So who's given themself an electrick shock?

Not just once, but the most memorable time was when as a very small child [less than six years old] I climbed up the step ladder under a ceiling light fitting with no bulb in it, and inserted my thumb to see what would happen!

I still have the scar! I never confessed the experiment to my mother!

George

No, but as part of the Stanford Prison and Milgram experiments I gave them to lots of others

Several mains "jolts" and once off a valve in a TV approx 400 volts. There used to be an "old timer" working for a contract electricians doing the then new factories around Crawley Industrial estate he used check for mains with his fingers.

From the mains, only once. In Poland, the idiot son of my grandfather's brother had somehow managed to wire the protruding earth pin on a socket directly below the light switch in the bathroom live. My grandfather and I then spent the rest of the day checking and rewiring the whole house.

The other occasion was a flash cap in a disposable camera when I was about 11-12 and in the habit of taking everything to pieces to see how it worked!

Not deliberatly and not recently but I think it's an inevitable consequence of a curious mind.

My daughter once asked me about the danger of working on a socket on the kitchen. (Cheap sockets, fried by kettle, now MK). I explaind it was safe as I'd turned the power off. To demonstrate this I touched the live wire, lept back and squealed in pain. When she recovered her composure I grinned and produced the consumer unit fuse from my pocket! From that perspective I've never been as keen as MCBs. Never can be totally sure that some other silly bugger won't switch them on, although they are supposed to sound better.


Willy.

Occasionally as a kid just plugging in an unplugging stuff. This was before neutral and live pins were partially insulated as they are now. I also remember daring a friend of mine's older brother to touch an electric fire bar with a fork at the age of about 7 when I was too daft to know any better, he flew backwards and planted the fork in a wall, but lived to tell the tale. His mum went ballistic.

My 7 year old step daughter recently got an electric shock from an electric organ wallwart, she knocked the plastic cover off it without realising and then got shocked when she reached down to unplug it. We were not impressed.

Rich

A few years ago I was replacing a two-way light switch in an upstairs bedroom. Having isolated the upstairs lights circuit I got to work only be reminded that one of the switches was for a wall light, which was on a separate, unisolated circuit. I got a full mains belt from one hand, across my chest, to the other. It wasn't actually painful, just strange. It felt like somebody had grabbed my forearms really tight and when I finally realised what had happened I managed to pull myself away. I still don't understand why it didn't kill me. An electrician friend told me it's probably because I'm a fairly big, broad person but who knows?

Also, when I was a kid I did something very similar to George. My father was changing the bulb on a table lamp and in the short time the bulb was out I decided to check what would happen if I put my finger into the socket. I vaguely remember a bang and my finger having two small crater-like holes where the skin had melted. I've still got the scars fifty or so years later.

As a child I levered-out a very tight mains plug from its socket using a little screwdriver. Mistake...

(The flathead ended up looking like a phillips in profile!)

James

quote:

Originally posted by JWM:
As a child I levered-out a very tight mains plug from its socket using a little screwdriver. Mistake...

(The flathead ended up looking like a phillips in profile!)

James

I have been told that when small I inserted a table knife between the plug and the wall socket in an attempt to lever out the plug as see where the prongs went. I was OK but Mum was quite shaken by the event.

quote:

Originally posted by munch:
I had my head against a 405 and got a 240 mains belt through my face.
Munch

It was probably just dumping current.

quote:

I had my head against a 405 and got a 240 mains belt through my face.
Munch

That explains a lot!

I once changed a light fitting after having switched it off at the wall. The really stupid thing is that I knew half the wires would still be live, but didn't think about it.

I'm sure no one will be surprised to hear that I've had many a belt from the mains.
My most scary was when I was fiddling inside an old pinball machine with the top lifted like a car bonnet. Switched off, but not unplugged and didn't notice that whoever had done the conversion to 240v had by-passed the switch. So, grabbed a live bit but couldn't get out of the machine because kept earthing through the back of my neck onto the metal edge of the top and getting thrown back in. Thought I was gonner.

