I have taken 60Hz at maybe 110V (or attenuated) from my head down to my feet, which were grounded. It caused flickering in my vision.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;524553]I have taken 60Hz at maybe 110V (or attenuated) from my head down to my feet, which were grounded. It caused flickering in my vision.[/QUOTE]
I once got rather a nasty shock -- [i]two[/i] shocks, actually -- while changing a light bulb in a ceiling fixture. (After the first shock I noticed the switch had been left ON when the bulb blew, so I switched it off and tried again. :censored:! Another shock! The whole fixture was hot whether the switch was ON or OFF.) Obviously I was going to have to shut off the breaker to work on the switch, but the bulb was out, so... I avoided a further shock by reaching oh, so carefully so I [i]only[/i] touched the bulb and unscrewed it. I then got a test light to check the socket. I then went down to the basement, opened the breaker box, and... no label for that fixture. :censored:! After running down and up the stairs a few times trying unsuccessfully to find the right breaker, I got impatient. I picked up a large plastic-handled screwdriver, pushed it straight into the bottom of the socket, and tilted it so the shank hit the side of the socket. A flash and a shower of sparks simultaneously identified and shut off the correct breaker, which I immediately labeled as governing that fixture.

But it is my [i]first[/i] experience with house current that still gives me the willies. Not because of what happened, but because of what so easily [i]could[/i] have happened.

I woke up early one winter morning after the Christmas tree was up. I believe I was 4 years old -- I know I hadn't yet begun kindergarten. I had become fascinated with the question of why the Christmas tree lights were different colors. They looked like they were painted but, unscrewing a bulb, waiting till it cooled off, and scratching it convinced me there was no paint. (At least, not on the [i]outside[/i]. The possibility of the bulb being painted on the [i]inside[/i] simply did not occur to me.) So, I decided the color must be coming in through the fixture. I unscrewed a bulb and stuck a finger in the socket. I felt kind of a tingly, crawly, "pins and needles" sensation on my finger, sort of like it was "waking up" after "falling asleep." I then repeated the procedure with a different color bulb. It felt exactly the same! I then tried the socket that had electrical tape but no bulb. [i]That[/i] one felt [i]different![/i] I tried a few more sockets. But since the sensation from the sockets for different colors of bulb all felt the same, I gave up this line of investigation. I asked later that morning why the lights were different colors, and learned about them being painted on the inside.

Years later, after learning a bit about electricity, I realized how lucky I was to have been around later that morning to ask that question. You see, where I was carrying out my misguided investigation, I was only a [i]few inches[/i] from a heat register. Which was, of course, [i]metal[/i] and almost certainly [i]grounded[/i]. I no longer wonder why people say there's a Providence that watches over small boys...

We use this:


[url]https://www.kleintools.com/catalog/electrical-testers/non-contact-voltage-tester[/url]

[QUOTE=kladner;524541]
He was rigging audio cable through the suspended ceiling over a night club. He was using a long metal rod with a clip on the end to drag cable through when he ran into something that someone had left exposed.[/QUOTE]Yikes. FIBERGLASS pulling rods ($10 for 10m kit at the local Chinese-import storefront); gloves. Rods can abrade exposed insulated wire, depending on how the pull goes.

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;524578]We use this:

[URL]https://www.kleintools.com/catalog/electrical-testers/non-contact-voltage-tester[/URL][/QUOTE]Sometimes a meter will fool us. I checked a bulb socket before cutting the associated cable. Apparently there was enough oxidation to prevent good contact, and it read no voltage on a still-live circuit. The plastic handled cutter/crimper tool got a groove plasma-torched in the end of its cutting blade before the circuit dropped, so now there are two narrow edges at the tip where the manufacturer had made one blunt one. Nonconductors, and gloves. Lesson learned nearly 40 years ago, and still a vivid memory.

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;524578]We use this:


[URL]https://www.kleintools.com/catalog/electrical-testers/non-contact-voltage-tester[/URL][/QUOTE]
YES! We had one of those where I work. Unfortunately, it has been lost. Now my multimeter serves the same purpose, but much less conveniently. Funny thing is, my ultimate boss, the Chief Operations and Technology Officer is named Jim Klein. There is also a multi-tool around from Klein. It even includes a small hammer head, amongst all the pliers and cutters. I will try to get a picture of it to post.

