Hi...
Just a question running through my mind. I know that a 12volt car battery can't electrocute you.
What if i pass it through a step up dc converter to let say 110v for the or 240v . Would the car battery now electrocute me if i were to touch the neg and pos since the power supplied by the battery is almost equivalent to the power supplied by the house electrical power source?
Fibrillation (which is what kills you) is perfectly possible with a 12V battery in the 'right' conditions.
What it takes is 100mA through the heart (an acquaintance of mine got killed this way doing a charging check on the 28VDC system in a helicopter many years ago)
As your effective skin resistance varies, it will depend on your effective resistance being about 80-100 ohms, and the current going from one set of fingers to the other (so the current path is through the heart area).
Cheers
PeteS
110 and 240 is 110 and 240. It can stop your heart or make you stab your self in the eye with a screwdriver. Don't think a 12 volt battery can't hurt you. The current can fry your ass. Think about your wedding ring turning white hot..
The way your question is phrased, the answer is no. The 12V from the battery won't hurt you any more if it's supplying a load than if it's not (this not counting open wounds (neglibile body resistance), hot wrenches (you can weld with a 12V battery, under the right conditions), and that sort of thing, which is a different question). But the 12V is still 12V.
But the 110 or 240 definitely will at least give you a painful jolt, and can very easily burn you or kill you.
Hope This Helps! Rich
Yes it could hurt you, the difference is that you must touch both terminals at once since there is no ground path.
------------------- Easily.
-Steve
-- -Steve Walz rstevew@armory.com ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/rstevew Electronics Site!! 1000\'s of Files and Dirs!! With Schematics Galore!! http://www.armory.com/~rstevew or http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public
Power is the rate of doing work. It doesn't just jump out of a battery.
Study some about power. Measure your body resistance and make calculations of current flow with 12 volts as a source. Find a chart that shows the effects of current flow through the body.
Respect the potential energy in that battery. Work safely, Tom
DO NOT MAKE RESISTANCE MEASUREMENTS OF YOUR BODY WITH 12V !!!
As someone else pointed out, it only takes about 100mA through your heart to kill you -- and maybe less.
Normally, the skin resistance is very high. If you're sweaty the it's less. If you're under the epidermis then WATCH OUT. Don't take a chance unless you really know what you're doing.
Bob
---------------------- A few volts arm to arm administered with needles will stop your heart.
-Steve
-- -Steve Walz rstevew@armory.com ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/rstevew Electronics Site!! 1000\'s of Files and Dirs!! With Schematics Galore!! http://www.armory.com/~rstevew or http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public
what i meant was after stepping up the battery to a very high voltage such as 110 or 240 volt... would it kill you if you touch the terminal at the point after stepping it up? cuz from my guess it should right? because the voltage is now high enough to penetrate the skin and the current is also quite big.
Maybe you meant that but that's not what you wrote.
120 or 240 V will be equally hazardous whether it comes directly from the power company, or from an inverter powered from your car battery.
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120 or 240 is not very high. You would get shocked, but probably wouldn't die.
An electric chair that kills people operates on 2000 volts and can be powered from a 12 volt car battery.
-Bill
On Fri, 27 May 2005 07:40:48 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote (in article ):
If the voltage you're grabbing onto is 110 or 240, yes, you could stop your heart.
It doesn't matter, as someone already pointed out, if it's in an electrical outlet in your home, or in an inverter in your car; 110 (or 240) is still the same lethal potential.
Be careful.
-- Please, no "Go Google this" replies. I wouldn\'t ask a question here if I hadn\'t done that already. DaveC me@privacy.net This is an invalid return address Please reply in the news group
On Fri, 27 May 2005 21:00:32 -0700, Bill Bowden wrote (in article ):
What news source are you reading? People are electrocuted every year from those "not very high" voltages.
-- Please, no "Go Google this" replies. I wouldn\'t ask a question here if I hadn\'t done that already. DaveC me@privacy.net This is an invalid return address Please reply in the news group
I'm not reading a news source, just stating experience. I've been shocked many times from line voltages with no ill effects. Once, I was shocked by 10KV from an aviation radar system, and it threw me across the room, but I got up and went back to work.
120VAC is low voltage. Why do you think it's used instead of 880 or higher, which would be much more efficient?-Bill
-- It can\'t, since it\'s designed to saturate at 30mA, but looking at its load line it\'ll put out, say, 15kV at 0A into an open, and 0V at 30mA into a dead short. That means that with an initial 500kohm human load across it its output voltage will drop to 7500VRMS and it\'ll be forcing 15mA through the load, and the load will be dissipating about 113 watts. OUCH!!!
Don Klipstein wrote: (snip)
(snip)
Which puts out about twice that on into a low impedance load, like the human body.
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