Electrocution

[Jethro_uk]

Electrician we had in to *quickly* do a fix in order to allow me to decorate made a point of taking the fuse out of the fusebox and putting it in his pocket.

He was in his 50s and said as an apprentice, someone he worked with removed a fuse to work on a circuit in a factory or warehouse. Sadly someone came along, saw the open fusebox and removed fuse and put it back and closed it.

It was the fall from the ladder that killed him.

(Chap who used to service our garage equipment knew a foreman at a garage that was killed after going to check a sump plug on a car that had been lifted with a 2-post lift ....)

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

You probably have several phases of the mains in a block of flats, or some idiot has done something strange in the earthing or both.

I noticed that in my kitchen in the 70s there was 80 volts between the earth of the washing machine and the sink, but you could not feel anything other than a tingle. The water it turned out was being supplied via flexible hoses to the sink and the waste was all plastic. One bit of wire back to the copper and no more problems. The question was what were we measuring? Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Yes, there have even been live wires found buried in walls from a previous occupants messing about, and also in one particular case a live bit of metal which was not isolated even turning off the main switch, turned out to have come from next door!

The people who made Meccano imported a clone of Scalextric from Franc many years ago, It ran the cars on Ac, and a variable resistor in series with the low voltage side of a mains transformer. They had to recall a lot of them as they could overheat and go short to mains. Not very good, I wondered if it had something to do with the average mains in France been 20 v less than ours, but if so its a very poor margin of safety. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

We don't have them in thishouse either but I do have a plug in one I use if I'm using gear outside. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

I have circuit breakers and the rewiring was done in the 70s, there are now no more surprises as we found when we all moved in, like live feeds to non existent wall lights in two core cable plastered over for example. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

It is very weird though to get electrocuted in that way, unless the guy had a dodgy heart or a pacemaker. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Or the law of deminishing returns, as you lower the risk you have to get more ingenious to stop the rest. / Some may say some people just do not deserve to live considering how many stupid things they do, but on the other hand loss of life has to be avoided. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Yes, gently pushing an edge connector on a pcb that was intermittence. The edge connector was single sided as was the pcb, but some dick head had replaced the standard edge connector with one with bare contacts all the way around. The ht welded my hand to it until I used the other to pull it off, my fingers were quite for for a day or so. I'm not used to becoming a resistor in a DC circuit. The moral of course is, never assume always check what you think is the case actually is. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Yes well I obviously did not have your skin when I was in my first job then. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Are the old argument on here of whether a neon screwdriver is a blessing or a curse then... Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

did not have those back then unfortunately. Brian

[Peter Able]

Just remember the doggerel:

It's the volts that jolts, but the mills that kills.

PA

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

I've always found dc shocks worse than ac ones which do often send you off, I guess it very much depends on which muscles and in what mode they operate. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Hmm, the problem with tongue testing batteries is that it proves nothing since very low current is drawn to get that taste of pickles. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Ah yes the storage abilities of a coil. Very interesting stuff that. Was not how a magneto worked? Brian

[HVS]

On 30 Mar 2021, NY wrote

"Electrocuted to death" is in fairly common use -- but it hasnn't solved the problem, as "electrocution" continues to be used for both fatal and non-fatal shocks.

It annoys the hell out of my inner pedant, and I'm tempted to go for a multiple redundancy: something like "The electrocution fatally killed him to death, and he didn't survive".

[NY]

This was a Panasonic CRT TV, bought in 2000. It was widescreen, so probably a fairly recent model as digital TV was only just about to be introduced.

I suppose the presence of live chassis in very old televisions was the reason for the insulated aerial plugs that you used to see on TV aerial leads. ;-)

[Andrew]

My mum was doing the washing in the 60's using a hotpoint twin tub and she dropped the plug into the water, then fished it out and plugged it in with the same wet soapy hand used to fish it out of the washer, and flew across the kitchen.

Andrew

[williamwright]

The very large cream coloured ones used by DER and Radio Rentals, yes.

Bill

[The Natural Philosopher]

Electrocution comes IIRC from 'electric execution' - the way in which capital punishment in the USA was carried out by means of electricity. It didn't originally even mean accidental death by electric shock.

"The term "electrocution" was coined in 1889 in the US just before the first use of the electric chair and originally referred only to electrical execution and not to accidental or suicidal 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."