome renovations
DaveOk but for real, that wouldn’t work, right? How would them holding it complete the circuit? The circuit is just gonna be from one screw to the top of the pole back through another screw, not the part the person is holding.
You can short the terminals on a car battery with your body with no issue (there’s a theory that that’s why you see it in movies so much - if anyone actually tries it the studio isn’t giving them an idea that actually works. Same with duct-tape gags and chloroform), but it might melt the hardware and set the floor on fire which would be fun! What they should really do is connect a HV source and charge up the pole. Won’t cause any lasting harm, but hopefully it’ll convince them they drove a screw through a live wire.
asbestosWho the hell told you you can short a car battery with your body? You absolutely can’t.
A short circuit is when you provide a path for electricity to travel directly from A to B.
You can’t do this by touching the battery terminals because your dry skin won’t transmit the electicity. You’re just touching battery terminals.
If you hold a AA battery in between your finger and thumb, you’re also not short circuiting it. You’re just holding it by its terminals.
But if you hold an unfolded paperclip to both sides, you are shorting it.
As far as I know, there is not a large population using “short circuit” the way you were (just touching a battery terminals).
No, there is absolutely current flowing when you touch both terminals, it’s just an incredibly tiny amount. You can do the math yourself and see, it’s a basic application of Ohms law. The formula is (I=V/R). The reason you feel the tingles from a 9 volt you lick vs one you touch with your finger is that the resistance is much lower when licked, allowing more current to be produced - but the resistance is not infinite when you touch it with your finger, it’s just high enough that you do not notice the tingling from the small amount of current that results from a circuit with such high resistance (also it travels across the surface and on a much less sensitive part of your anatomy etc. etc.)
Shorts are unintended low impedance paths.
it’s just an incredibly tiny amount Indicates you are not describing a short.
Sure, there is technically current flowing, but it is small enough to be considered an open circuit for engineering purposes. There is leakage current for every insulator, we don’t call it a short.
(I’m sorry I hate doing these point by point breakdowns, it lacks narrative structure and flair, but I’m tired…)
but it is small enough to be considered an open circuit for engineering purposes.
The current flowing when you complete the circuit with with your hand is about 0.2 miliamps (measured at ~47,000Ω resistance so I rounded to 50k). If any engineer is considering that an open circuit they should be driven through the streets in a waymo I would very much like to see the application in which they consider that an open circuit because none is springing to mind (outside of clear outliers like some of the really weird switches used in high voltage electronics which I can’t even remember the names of).
Shorts are unintended low impedance paths.
That is one type of short, yes, however if we look at the closest thing we’re going to find to a broadly accepted formal definition (the one from wikipedia:)
A short circuit is an abnormal connection between two nodes of an electric circuit intended to be at different voltages. This results in a current limited only by the Thévenin equivalent resistance of the rest of the network which can cause circuit damage, overheating, fire or explosion.
We can see that it is not actually a requirement to have a circuit with low/no impedance; it’s just a common form a short takes. The actual requirement is a circuit with lower impedance than the intended circuit. This makes sense of course: a short across a signal wire is obviously not going to dump the full potential of an entire system, only that portion which provides current to the shorting circuit. It would similarly still be considered a short if the conductor shorting the signal wire were a high-impedence resistor that was causing a false signal - so long as it’s enough to trip whatever sensor is at the other end, it would be a fault caused by a short circuit. In the case of a car battery, the leakage current is part of an absurdly low current circuit (something like 30 picoamps) which you are shorting when you make contact with the terminals. The difference between a circuit with kilohms of resistance and one with near gigaohms of resistance is phenomenal.
However at the risk of still being right, let me say that this is an incredibly pointless semantic argument to be having. Yes, technically, you are shorting the battery. In a more formal setting I probably wouldn’t have phrased it like that in an effort to stave off the chance of a tedious argument like we’re having right now; however this is a shitpost community so I figured brevity instead of defensive technical clarity was the ideal course of action.
Misjudged that one, didn’t I.
(Edit: clarity, removed horny joke. This is no joking matter.)
Cool, til. I guess it is semantic then wether a short is low-resistance or any connection.
Iirc, even the air has a resistance value, so that would imply that all batteries are shorted at all times which doesn’t seem useful for the English language.
A quite reasonable argument could be made that a battery simply sitting around is only connected to one circuit (itself thru the air) and thus there’s not an “unintended” one it’s also connected to that could be considered a short - but really, my unstated point this whole time is that this is not a usefully rigorously defined term. The definition on wikipedia is as close as we’ll get, and it’s extremely broad by it’s nature.
tomiant
FubarberryThe way you worded it makes it sound like it’s very easy to short a battery with your body, not that attempting to short a battery will cause “no issue” because it won’t actually work.
