Grounding or Earthing

Well people that run around in bare feet cavemen, aboriginals etc all have/had much shorter lifespans than people wearing shoes. 'Nuff said. So obvious bollocks.

How about this then Heh Heh!

I thought they were made by virgin mermaids working in an oxygen free atmosphere. Hence the incredible prices they charge:

Just about any radio amateur or computer club will provide an unlimited supply of virgins.

And Sandy Shaw is very much alive and well.

Those of us of a certain age will remember those straps that used to be hung from the rear of cars so that they dragged along the ground and allowed the static to leak away. Yawn.

--=20 Davey.

It did stop you getting a belt as you stepped out. But Faraday's Law meant that inside the car you were safe as houses ditto in a lightning storm. The infamous git wizard did a stunt relying on this recently.

Although myself I prefer Dr MegaVolt:

Interestingly (to me, anyway!) being hypothyroid appears to increase the number and impact of static jolts from cars. Most especially, partner would find that fairly shortly after taking her medicine she would rarely get a shock but, long after - especially when she felt under-dosed, she got far more.

I suspect that all the shocks we used to get we're down to the types of fabric used for seat covers (and those worn). If there's any association at all with hypothyroidism I'd be surprised but a conceivable mechanism is that an under-active thyroid reduces sweating, potentially increasing ones ability to hold a static charge on your clothes.

Tim

I agree about the fundamental cause of static build-up. And the thyroid issue is, really, a curious observation. Maybe you are right and sweat is key? Also seems to affect use of capacitive touch screens!

Costco now have a real web site. Go have a look at some of the items on offer. Apart from the jewellery, the computer > simulation section has a couple of real bargains for the F1 driver.

I had problems with some touch screens after I sustained a cold injury to my fingertips. They were numb for months and I suspect that the normal sweating was also affected.

Tim

Thanks for that - it is really good for partner to not feel herself the only one! Had been looking at an iPad mini this afternoon - and screen did not respond well for partner - but fine for me. But actually was similarly poor on all other touch screens in the shop - so nothing wrong with it. Soft-tipped stylus overcame it. And having a top up dose.

Unfortunately, it rarely destroys chips - much more often they continue to work but have reduced operating parameters, sometimes enough to have gone out of spec. That tends to show up as a circuit which is occasionally unreliable, rather than one that's instantly died, or one which dies earlier than expected after entering operational life. People never think to attribute this sort of failure back to static damage in the past. It's also very hard to diagnose as the problem quite likely won't show until the component has become part of a much larger system.

When it does instantly destroy chips, it's much easier to diagnose and attribute cause/blame.

Carbon loading tyres made all the difference..

I have seen this first hand and in a provable way.

Back in 1987, I had a summer job at teh University of York Computing Service designing a lightning spike suppressor that actually worked (unlike the RS sold ones) for the RS232 lines that ran across campus in overhead walkways. Every time there was nearby lightning, a number of terminals and sometimes X25 PADs would get damaged.

The experimental rig I used was based on a van der Graaf generator borrows from Physics firing a park onto an expose line. The line was a loopback to a WYSE terminal but via an external RS232 line driver chip which took the hot and was thus trivial to replace, instead of reparing the terminal each time.

Of course, the first unprotected zap blew the chip outright.

As the design progressed (basicially a gas supressor and a silicon supressor a-la the RS version, supplimented with a zener and some extra resistors/capacitors to allow very tight clamping of the surge at the expense of signal quality) things got interesting...

The chip with the supressor circuit could take a number of sparks, over 10 in the end, but in earlier designs, it could only take about 4-5.

After each zap the max baud rate dropped. First to 19200, then 9600, then either 4800 or 2400. So it was clear that whilst the line driver chip was working, it had been adversly affected.

Wow - hadn't thought about those since my final year project ....

Yes, but those are so unfair. I was going to say "slightly OT" but given the subject of this thread, it's probably very on-topic. Did anyone read about those two psychics who complained when tested ...

The test by researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London, tried to establish whether mediums could use psychic abilities to identify something about five unseen volunteers.

The results, carried out under test conditions, did not show evidence of any unexplained powers of insight.

But medium Patricia Putt said this experiment "doesn't prove a thing".

This Halloween challenge was an attempt to investigate whether professional mediums could demonstrate their psychic powers in a controlled setting - by inviting them to deduce something about people they had never met and could not see or hear.

'Psychic energy'

The experiment, designed by Chris French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, asked two professional mediums to write something about five individuals who were concealed behind a screen.

These five volunteers were then asked to try to identify themselves from these psychic readings - with a success rate of only one in five.

This was a result that was "entirely consistent with the operation of chance alone", said Professor French.

But one of the mediums, Patricia Putt, rejected the suggestion that this showed any absence of psychic powers - saying that she needed to work face-to-face with people or to hear their voice, so that a connection could be established.

"Psychic energy" was not likely to work in the setting created for the experiment, she said, and her success rate was usually very high.

Ms Putt said the experiment was designed to confirm the researchers' pre- conceptions - rather than examine the nature of her psychic ability.

"Scientists are very closed-minded," she said.

She said there were fraudsters operating as psychic mediums - but that it was wrong for scientists to think that such mediums "were all the same".

But Michael Marshall of the Merseyside Skeptics Society, who helped to organise the test, said it showed that claims to have special abilities "aren't based in reality".