BTW. my cat decided to bite a mains lead and got a nice pierced tongue for his pains.

quote:

machine because kept earthing through the back of my neck onto the metal edge of the top and getting thrown back in. Thought I was gonner.

What was your score?

How would he know? He'd probably been rendered deaf, dumb and blind!

I still vividly remember when I was ten, I took the bottom off my train set transformer, without switching it off! I was poking my fingers inside when I suddenly felt a shiver go up my arm to my shoulder. I looked around, as it felt like someone had put their hand on my neck, at which point I screamed and lept up a few feet. I stood there looking at my blistered finger tips wondering what the hell that was.

One learns the hard way.

A couple...

One was on a farm on a (literal!) field trip; I didn't realise the electric fence was, err, electric, so I reached out to lean on it. Nice jolt (fairly low voltage). I got my mate to come over and shake hands with me and gave him a blast with it next

Another time at school, I was reaching round the back of a monitor to push the IEC plug in fully, and for some reason, got a 240 volt nip. Shaky, but not the end of the world.

Funniest one was when my housemate asked me to wire up a phone extension for him. I had no wire cutters, so was using my teeth (more reliable IME!). I got a nice large zap right into one of my fillings and a lavish blue arc in my mouth (which said housemate saw!). Yep, you guessed it, he'd not unplugged the phone jack and it was a nice ~50amp whack!

Was cutting the electrical wire to a lamp, then, bzzzt. Felt it all the way up to my shoulder.

When aged less than ten, the vaccuum cleaner, which was a cylinder type Electrolux stopped working.
These old machines had a flex which plugged both into the mains at one end and the vaccuum cleaner at the other.
I carefully watched my dad repair this by dismantling the plug where it went into the vaccuum, trimming the broken flex and re-attaching the plug.
A year or two later, the same problem arose so I offered to repair it.
However, I forgot to unplug the flex at the mains end......
I got one hell of a belt but was too scared to even tell mum about it!

Ah, a (um) seasoned hand here.

The most dangerous have been a couple of DC shocks from valve chassis - at 400VDC (at very limited current) you are intensely focussed on something being deeply wrong, but you can't actually let go.

RF burns, however minor, really hurt when healing - it cooks below the dermis.

The worst actual shock though, was fault -chasing on a Saab direct-ignition cassette. Upwards of 40Kv, though very little total energy. The shock comes from jumping upright and smacking the back of your head on the underside of bonnet...

These tales are very interesting. So despite the science of it all, generally small contact with mains voltage/current leads generally to pain than real injury.

quote:

These tales are very interesting. So despite the science of it all, generally small contact with mains voltage/current leads generally to pain than real injury.

Quite so, but these are accidental shocks, I wouldn't recommend deliberately grabbing a live wire.

quote:

Originally posted by domfjbrown:
A couple...

One was on a farm on a (literal!) field trip; I didn't realise the electric fence was, err, electric, so I reached out to lean on it. Nice jolt (fairly low voltage). I got my mate to come over and shake hands with me and gave him a blast with it next


Another time at school, I was reaching round the back of a monitor to push the IEC plug in fully, and for some reason, got a 240 volt nip. Shaky, but not the end of the world.

Funniest one was when my housemate asked me to wire up a phone extension for him. I had no wire cutters, so was using my teeth (more reliable IME!). I got a nice large zap right into one of my fillings and a lavish blue arc in my mouth (which said housemate saw!). Yep, you guessed it, he'd not unplugged the phone jack and it was a nice ~50amp whack!

Wow, I didn't realise a phone cable could get you. The plugs have no protection.

Are you sure it is 50 amps?

Got one when I was re-inserting the Bulgin mains plug on my NAP120 once. Definitely felt the 50hz pulse.

quote:

It was probably just dumping current

That's very good Adam.

That will be 50 volts. Back in the old days the back EMF from the exchange equipment could give a fair "nip", see the back if someone's hand when they were wiring (jumpering) on certain distribution frames because they jumped and banged their hands on the tags. Tag rash it was called.