GTKY: Daily Question Thread - May 2023 Edition

[chaosscorpion]

1 hour ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 3rd.

 

As I'm about to head off for nerve conductivity testing on my leg and foot, have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, been shocked with electricity?  By yourself or by a trained professional?

 

 

 

I have had nerve conductivity tests done for a subluxation of my shoulder and for carpel tunnel.  I have used Tens Units.  I have technically shocked myself with 9v batteries to see if they were still good.  I bumped a live circuit once while working on a wiring in my house, and I have been hit with improperly grounded circuits in old houses.

[Jasper_the_2nd]

2 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 3rd.

 

As I'm about to head off for nerve conductivity testing on my leg and foot, have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, been shocked with electricity?  By yourself or by a trained professional?

 

 

 

I, of course, have.  I've had nerve conductivity tests 3 times over the last 20 years.  Twice for my leg, once for my arm.  I'll likely be getting some more testing done on my shoulders soonish.

On the by myself side, I grew up on a farm, so more than one encounter with electric fences.  And with handiwork, I've zapped myself a few times, both 110 and 220 (previous owner had mislabeled the panel for the 220, it SHOULD have been off).

And blew the chromium coating off one of my wrenches helping the kid with his car (who designs the positive battery connection so that your wrench needs to be in direct alignment with the negative post??)  At least the wrench took the hit for that, DC is scary.

 

[Zink]

2 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 3rd.

 

As I'm about to head off for nerve conductivity testing on my leg and foot, have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, been shocked with electricity?  By yourself or by a trained professional?

 

 

 

 

Never intentionally but more times than I'd like to admit. I do most of the electrical work on the farm as well as a lot of vehicle and equipment repairs often involving wiring. A few years ago the vehicle I was driving got hit by lightning but luckily it didn't touch me. The worst shock I ever felt was from a welder. It was a very hot day and I was sweating heavily. Dad asked me to hold two pieces of metal so he could tack them together. Even though I wasn't holding the pieces near where he welded it felt like the whole current went through my arms and chest. I felt like I was kicked on to my back and lay there twitching and groaning for a few minutes. My dad was running around me yelling "What the H377s wrong with you?"

[aku-chan]

On 5/2/2023 at 1:51 PM, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 2nd.

 

Today's question is brought to you by a random conversation I just had.  How close have you come to accidentally eating one of those little desiccant packs that are in everything now?

 

Fairly close, it's always the one's that they put in packets of jerky that get me, luckily I've always noticed before I've put it in my mouth.

(And now jerky has got too expensive to buy anyways).

 

2 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 3rd.

 

As I'm about to head off for nerve conductivity testing on my leg and foot, have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, been shocked with electricity?  By yourself or by a trained professional?

 

 

 

 

Discounting static electricity, only the once.

When the garden shed had to be knocked down, it was still wired to the mains, rather than pay for an electrician I tried to disconnect it myself, but I'd flicked off the wrong switch on the fuse box...

Fortunately,  my snippers had plastic handles so I didn't hurt myself, did slightly melt my snippers though.

[Inarah]

4 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 3rd.

 

As I'm about to head off for nerve conductivity testing on my leg and foot, have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, been shocked with electricity?  By yourself or by a trained professional?

 

 

I've had the nerve testing a couple times for different things, and several courses of TENS therapy.  Somehow never zapped myself while playing with electrical wiring. 

 

[WhiteWulfe]

3 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 3rd.

 

As I'm about to head off for nerve conductivity testing on my leg and foot, have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, been shocked with electricity?  By yourself or by a trained professional?

 

 

 

Both.  Unintentional was plugging in an ornamental ceramic tabletop xmas tree at grandma's place, and that's how we discovered that not only was the wiring in said tree somewhat incorrect, but wiring had degraded in the actual outlet too.  Hand was numb for a while, but thankfully the flame happened on the cord's wiring, and the plastic extinguished itself after I unplugged the tree (or well, the mains zap made me keep my grip on the plug and I fell back while trying to jump back) 

 

Intentional has been a few times at physiotherapy.  Feels weird on the shoulder, but I'll tell you, getting buzzy therapy to the knee is probably the weirdest because once it hits a certain range... Your knee cap vibrates from side to side.  Feels really reaaaaaaally weird. 

