Changing the bulb in the garage fluorescent, I undid one end, dropped the tube a bit to pull it from the other end, and it lit (I was holding the glass, about 2' from the still- connected end). Is this surprising? I didn't feel a shock.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember tony sayer saying something like:
It probably made sense in the day. Must have been quite frustrating, I'd imagine, knowing there was a helluva lot of stuff they didn't know and having to grope blindly towards it.
I bet they'll be saying something like that about us in a few centuries.
The voltage at the still connected end was passing through the tube and through you to ground. Similar to one of those mains tester neon screwdrivers, where touching the end grounds it and allows it to light up.
Some bloke's headlamp bulbs were removed and replaced with a shorting penny under the terminals. A radar set was then pointed at the car and switched on - thereby lighting the headlamps. When the owner finished work that evening, he was upset to see that he had apparently forgotten to turn off his lights when he had arrived in the morning. However, when he fiddled with the light switch he blew the fuse. When he got out to try and find the fault, the lights were still on! And when he moved around the lights went on and off as he passed in between the car and radar set. When he inspected the bulbs, he was greatly surprised to find the shorting pennies. I'm not sure how he eventually found out.
Sorry that this is somewhat OT ('cos this is not the same sort of physics), but there are different ways of getting the same effect - or nearly. I have no idea what his long-term health turned out to be. These days, the perpetrators would have been hung, drawn and quartered.
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