I’m aware - I very intentionally spared everyone the lecture on the mechanics of how this works because it is, on the whole, very boring. However if we really wanted to get into the boring technical details nobody but us cares about then yes, you are indeed shorting the battery, it’s just for a ludicrously small amount of current. Ohms law (I = V/R) gives us that.
Thing is, you also called it “shorting” the battery. Usually a short is an unintended, unsustainable low resistance path.
While your body may technically close the circuit, calling it a short makes it sound like an actual electricution risk. That combined with the unclear “no issue” usage made it pretty confusing, I thought you had no idea what you were talking about until I saw your reply.
It’s just the common parlance. I wouldn’t have done this were it a more technical setting, but this is a shitpost community - so I’ll just have to beg forgiveness for my imprecision. Fortunately, should anyone go to test this by fondling their car’s terminals, no harm will befall them due to my lack of strict accuracy in the description here (though they might get rebuffed by their car if it’s not in the mood).
Oooh, because we’re too dumb to understand the finer details of electrical engineering, is that it? IS THAT IT?
Because yeah I am too dumb to understand even the coarser details of electrical engineering.
socsaThat’s not a short, by definition.
Isn’t it? You’re shorting the battery terminals by connecting them directly, it’s just a shitty wire lol
AkasazhThe body is a resistor, limiting the fire of the system in the same way if a lamp would be in the circuit.
A short is a circuit with ideally no impedance, there isn’t an ideal circuit and one can debate how much resistance would invalidate the term ‘short circuit’ so both of you might be right.
What’s a “level engineer”?
Nah, that wouldn’t. But if you connected just the hot line (right eye of the outlet smiley face) that would do it. Wouldn’t recommend it because you could kill them by electrocution or kill even more people with a fire.
I mean, a car battery isn’t going to do anything even if you could complete a circuit. You can just grab the terminals on a car battery, 12V isn’t high enough to be noticeable on dry skin.
You’d want to solder on the hot lead of an extension cord hooked up to 120 if you wanted to make sure they never touch that pole again.
Disclaimer: don’t do this, it’ll probably kill.
A electric horse fence is a better option. Will zing you but isn’t lethal and also has an intermittent current. Specifically designed to be touched by living things without harm. But stay away from cattle fencing, that can kill someone with a heart condition.
ikiddI think there is potential for some non lethal zapping if done right (one terminal to the poles other to ground)
Your skin is where most of the body’s resistance is, and electrocution / shock can occur at much lower voltages if applied internally/ to a cut.
There’s an urban legend about a navy Electrical engineer stopping his heart by trying to measure his internal resistance with a voltmeter- he stabbed one probe into each of his thumbs and the portion of a single volt the meter uses to test resistance going across his heart was enough to cause afib.
Now, with pole dancing, theres some potential, for a sweaty bikini to make contact with both an electrified pole and the interior of the dancer’s labia, conducting enough electricity to impart a noticeable shock.
No matter the voltage though, I think the main problem is the body being part of the least resistive, or any, path to ground. Unless the screws holding the bottom of the pole also protruded through the downstairs neighbor’s ceiling, and you run the negative wire out your window and into theirs, connecting both ends of the pole to the battery…
Even if you had wires on both ends of the pole, nothing would go into the person because the path of least resistance would be the pole. You would have to energize the pole and directly connect the person to the other wire in order to complete the circuit. Then the resistance of the human body becomes an issue, and using this paper as a reference, the worst case scenario of internal body resistance is ~300 ohm, and the threshold for immediate cardiac symptoms is ~100 mA.
Then, 12V / 300 ohm = 40 mA. So closer than I’d like, but probably not fatal even in the absolute worst case scenario where there is no electrical resistance provided by the skin and a direct electrical path through the heart.
Conduction of Electrical Current to and Through the Human Body: A Review
Objective: The objective of this article is to explain ways in which electric current is conducted to and through the human body and how this influences the nature of injuries. Methods: This multidisciplinary topic is explained by first reviewing ...
Not if the person two floors downstairs is in on it
mercFor someone to get electrocuted, the current needs to flow through their body. Electricity always follows the path of least resistance, so there’s basically no way to do that from upstairs.
If you attach both terminals of the battery (or a stripped extension wire) that wouldn’t do it. Assuming the pole is conductive, the electricity would just go into the screws, into the pole, across to the other screw and out. If the pole isn’t conductive it would probably do nothing at all. Maybe the floor is conductive, in which case it would go into the screw, through the floor/ceiling and out the other screw. There’s just no way to do it where the electricity flows from a screw, down the pole, into the body of the pole dancer, then somehow back out and up to the battery.
Even if the person who owned the stripper pole wanted to electrocute themselves it would be difficult. Assuming the pole is conductive, if you attached one electrode near the ceiling and one near the floor, the electricity would just flow through the pole. It wouldn’t make a detour to go through the body of the pole dancer. You’d basically have to clip one side of the battery to your toe, the other side to the stripper pole, and then grab the pole with your hands. And, even then, it might not do it – you’d have to have sweaty hands and toes to make the path through your body conductive.
