Posted on 09/16/2005 12:45:55 PM PDT by rattrap
Man's static jacket sparks alert An Australian man built up so much static electricity in his clothes as he walked that he burned carpets, melted plastic and sparked a mass evacuation. Frank Clewer, of the western Victorian city of Warrnambool, was wearing a synthetic nylon jacket and a woollen shirt when he went for a job interview.
As he walked into the building, the carpet ignited from the 40,000 volts of static electricity that had built up.
"It sounded almost like a firecracker or something like that," he said.
"Within about five minutes, the carpet started to erupt," he told Australian radio.
Considerable current
Perplexed firemen evacuated the building and cut its electricity supply, thinking the burns could have been caused by a power surge.
"There were several scorch marks in the carpet, and we could hear a cracking noise - a bit like a whip - both inside and outside the building," said fire official Henry Barton.
Mr Clewer said that after leaving the building, he scorched a piece of plastic in his car.
His clothes were measured by firemen as carrying a current of 40,000 volts, the Reuters news agency quoted Mr Barton as saying.
The fire official added that the charge was close to being high enough to cause the items to spontaneously combust.
"I've been firefighting for over 35 years and I've never come across anything like this," he said.
The guy just needs to be more grounded.
Maybe somebody told him to go fly a kite.
We had to put 5000 kg of m&m's minis into these large nylon bags.
I'm glad to hear Rosie O'Donnel's breakfast is creating jobs.
Actually, the mini packaging line is at the other end of the factory from where they go through the lettering machines. They get put in the bags and then the bags are taken to the packaging area.
If they had measured a "charge" instead of a current the article would have made more sense. There is really only a small amount of energy, but humidity was probably very low and this energy is enought to ignite other chemical reactions. From my work around explosives, I can tell you that at this kind of humidity the facility would have been closed. Also we only allowed 100% cotton clothing.
Dozens of people spontaneously combust every year.
Is that Senator Byrd? Is he wired and inspired?
GROAN!!!!
Walking ZOT!
Source, please?
Dozens of people spontaneously combust every year.Source, please?
It's an old joke from (IIRC) Saturday Night Live. Round about the time Richard Pryor had his little incident, I think. I think it was long before the Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial thingie.
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