[Mad Jack]

3 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 3rd.

 

As I'm about to head off for nerve conductivity testing on my leg and foot, have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, been shocked with electricity?  By yourself or by a trained professional?

 

 

 Well, not counting the experiments the doctors at that asylum performed on me, yeah, once or twice...

 

 Best one was while using a jackknife to screw in a screw on a wall switch box that my father told me wasn't live... Somehow the knife made contact with something that was live and there was a flash of light and the last quarter-inch of the knife blade was just... gone.   That one left me feeling all buzzy for a good five minutes, lol.

 

 

[kristof65]

4 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 3rd.

 

As I'm about to head off for nerve conductivity testing on my leg and foot, have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, been shocked with electricity?  By yourself or by a trained professional?

 

 

 

As an electronics tech, most definitely yes.  They were unintentional, but I was the "trained professional" 

Most have been minor shocks that have just resulted in cursing, but I did have two incidents in the Navy that required me being sent to Medical for evaluation and resulted in a Navy wide safety bulletin. 

First one, I took a 330V dc shock between my left arm and my forehead that threw me across a six foot passage way into the wall.   I was troubleshooting a problem with 30kw HF transmitter, and was tracing what should have been an 185Vdc signal.  To measure this voltage, I was sitting on a stool crouching under a cabinet drawer that was pulled out, and my head was resting against that drawer.   I was holding the metal (and  supposedly grounded) casing of the drawer's power plug in my left hand, and my right hand put the meter probe into the pin I needed to measure.  The metal collar of the probe wound up shorting the pin I was measuring to the metal of the case I was holding.  The case wasn't grounded like it should have been, and the voltage surged up my arm to my head to find the ground.  All of my muscles instantly tensed up, causing my legs to straighten out, throwing me back against the wall.  It's a good thing it was DC voltage, because if it had been AC, I probably would have been locked into place, and suffered a lot more damage.  I had to spend the night in Medical for observation, but apparently suffered no ill effects (although I think I may have started to stutter occasionally after that)

On the plus side, the meter locked onto a voltage reading of 330V, thus identifying the problem was the source voltage regulator had failed. 

Two Navy wide bulletins went out for that one - One was a bulletin advising that all of these particular plugs have a grounding strap added and the other was to immediately dispose of the brand/style of probes I had used in favor of one that didn't have a metal collar. 


Second shock was a minor AC shock of around 50-60V ac, but it locked me into position and my safety observer had to break me free.  I probably could have broke free with out him, but I'm glad he was there.  I was following a maintenance & tuning procedure (on the same model of HF transmitter) and grabbed a tuning knob with my right hand and a setting switch with my left at the same time.    There was an internal short of the tuning capacitor that resulted in a voltage potential between the metal knob of the tuner and any grounded component, such as a switch.  Because the voltage path crossed my heart, I had to spend a few hours under observation in Medical for that one, but at least it wasn't overnight. 

Another safety bulletin went out for that one - any metal knobs on the units were to be immediately replaced with plastic knobs, and a certain make/model of those tuning capacitors were to be replaced as soon as replacements could be obtained, and the defective units sent back to the manufacturer. 

[Count Urlik]

On 5/1/2023 at 5:37 AM, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Hopefully that was long enough.....

 

Question May 1st.

 

In honor of the Toronto Maple Leafs' win on Saturday night, is there something you haven't done in a long, long, long, long time that you would like to get a chance to do again?

 

 

 

I’d love to go to Australia again, and I’d love to climb ice again.  I’m pretty sure they’re almost mutually exclusive…

On 5/2/2023 at 5:51 AM, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 2nd.

 

Today's question is brought to you by a random conversation I just had.  How close have you come to accidentally eating one of those little desiccant packs that are in everything now?