I really hate the movie trope where people can get electrocuted by stepping into a puddle that has something electricity-related in it. It’s almost as bad as the trope that you get blasted backwards if you’re hit by a bullet / shotgun blast.
so there’s basically no way to do that from upstairs.
Incorrect.
stripper poles are tubes and spin on bearings. follow these instructions and you can most certainly electrocute someone with one.
- make sure you’re using a 30amp breaker and switch
- prepare your butthole for the cops when they show up
- accept you probably just killed a person. two stupids don’t make a less stupid.
🤣 I really didn’t. I used to be a contractor and just understand how this stuff works.
best way to not kill yourself is to know the thousands of ways to die.
why not give it a try and come back to tell me I’m wrong.
I don’t need to, because I know how electrical circuits work. I don’t think you do. But, go on, explain why I’m wrong.
I didn’t know I was talking to a professional here!
what would be the resistance of a plate of 16 gauge aluminum over 9 feet long?
I’ll answer that for you, but first tell me what the (typical, average, ballpark) resistance of a human body is.
totally depends on conditions.
for a typical dry adult hand with a moderate to heavy amount of calloused skin, it’s around 100k Ω. add any type of moisture or water like sweat it will be far less.
btw did you know the skin is the primary conduit of electrical conductively? only HV is a real danger to your organs because it permeates through all tissue.
side note. the internal resistance of the human body sits around 200-400 Ω.
so, what’s the resistance of a 16 gauge plate of aluminum that’s 9 feet long? in all honesty it’s probably more likely to be 22 gauge though. which one would have the lower resistance?
So, a fair estimate for a human body’s resistance is about 1000 Ω. That’s a case when the hands are sweaty, or there’s an open wound, or other cases where the skin isn’t acting as a massive resistor and blocking any current from flowing.
According to this chart, a 16 gauge sheet of metal is about 1.5 mm thick. A 22 gauge is about 0.76 mm thick. I’m going to go in metric since everything is so much more straightforward.
So, 9 feet long is about 3m long. Apparently stripper poles typically come in 38, 45 and 50mm diameters, so, let’s go for the smallest one to have the highest possible resistance. So, 38mm diameter means a circumference of 0.038 * Pi = 0.12m. So, the area of the pole is its circumference multiplied by its thickness, or about 0.12 * 0.00076 = approx 0.00009 m^2 (9*10^-5 m^2).
To calculate the resistance of something you need its resistivity. This table gives resistivities for common materials. Aluminum is listed at 2.82×10−8 Ωm. To calculate the resistance given the resistivity, cross-sectional area and length you plug the values into:
R = ρL / A
R = 3E-8Ωm * 3m / 0.00009m^2 = 3E-8 * 3 / 9E-5 = 0.333 E-3 = 3E-4Ω
Or, about 0.3 milliohms, or 300 microohms.
As a check, you can compare it to the resistance of a wire. Another chart gives the resistance of wires of various gauges at 1000 ft, or approx 300m. So, a 3m length of wire is going to be roughly 1/100th of that resistance. The values in the chart are on the order of 1 ohm at 300m, so 0.01 ohms (10 milliohms) at 3m. Of course, wires are much thinner than a whole pole, but wires are also designed to be good conductors, but 0.3 milliohms vs. 10 milliohms seems like we’re in the right ballpark. So, even if the neighbour was dangling from a length of AWG 14 wire, and it was somehow not breaking, even then she’d be in no danger of electrocution.
This is all just back of the envelope estimation, but we’re talking 6 orders of magnitude difference in resistance. No matter what the pole is made of, or how thin it is, it’s still metal, and metal has much lower resistance than flesh. The current is going to stay in the pole, and the pole dancer is in no danger.
What makes you think that will work? That sounds like a very complicated way of just connecting the common to live with no human in the loop.
Ikr, this at least makes the pole get hot because current is actually running through part of it.
But at no point is a human part of the path of least resistance for the electricity.
But at no point is a human part of the path of least resistance for the electricity.
the pole wouldn’t get hot unless it was made of a ferrous metal like steel or iron. most of these poles should be made of aluminum.
You’re confusing induction heating with resistant heating.
the gauge of metal the pole is made from is pretty thin. on top of that, it’s very likely to be made from aluminum.
if electricity follows the path of least resistance, it would be through the person.
Ok, you’re still failing here. The water content of a human body is irrelevant. A large contact area is irrelevant.
Let me make it easier for you. As I’m sure you know, to be electrocuted an electrical current needs to flow through someone’s body. What part of the neighbour’s body is the current going to enter, and which part is it going to leave?