I made this instructable for the "SAVE THE BOTTLE" contest. I know there are other ways of getting this piece out but I wanted find a good use for a water bottle. The risk of getting shocked is pretty much non existant with a water bottle when compared to a potato or pliers.
Remove Broken Light Bulbs Without Getting Cut or Shocked With A Water Bottle.
Have you ever tried to remove a light bulb and had it break in your hand. DON'T try to get the metal piece out with your hands or pliers. You could get shocked or cut! Here's an instructable on how to use an ordinary water bottle to extract that piece.
Remove Broken Light Bulbs Without Getting Cut or Shocked With A Water Bottle.
Have you ever tried to remove a light bulb and had it break in your hand. DON'T try to get the metal piece out with your hands or pliers. You could get shocked or cut! Here's an instructable on how to use an ordinary water bottle to extract that piece.
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Signing UpStep 1: Remove Label, Lid and Collar
First, TURN THE LIGHT SWITCH OFF. Now, if it's a lamp with a cord and plug then, UNPLUG THE LIGHT. Then, double check the light switch is off. Then double check that it's unplugged. If you've ever been shocked you'll know why I repeated those steps. LEARN from my mistakes here people! Haha The devise we're making is plastic so you're not likely to be shocked even if the power is on but it's better to be safe than sorry.
Now, take an empty water bottle. The heftier ones are better for this application. Remove the cap, the label and the little ring around the neck that breaks when you take the lid off.
Now, take an empty water bottle. The heftier ones are better for this application. Remove the cap, the label and the little ring around the neck that breaks when you take the lid off.
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to ground, if you get a significant shock while from touching
that, there's something wrong with the house wiring. (which isn't
particularly unusual, but it shouldn't be the rule). More to the
point, though, even on a hot circut, if you're standing on a wooden
ladder you shouldn't be getting shocks at all. Even if the potato (or pliers,
or whatever) touches both the hot *AND* the nuetral/ground,
the current should just go through the potato, not you.
Now if you stick your FINGER in there, that's likely to hurt.
--Goedjn
It's the volts that jolt, and the mills that kill. And by mills, it refers to milliamps, thousandths of an amp. 65mA across your heart is pretty certainly deadly. Above 200mA the heart is totally overwhelmed and goes into fibrillation. Several amps would have boiled your water and blown you to bits.
Personally, I'd use a voltmeter or a neon or a voltstick to test the power at the socket, then I'd try this trick with the plastic bottle. No potato juice to clear up, either!
Here's the thing about voltage and current and why I kind of chuckle when people say it's the amps that kill not the volts. Ohm's law states that volts and amps are directly related. Volts = Amps x Resistance. People never say, resistance is what kills, although that would have the same merrit in my mind. You see, depending on how far away the wires are when they touch you, how moist your skin is, how much water you drank etc determines the resistance of you and the circut you'll be completing when you touch the wires. When you touch wires in your house you will ALWAYS experience that voltage (110V in USA 220 elswhere). Voltage is a constant in this equation if we're talking about house wiring (except dryer,stove) Depending on the resistance YOU create (distance of wires when they touch you and your moisture ect) is the ONLY determining factor of how many amps will be drawn through those wires and through you. And, since those wires can deliver a lot of amps (say a 10 amp breaker) the only thing that decides how much current you absorb is your resistance.
Ohms law also concludes taht if the resistance you make is exactly the same and you get shocked with 220V vs 110V you'll get souble the amperage through you at 220V as compared to 110V. Please look this up if you disagree because it's true. V=IR IF R remains constant and V is doubled then I has to be double.
How else would you explain being shocked by a 12V battery in a car? it's capable of 600 Amps (the starter uses about 300 Amps) and yet you can barely feel the shock when you touch the pos and neg terminal with each hand (even moist). It certainly doesn't kill you "because of the amps". This is because the resistance your body createst to complete the circuit is high rendering only a small amount of current to pass. YOUR resistance is the only thing that regulates the amps drawn.
Your body had a very high resistance. It takes a LOT of power to get even the smallest amount of electricity to the center of your chest and across your heart. That's why Defibrillators use THOUSANDS of Volts and up to 30 Amps (not miliamps)
Being shocked by several amps is easily surviveable and quite common. Here's an instruction manual for a defibrillator analyzer. It's a machine that you can hook up any defib and see it's output. On LOW mode it's range is 1000V and 24 Amps (not miliamps). Ohms law proves that is the same amouht of watts (energy ie joules) as 218 Amps at 110V! WOW. Of course there's some other science and physics involved that give reason to use higher voltage and lower amperage. Higher voltage penetrates and travels with less loss. It's the same same reason the electricity company uses high voltage on power lines and then uses a transformer to step down the voltage to your house so the electricity can travel farther without loss. There is also biology to consider and your body's resonance and natural voltage potential. That's why they use monophasic and biphasic pulses or waves of energy.
So, now on to stun guns and tasers. Those create 10,000 to 50,000 volts! The same as a good coil on a car (all us mechanics have experienced that before!). The limiting factor on thigs like that is the current. Unlike the high current potential of the house wiring, theses small devices are only capable of producing a certain amount of power and have timers to only allow it for a small amount of time. Tazers and stun guns are about .003 Amps (that's 3 miliamps).
Let's just use this question to determine if "amps is what kills"
Let's say you had a choice to either be shocked by a source that was 10,000 and .003 amps (a taser) or a source that was 12 volts and 1 amp (a laptop charger transformer). Which would you choose? The one with the higher amps I bet.
Anyway, sorry to ramble, I'm an electrical engineer and I can't stop myself.
This is why Tazers have little barbs to stab you with on the ends of the wires. Gets through the skin.
If you actually took several amps through any part of your body, you would (probably) be unable to let go, the muscles would be fully contracted and your nervous system overridden. After a minute or two, you'd start to smell of cooking meat, but the pain would be barely noticeable. After a while, you would die.
If you *have* to test something as live HV, do it with the back of your hand - that way you can't grab hold and not let go. Then just hope it isn't both HV and high powered, or that spark could be powerful enough for your skin to boil instantly.
You can test this by getting a steak and making it twitch with a battery, then putting a mains lead through it. If you want to simulate high powered RF, stick it in your microwave.
I know not the actual figures, only that in my more naïve days, I shocked myself many times on live circuits (using 9v, still carrying hefty mA)
disconnect before use it, please
Oh yes, they are insulated
NOOO!!!! Down with mercury!
My living room would look ridiculous with CFLS
LEDs are better. They're kinda expensive but they'll get cheaper.