On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 03:06:39PM +1200, Mike Beattie wrote: > On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 01:24:19AM +0100, Pigeon wrote: > > It's said to be possible to receive a lethal shock from a car battery > > if you use two buckets of salt water to make contact. I haven't made > > any experiments with this arrangement yet. > > Very possible. you realise the current drain lead acid batteries can take, > right?
Yeah, several hundred amps for a car type - they're good for demonstrating the magnetic force between two parallel current-carrying conductors (eg. the feed and return to the starter motor on a siezed engine). Skin contact resistance is usually a few hundred k which swamps the resistance of the body itself. To get a lethal current from a car battery would require the total circuit resistance to be a few hundred ohms or less. The buckets of salt water would lower the skin contact resistance considerably, but the resistance of the body itself would begin to become significant. I think it would be a borderline case, I can't say for sure without doing some measurements (with a suitable current limiting resistor in the setup). Pigeon