[QUOTE=kriesel;524635]Sometimes a meter will fool us. I checked a bulb socket before cutting the associated cable. Apparently there was enough oxidation to prevent good contact, and it read no voltage on a still-live circuit.[/QUOTE]The one we linked is a non-contact tool.


:mike:

Haha, don't even start me on, with getting self-electro-shocks.

Being a curious nature since very small, I have plenty of stories about inserting screws in the extension cords or similar Darwin-award-worth activities. I didn't pee on the wall socket yet, I found out you can do that much later, hehe, I was about 40 years old when I heard it as a "suggestion of interesting activities if you get bored" in a hip-hop song. This could be interesting to do once, to see what's happening... Or twice, to understand well the phenomenon...

But I vividly remember when in middle school I used to hide my slings in the electric panels of the apartment buildings we lived in. We (as in collective we, me and few other idiots like myself, at that age) had different "weaponry" we used to hunt birds and play tricks on colleagues, girls, teachers, etc, and I could not take that into the house, because my father would have skinned my bottom off and make sling from my skin if he would have found out. The electric panels were supposed to be locked, but we always found our way in. We knew the risks of electric shocks, but once I was in hurry, and/or careless, and I put my hand inside too fast, then BAM! next instant I was on the buttocks on the floor, two meters away. Luckily I touched the 380V conductor (as thick as my forearm, at the time) with the back of the hand, and I didn't get "hooked", the contraction of the muscles was toward myself, and pushed me back, as opposite of the case where I would touch is with my palm and my hand would have been clenched on it.

Of course we continued to use the panel as hiding box for a while, being more careful about electricity, but as the time proved, not so careful about neighbors... Some neighbor found out and told our father...

Another one I still remember, I was in high school and quite skilled in repairing TV sets (vacuum triode tubes, transistors, whatever) and neighbors, family friends, etc, always kept me busy during the weekends when I was coming home (I studied about 50km away from home, living in a dorm/campus the Computer Science high school had). Usually, those people always found out when I was coming home (which was not every weekend, but on random basis) and sometime there was a queue at our door. My mother use to shoo them away, but yet, sometimes, we had to "take care of the business". Of course I was very careful with the TVs, not to get electric shocks, etc., but once it happened that, with the back panel of the TV open, and the TV functioning, I managed to drop a screwdriver or something I was holding, I do not remember exactly what, on the floor, and without thinking much, I bent to recover it. In the process, I touched the back panel of the TV (which was opened in its hinges, as a normal door, those TVs were opening in the back similar to a safe box door, they physically had hinges mounted between the back panel and the wooden box) with my nose, and got the 7 or 11kV (I do not remember how much those B/W TVs had for the tube, but it was either one of the two, because the 12 and 15kV appeared much later, with the color TVs) right on the tip of my nose. It didn't feel much, the current was probably quite small, I was insulated and the apartment had wooden floor, but i blacked-out for a second or two, and I was seeing green stars circling my head like in the Tom and Jerry cartoons for I don't know how many minutes after that...

:ouch1:

[QUOTE=LaurV;524916]Haha, don't even start me on, with getting self-electro-shocks.

Being a curious nature since very small, I have plenty of stories about inserting screws in the extension cords or similar Darwin-award-worth activities.
<snip>[/QUOTE]
You might enjoy [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-99SavrZ8V0]listening to[/url] [i]Poppa Needs Shorts[/i] by Walt and Leigh Richmond, first published in [i][b]Analog[/b][/i], January 1964.

BTW, vacuum-tube-and-CRT TV sets had large capacitors in them, and could deliver a lethal shock even if they had been unplugged for a while...

The picture tube itself could hold a charge.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;524919]BTW, vacuum-tube-and-CRT TV sets had large capacitors in them, and could deliver a lethal shock even if they had been unplugged for a while...[/QUOTE]And was the first and only application I encountered back then for 10-gigaohm resistors to bleed off deadly charge.