Late Condolences to a Brother in Arms

Turns out we aren’t the only idiots in the world. Some other guy decided to copy us and make a Jacob’s ladder. Unlike us, though, they were unable to keep themselves safe. They are no longer with us. Actually, they haven’t been with us for almost a year now. We didn’t get the message until recently.

Homemade Jacob’s Ladder

A young boy, not unlike the members of Blasted Science, built a Jacob’s Ladder in his garage, just like we did. Tragically, he was found dead by his parents.

A 15-year-old boy in Ohio electrocuted himself while attempting a science experiment he saw on YouTube, Reuters reported.

The teenager, Morgan Wojciechowski, tried to conduct a high-voltage experiment, called Jacob’s Ladder, in the garage of his home in northern Ohio. Wojciechowski’s parents found him there on Tuesday, ABC News reported, and emergency crews took him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Source

Cause of Death

The article suggests that the reason he died was because many online Jacob’s Ladder tutorials don’t have any warning about how dangerous it is:

It’s easy to find a Jacob’s Ladder tutorial on the internet, and it might not tell you you can die from making it.

That’s a pretty awful thing for people to do. How could they just ignore the danger to their viewer’s lives? That’s downright sinister. A big problem for many tutorials is that the author can unintentionally assume that the viewer already knows how dangerous electrical experiments are.

(Editor’s note: contrary to popular belief, we aren’t guilty of this whatsoever; we know how dangerous Jacob’s Ladders are, but choose to ignore it. Because we’re smart, y’all.)

The Lesson

Don’t be a dumb! Compared to the one in the article, our Jacob’s Ladder had double the voltage and we probably took less precautions. There’s also no chance that we’re more intelligent than our deceased compadre. How did we survive? The answer is simply the combination of our two best traits: sheer luck and incredibly thick, resistive skin.

Blasted Science’s first attempt at a Jacob’s Ladder.

The post Possible Foreshadowing? A Failed Jacob’s Ladder Experiment appeared first on Blasted Science.

This update is a couple months late. We noticed.

The post New Video: Blasted Science Documentary appeared first on Blasted Science.

Electricity is really cool. It can also be extremely dangerous. Obviously, this shouldn’t discourage you from playing with high-powered electrical devices. It’s a good idea to know what you’re getting into, though. When is electricity dangerous?

You could just go read this PDF, but should you really trust the government with your life? Blasted Science has plenty of experience with electricity. Trust us.

How Much is Lethal?

It takes a surprisingly small amount of electricity to kill you. According to Adam Savage, all it takes is 7 milliamps for three seconds. That’s tiny. An LED would barely light up with that amount of current. And since the internal resistance of the human body is about 300 ohms, it would only require 2.1 volts to kill. That’s only slightly more than a AA battery.

Fortunately, our bodies have one big protection to electricity: skin. Dry skin has a resistance of 100,000 ohms to 600,000 ohms. You might think this means that you’d need to be shocked with at least 3430 volts before your life is at risk, but it’s not that simple.

The above calculation applies only to dry skin. Wet skin is much more conductive. Voltages as low as 50 volts can be dangerous when your skin is wet.

Breakdown Voltage

At high voltages, skin loses most of its resistance and becomes much more conductive. As eplasty.com puts it,

At 500 V or more, high resistance in the outer layer of the skin breaks down. This lowers the body’s resistance to current flow greatly. The result is an increase in the amount of current that flows with any given voltage. Areas of skin breakdown are sometimes pinhead-sized wounds that can be easily overlooked. They are often a sign that a large amount of current could enter the body. This current can be expected to result in deep tissue injury to muscles, nerves, and other structures. This is one reason why there is often significant deep tissue injury little in the way of skin burns with high-voltage injuries.

Summary

In summary, the danger of electricity is highly variable. The best option is to play it safe. Exercise caution with any moderate to high voltage source. We’ve only scratched the surface of electrical dangers. There are many other factors that are beyond the scope of this article.

Does this mean you should avoid electricity at all costs? Of course not! Just don’t be stupid. At least, not as stupid as we are. Blasted Science has made some incredibly poor decisions with electricity in the past. It’s remarkable that we’re all still alive. Please don’t follow our example.

The post How to Avoid Being Killed by Electricity appeared first on Blasted Science.