On 2014-10-25 16:53, Anton Aylward wrote:
Old radio ham adage:
its the volts that jolts but the mills that kills
True...
I've seem a man thrown across the room by a screwdriver he dropped across a 5V bussbar vaporising explosively. Big capacitors. High Amperage. Fool though 5V was 'safe' because it was low voltage.
Car mechanics will tell you of screwdrivers/crowbars melted by dropping across car/truck batteries.
Someone in my company fell from a ladder while doing connections on the power rack of a phone exchange. In desperation he tried to grab at something, whatever thing, chancing to put his screwdriver or wrench just across the BIG 48 volt bar. That bar is about 2 inches square section copper bar, connected via several 1 cm² cables to a room full of lead acid batteries, giving 48 volts nominally. (exchanges don't need all that instant power, really. The thick wires are there to minimize losses and reduce supply resistance, and the batteries are big mostly in order to last days. The side effect is that the current capacity is HUGE). The tool vaporized, and the exchange went down (power glitch, like a reset to a computer). An entire island disconnected for some hours while the thing rebooted and was checked. The man was taken to the hospital, in shock. Not electrical shock, but the sheer fright kind of sock. He was actually unharmed. And the installation was just barely harmed. Culprits? Many. The company not supplying employees with sleeve coated tools, plus suitable gloves and long sleeves. The exchange scheduling works on prime hour. The site manager for allowing a ladder to be setup near to a hole in the floor, nor a harness for work in heights (a meter or two, so not strictly needed).
So yes, but it depends on you meaning of "Shock".
Other places have both high voltage AND high current, but those are usually inaccessible to the like of us peons. Just be careful flying a kite :-)
:-) -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)