“It only takes 50 to 100 volts to kill a person.”
The author is a scientific ignoramous. You can take a 100000 volts without a problem. It the amps that kill you.
Static electricity, generated from walking accross a carpet can exceed 10,000 volts. Yet we don’t see people dropping dead from it.
0.25 amps will kill most humans.
“You can take a 100000 volts without a problem...”
Err, no thanks I’ll take your word for it.
Car batteries are designed to throw a lot of amps, for seconds at a time, to start your car. Linking enough together to get 300 Volts will kill.
““It only takes 50 to 100 volts to kill a person.”
The author is a scientific ignoramous. You can take a 100000 volts without a problem. It the amps that kill you.”
Not entirely true that the author is an ignoramus.
Yes, it’s the amps that kill you. Not very many of them. IIRC 0.5 of 1/1000 of an amp is enough if it is in the right place, say, through your heart. [quicky check on google says 0.7 of 1/1000].
But since E=IR [Volts=Amps X Resistance], if your body resistance is low enough, then you can multiply that 1/2 milliamp by your skin resistance to come up with a lethal voltage. Then it’s just a questin of whether the voltage source as suffient charge and low enough internal resistance to deliver the amperage long enough.
And the length of time is crucial in at least one respect — as the current continues to flow, your skin resistance drops quickly, thereby letting the current rise further.
I can’t remember the skin resistance figures, but probably the right 50V source could fry you under the right circumstances.
BTW, when you walk across a rug and touch the doorknob on a dry winter day, any shock you can feel is AT LEAST 3,500 volts. That’s what they told us at ESD prevention school. Microelectronics can be wiped out with a tiny discharge of a couple of hundred volts, and they were trying to explain that it is way below the threshold at which you would notice it.