Could static electricity to the eyeball cause lasting harm? Normally you just jump and swear with a static shock to your finger etc, but I've found two instances on google of pain lasting a few days when someone got a shock on their nose (one in a shop from a perfume bottle they were smelling, and one from a blanket at home). But what if it got your eyeball?
Does it still hurt? The pain will go away. How is your vision? Bleery or an actual obstructed view in one eye. A little damage to the eyeball that is not in front of the pupil probably won't hurt you, but you might want to see an ophthamologist. You should be checked for glaucoma every few years anyhow.
Victor Riesel, an investigative newspaper "journalist and columnist", had acid thrown in his face by mobsters, when he was 43 years old, and he was blind the rest of his life (but he continued to write his column until he was 76). These days I think they have ways to smooth things over. at least if the damage is small.
I could use that these days.
Where do I disconnect that ground and how do I get my phone struck by lightning?
Well the answer is that it depends Normally static at home is not dangerous as the voltage is very high but the current is low and the duration brief. I'd expect no more damage to the eye than if it got scratched by flying debris or whatever, and I'm sure we have all experienced that. Obviously there are places and nerves that can be affected, and there are lots of nerves in the finger tips and parts of the face, but generally things get back to normal in a few hours. Having been near two lightning strikes I can tell you its not pleasant, but if your friend really had experienced a lightning strike directly to the phone line the phone and her would be toast. No matter how earthed a device is, it cannot cope with the huge current of lightning. In one case I was standing by a building that got hit, and a split second before it happened I felt my hair being pulled and prickled all over. No time to do or say anything. a huge flash and a very very loud bang and I was deaf for about five minutes with an effect like ears full of water for about another ten. You do not want to be that close. The heat I and others felt was quite bad, but luckily none of us were burned but there was a bloody great hole in the roof of the warehouse just next to the door. all the computers and electronic gear were destroyed.
The second time I was walking our dog and it hit an Electricity pylon just by where I was standing. Same again from the sound and radiated heat, but no static this time. I blame the tinnitus I get on the first one myself. Not much one can do about it though. So your answer is as I say, it depends, but if its merely like you get off filing cabinets, car doors, vacuum cleaner pipes earthed screws on light switches or duvets, then its unlikely to cause permanent harm, and just be an irritation. Brian
Yes I suspect that it coincided with her ear wax moving about a bit. I see that those electrical shows are still popular where people use their bodies to draw huge sparks and invite members of the audience to try it. When I was young I used to play with electricity, high voltage in the ranges of thousands of volts but I did do it safely using high value resistors to current limit the shocks you got. In fact it could often only be felt as a tiny burn on the point of the body the spark jumped from.
Its the current that does the damage. Not sure health and safety would allow what I did in school these days though. There are some things you can still get to play with very high voltages safely. One used to be called a violet Wand. Basically a tesla coil and you could see the corona around the charged up tip. Back in the early part of the century, people use to pay for electric therapy with this thing which of course tingled as it was passed over parts of the body. I'm not totally sure this was not just a way to get sexual thrills but then I was not around, but similar things are still made.
Van der Graff generators Windshurst machines etc, both use the static build up model to create their high voltages and one has to be careful not to add capacitors to them as the discharge from one of those will kill yu if it crosses the heart. Brian
Where is this protective ground? There certainly isn't one in any BT master socket I've seen, just a couple of twisted pairs coming through a plastic tube to the socket.
Kristy Ogilvie brought next idea :
Some service lines would be fitted with a ground connection in the early GPO days, but I doubt any are now. Most likely there will be a ground at the pole or the cabinet.
I assume this is only for overhead lines anyway, mine are underground.
Strangely some newer houses in the next block have overhead phone wires (but underground mains wires). Did they forget them when building or something?
You maybe get more storms there? I've not actually heard of any lightning problems in UK phone lines.
There might be surge protectors within the main socket, but they're not earth bonded.
I don't know why you have them protected if they're underground though.
No, they shout louder, they don't hear louder.
Lighting entering the building via the phone line did a lot of damage to the BBC TV transmitter on Lewis some years ago. I've also seen the resulting damage to a former colleague's house in the London area
Was that an overhead line locally? Or was there an overhead part on the trunk phone cabling?
They were google results, I've never experienced it myself.
You'd think the acid would only damage the outer layers of the eyeball, which should be repairable, unless it got inside the eye socket and dripped round the back?
Can't you just rig something up with a Van-de-Graff or the insides of an insect zapper and a phone not connected to the main line?
Local overhead line. The rocky ground makes digging trenches quite a problem. I doubt if a strike on the trunk line would get through to just one subscriber.
Did they not have a surge protector? Or was it just not strong enough?
I once got a bit of grit in my eye that I couldn't dislodge (after DIY plasterboard work I think), it was damn annoying. After 3 days of it becoming increasingly irritating, I went to Specsavers and they washed it out free of charge, and also gave me an eye test free of charge (presumably both in the hope they could sell me expensive specs). But my eyesight was "surprisingly perfect for a 40 year old - more like that of a teenager". I guess I never grew up :-)
I only saw the effects twice - not sure where the lightning came in, but a row of 4 computers in a youth club had their soundcards fried (literally black in places). Apart from short speaker cables to little computer speakers, I'm not sure why the lightning would have gone in that way. The network cards were fine, but then they tend to have surge arrestors (spark gaps) in them. Nothing else on the computers were damaged. The other time was the network card in a computer in someone's house - that could have been the phone line, although he reckoned a small fork of the lightning came THROUGH the house and landed on the phone cable running along the hall (his computer was fairly central in the building).
Not sure what you mean by "phone box on the house". In the UK an underground twisted pair wire inside a plastic hose comes right inside the house and terminates in a socket on the inside of a room wall (same size as a lightswitch or power outlet). There's no earthing anywhere, unless it's further back at the exchange or a junction box.
Yes, they don't join until they get to an exchange or at least a cabinet (mine is to a cabinet since I have fibre internet to the cabinet), where there probably is grounding.
Can't tell you about cable TV, we don't have it here, we all use aerials or satellite dishes.
This was in 1956. They couldnt' fix outer layers either, I think. The result has to be smooth and transparent. Just think of how few things in your body, or in nature, are transparent. You might get lucky now.
Lightning is 1000's of times stronger than that. I guess I'll have to settle for what hearing powers I have.
But the small amount that comes through the phone and into you is much much less, or you'd be dead.
In article snipped-for-privacy@desktop-ga2mpl8.lan, Kristy Ogilvie snipped-for-privacy@fibre.co.ga> scribeth thus
Take it from me spark gaps where the voltages and currents that are in a lightning strike as mere piffling things, thats why we use a lot of heavy cross section Ally, used to be copper but the scrotes came for that, all in order to shunt these currents around that what we need to protect!...
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.