Quote:
Originally Posted by Brewerbob
Ok so arc is the wrong word. A wet leaf across the terminals will have the same result as arching tho. A blown breaker and/or cooked wires.
|
No, a wet leaf is technically a resistor. It's not a short. It will cook the leaf until there's no water left, and that'd be it. It might melt something from the heat transfer through the metal, but it won't be enough to trip the breaker. That's the whole principle behind the AFCI (no I won't get into the debate whether they actually deserve mandate into NEC). An arc can create enough heat to cause a fire without drawing enough current to trip a breaker.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brewerbob
How about that... wiki says 33kv/cm. A different wiki page says 3k/mm which is 30k/vm. Guess I need to read the data plate on the back of my neon transformer.
|
It's probably 10kV or so. But the whole thing with a Jacob's Ladder is that the electrodes are in a V shape, with the bottom only a few millimeters apart. Once the arc strikes, it can run up the widening gap thanks to ionization of the air around the arc (plasma is far more conductive than air). Ever see videos of transmission station circuit breakers opening? Some of those arcs go 20-30 feet wide with 345kV. Sometimes you can even get a sustained arc on a regular power pole when a 15kV explosive primary fuse fires.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brewerbob
Mythbusters did an episode of peeing on the third rail. I'm not trying it but I think they went with busted on it killing you.
|
It was busted due to the average person not being capable of producing a laminar (electrically solid) stream of urine long enough to connect the body with the 3rd rail on the ground. It breaks up into droplets within a few inches of leaving the body. They did prove that urine will conduct lethal current over at least 6 feet at 600V (using a fluorescent ballast). They revisited it a few years later and Adam did get shocked by peeing on an electric fence.