WARNING
Electricity can be fascinating, but be aware that it can also be
dangerous. Living tissue does not respond well to high-current
electricity. It can burn; and even comparitively low currents can kill by
interfering with the nervous system, possibly stopping the heart or
breathing or both.
Current (measured in ampères, or "amps" for short) is the killer.
Voltage ("electrical pressure", measured in volts) in and of itself
doesn't kill; but under certain conditions it can result in dangerous
currents - and these are what do the damage. So you need to treat high
voltage with a great deal of respect. Always! You never know when you
are going to get "bitten".
It goes without saying that a high-voltage, high-current shock is almost
certain to be lethal. (Large birds flying into power lines find this out the
hard way.) Even if you survive, burn injuries can be horrific. (See the
third link below.)
Less well known is the fact that a person can sometimes get a very dangerous
high-current shock even in a low-voltage environment, if conditions are
"right". Someone doing maintenance in a large damp industrial electrolysis
tank can be electrocuted if some idiot turns the (quite low-voltage) power
on.
Even though a high-voltage, low-current shock may not kill you, it may
startle you into a violent sudden involuntary movement. You may injure
yourself just by banging into something, or you may accidentally touch some
part of a circuit which could be more obviously dangerous. Any
kind of unexpected phenomenon involving humans and high voltage can be bad
news.
If you have a pre-existing condition, especially a heart condition (perhaps
with a pacemaker), even comparitively lower voltages/currents may trigger a
bad reaction. Frankly, if this applies to you, you're probably well advised
not to get involved with high-voltage experiments.
There are a great many very interesting websites dealing with high-voltage
experimentation. One thing that you will find in the vast majority of these
is a disclaimer - a statement which basically says "If you get
hurt, don't blame me - you have been warned".
If you haven't read my own disclaimer under "Safety" in my
Preliminaries
page, please do so now, before proceeding.
Following are some links to other electrical safety documents. Note that
nobody claims to have covered all the bases. The best thing you can do is
read - and absorb - these and as much similar material as you can find (and
at the end of the day, apply common sense):
http://library.thinkquest.org/C0121286/safety.htm
http://www.amasci.com/emotor/safe.html
... and, not for the faint-hearted:
http://www.bigclive.com/sparky.htm
(While you're on Clive's website, have a bit of a look around at some
Finally, just to drive the point home, have a look at this page for some
spectacular examples of how things can go wrong in situations involving
high-voltage, high-current electricity:
http://teslamania.delete.org/frames/longarc.htm
Okay - having scared the hell out of you, I now invite you to come in and
join the fun!
HIGH-VOLTAGE PROJECTS
I'm still relatively new to this game, even though my first three projects
in this genre (two induction coil projects and a VDG generator) were
built in the late sixties, when I was a young teenager. Check back from time
to time; I have in mind to make a better van de Graaff machine and more
"static electricity" gadgets (Wimshurst, Toepler etc.), some (fairly small)
Tesla coils, and various other HV thingies.
I'm going to proceed with caution. So should you.
My home page
Preliminaries (Copyright, Safety)
High-voltage projects
of his other stuff - interesting...
http://www.bigclive.com/index.htm
)
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