People who think that low-voltage DC is always completely harmless should be invited to watch a foot-long 5/8" wrench do an impression of an incandescent light bulb when dropped across the terminals of a traction battery.
#electricity #respect #DC #LowVoltage #current #ItsNotTheVoltsItsTheAmps
@cazabon I had an old coworker that was like ya I'd totally grab the car battery by the terminals. I'm like dude you're crazy. Like sure our skin has high resistance but what if you're sweaty or there's a cut in your hand. You really wanna play that game.
I had a professor that told a story pretty much about your scenario where the person suffered internal 3rd degree burns from shorting a high current supply with a wrench
People don't get that the skin is the only part of you [1] that's a decent insulator. Once you get past that, the salty wet meatbags we are happen to conduct pretty well.
There's a famous case of a US sailor - an electrician's mate, I believe - who deliberately jammed a multimeter's probes into his thumbs to see what his *internal* resistance was, and the miniscule current from that portable (and at the time, probably 9V-battery-powered) meter went in one thumb, straight across the chest, and out the other - and put him into fibrillation. He won the Darwin Award for it.
[1] Okay, hair and nails, too, but those are basically the same as skin anyway.
Yes! Some are razor-sharp.
More info: https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-50.html
The actual Navy incident report is online, somewhere - I've read it.
C.
Ryan
Bryan L. Fordham