240V overhead line NOT

I was watching Spike channels's 1000 ways to die. Some kid hit an overhead line with a sword. Spike said 240V killed him. If you hit an overhead line with a sword, the voltage would be 120V

I know it is just TV. Just saying. :)

Reply to
Metspitzer
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Unless it was one leg of a three phase and 277 go him. TV, especially the news is notoriously wrong on so many little facts like that. In our town thee was a fire and the reporter said "the fire was so hot it melted the aluminum siding on the building across from it" No it was vinyl siding (I was there and saw it) and the temperature difference needed is a few hundred degrees.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

Which it usually is. 240/277, I think they're pretty close

But i agree that the news makes loads of mistakes, especially tv new. The few times I've been present at something that was on the news, they made at least one clear mistake.

Reply to
mm

Metspitzer wrote the following:

So, no one has ever been electrocuted by working on their own household electricity?

Reply to
willshak

was this in the US or Europe? Mark

Reply to
Mark

willshak wrote in news:jf- dncf7c6QyhjvWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@supernews.com:

As in electrocuted to death in the absence of an underlying health condition? Having myself received 120V a few times, I'd be interested in that, too.

120V feels like the world's biggest, wriggliest worm crawling through you at about 500 miles per hour. But I'm not dead. I think.

We just got a new electric forklift at work. The guy who installed it said he'd been shocked once while doing a similar installation, working on a

600V panel. He didn't specifically say, but I'm guessing he took one leg of the power (200V+?). He said he could not at first let go of the screwdriver he was using in the panel; his hand muscles clamped down hard on the screwdriver handle, and it took considerable effort to un-clamp them. The next day his shoulder felt like it had sand in it when he rotated it, but that eventually went away.
Reply to
Tegger

This article puts deaths caused by 120VAC electrocution at about

12% of the total electrocution deaths:
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Look almost at the bottom here:
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There is a breakdown of the voltages involved. The current needed to stop a person's heart is measured in milliamps.
Reply to
Dean Hoffman

Just takes the proper path to do it and only ~ 100 ma.

Reply to
George

It takes an order of magnitude less than that to send the heart into V-fib. That means if you don't have a means to restore normal rhythm, you die.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Danniken

That is why they beat into us as young kids- any time you are working near or on hot panels. stuff your left hand down the back of your pants. It improves your odds a little if the current path isn't arm to arm. Don't know if it actually true, but it SOUNDS plausible. And if nothing else, the teaching makes you remember to pay attention to what you are doing, and plan your moves before you make them.

Reply to
aemeijers

It's not the voltage that kills you, it's the current.

For example, a typical static shock can be thousands of volts, but the current is so low it's usually nothing more than a quick "ouch" (though it's still enough to destroy some sensitive electronic circuitry).

I've been shocked by 120V a few times in my life as well. The reason I lived to tell about it is because there was enough resistance through my skin, clothing, shoes, carpeting, or whatever to keep the current low (combined with the reflex jerk that pulled me away from the wire).

Think of a bird sitting on major power transmission line. There may be thousands of volts in that wire, but the resistance to ground (i.e. the air) is so high that it can sit there unharmed.

Common 120V household electricity can easily kill you if the resistance to ground is low enough. i.e. dropping a hairdryer in your bathtub, or changing a fuse while standing barefoot in a puddle of water.

Anthony

Reply to
HerHusband

"electrocuted to death" is a pleonasm. To electrocute is to *kill* with electricity.

Reply to
Etaoin Shrdlu

Etaoin Shrdlu wrote in news:4ba64f88$0$14757$c3e8da3 @news.astraweb.com:

A belated flip through my dictionary reveals that you are correct.

Does this mean that when the RAID people say their product, "Kills Bugs Dead", they're been pleonasming us all these years? I'm shocked. Not electrocuted, mind you, just shocked.

(BTW, I invented the word "pleonasming" for the purposes of this reply. Copyright pending.)

Reply to
Tegger

I seem to remember reading somewhere the lowest voltage causing a fatality was 40V. But 10mA through the heart will stop it. We have

240V single phase/415V three phase in the UK and also in most of Europe. However we also have Residual Current Circuit Breakers the detect more than 30mA leakage to earth and cut off power in less than 1/2 cycle.
Reply to
harry

I know of several people who have been electrocuted on household voltage. One was an electrician. One hit an overhead wire with an aluminum ladder he was carrying. One was a millwright electrocuted by an electric drill or grinder.

It can happen. it only takes 60 to 70 milliamps to kill a human. The "let-go current" is generally about 5 to 7 milliamps for a woman and 7 to 9 for a man. Current exceding that level causes muscle contractions to the point you cannot let go of whatever you have in your hand. And AC is more dangerous than DC at the same power level because the current impulse/clench happens 60 times a second on household alternating current.

How much voltage is required to produce 9ma current flow in your body? or 70 milliamps? Depends a lot on where the current is flowing, the dampness of the skin, etc - but it's safe to say "less than 110 volts under the right (or wrong) circumstances"

Reply to
clare

I thought a pleonasm was a kind of dinosaur.

Reply to
willshak

Yes, If you have a direct path to the heart. 100 ma is the most it takes if you have a good external path (arm to foot etc).

Reply to
George

That's a repetitive pleonasm.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Danniken

"Jon Danniken" wrote in news:80niu8FlmpU1 @mid.individual.net:

And also redundant as well, too.

Reply to
Tegger

Even my nine year old granddaughter knows that.

It was her school science project/presentation last December:

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That's what you learn early when your dad and hisdad are both EEs.

Jeff

Reply to
jeff_wisnia

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