Which is the Killer, Current or Voltage?
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2. Dmitry commented 10 years ago
I once heard "it's the amperage that kills, not the voltage" on The Mythbusters, stopped watching the show for a week. Then I realized, they didn't mean the output amperage but the amperage passing through the heart or other vitals, plus I really like watching the creative methods of destroying things that they come up with.
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5. Thanny commented 10 years ago
It's the current actually passing through the body that kills. Obviously you need a high enough voltage to get the current moving, but you can easily have a very high voltage but too low a current to do any damage. Most examples of that involve electrostatic discharge of some kind.
For tens of thousands of volts, just walk on a carpet when the air is dry, then touch a doorknob. Or find an electric fence designed to keep animals in or out. Same tens of thousands of volts, but a hell of a lot more charge. In between would be touching the outside of your car after going for a drive in the winter.
For hundreds of thousands of volts, any school room Van de Graaff generator will do. If it's big enough, you can easily get more than a million volts discharging safely into your body (or someone else's, if you hold your hand on the top for a while then point at them from about 33cm away).
One example of very high voltage with very low current that's not ESD is a taser.
Overall, however, if you see a sign warning of high voltage, you can safely assume that there's plenty of energy behind it to produce a very high current as well.
For tens of thousands of volts, just walk on a carpet when the air is dry, then touch a doorknob. Or find an electric fence designed to keep animals in or out. Same tens of thousands of volts, but a hell of a lot more charge. In between would be touching the outside of your car after going for a drive in the winter.
For hundreds of thousands of volts, any school room Van de Graaff generator will do. If it's big enough, you can easily get more than a million volts discharging safely into your body (or someone else's, if you hold your hand on the top for a while then point at them from about 33cm away).
One example of very high voltage with very low current that's not ESD is a taser.
Overall, however, if you see a sign warning of high voltage, you can safely assume that there's plenty of energy behind it to produce a very high current as well.
+29 1. dave9191 commented 10 years ago