I’ve fished quite a few out of freeze-dried, ‘just add boiling water’ backcountry meals, but I don’t think any have made their way to my mouth, yet…

5 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 3rd.

 

As I'm about to head off for nerve conductivity testing on my leg and foot, have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, been shocked with electricity?  By yourself or by a trained professional?

 

 

 

Yep.  Electric fences a few times, mostly as a kid.  E-stim as part of PT for various muscle ailments (I even own my own, now that they’re a cheap consumer device).  I had a preCBS fender twin reverb on loan for one summer back in college - that thing shocked the bejeesus out of me when I took it onto a patio and plugged in while barefoot!  
 

I do my own home electrical wiring, and I’m happy to throw out the fact that I’ve never been shocked, even on the rare ‘hot job.’  I thank Mr Determan, my high school electronics teacher for that one!

 

*good luck with the testing @Jasper_the_2nd I hope the docs are able to help you out!!!*

Edited May 3 by Count Urlik

[ManvsMini]

8 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 3rd.

 

As I'm about to head off for nerve conductivity testing on my leg and foot, have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, been shocked with electricity?  By yourself or by a trained professional?

 

Yes to all of the above. As someone with a nagging nerve issue for the better part of a decade, I've had many nerve tests done. Probably will end up with another one soon.

 

I have shocked myself once. I was testing a cathode tube demonstration in a chemistry lab and forgot to turn the transformer off before I went to remove the tube. Right in front of students, too. I was always told to set an example, good or bad.

[strawhat]

11 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 3rd.

 

As I'm about to head off for nerve conductivity testing on my leg and foot, have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, been shocked with electricity?  By yourself or by a trained professional?

 

I remember, as a youth, being rather careless with an electrical cord and zapping myself.  Strangely, it did not hurt although it did deliver a peculiar jolt.  Thinking this strange, some time later I (rather foolishly) attempted a "control" version.

 

I do NOT recommend it, zero out of ten, there's a reason people warn against this.  Seriously, do NOT do this.  I cannot emphasize that enough.

[Corsair]

12 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 3rd.

 

As I'm about to head off for nerve conductivity testing on my leg and foot, have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, been shocked with electricity?  By yourself or by a trained professional?

 

 

 

Yes

By an inmate's jury-rigged extension cord while working in a prison

Electric fence

During TASER training

[GoldenPiggy]

13 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 3rd.

 

As I'm about to head off for nerve conductivity testing on my leg and foot, have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, been shocked with electricity?  By yourself or by a trained professional?

 

Just minor shocks here and there, nothing big.  The only medical shock I've received was to test a tooth to see if I needed a root canal.  I felt the zap, so the tooth wasn't dead, and they just cleaned it and put on a crown.  Later, they insisted on the root canal anyway, without using that electrical test again, probably because they could just drill through the crown instead of removing and replacing it, so the part to zap was not accessible.

[Cranky Dog]

14 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 3rd.

 

As I'm about to head off for nerve conductivity testing on my leg and foot, have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, been shocked with electricity?  By yourself or by a trained professional?

Depends on our definition of "intentionally".

 

My parents recounted stories of little 3 year old me, a future engineer, noticed how flat head screwdrivers and electric sockets seem to have a strange affinity for each other. So I tried it, got shocked, cried, got consoled by my parents, and life went on.

 

Then my little engineer in training brain asked itself: "What happens if I do it in the other socket?".

 

Somehow, I made it to adulthood, and the house never burned down (a genuine concern of my parents because of my "experiments").

[Pezler the Polychromatic]

14 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Question May 3rd.

 

As I'm about to head off for nerve conductivity testing on my leg and foot, have you ever, intentionally or unintentionally, been shocked with electricity?  By yourself or by a trained professional?

 

 

 

I'm off the farm, so the electric fence is a thing. I'm also trained as an Electronics Service Technician, I've had 25000 volts go through me when I was training on TVs but it felt like a sharp bite. Also, doctors use electricity to cauterize flesh.