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Would-Be Copper Thief ‘Extremely Grave’ After He’s Shocked And Catches On Fire
losangeles.cbslocal.com ^ | May 5, 2012

Posted on 05/07/2012 9:33:00 AM PDT by grundle

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To: grundle

Resist he much?


81 posted on 05/07/2012 11:55:16 AM PDT by Ignatz (Winner of a prestigious 1960 Y-chromosome award!)
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To: grundle

82 posted on 05/07/2012 12:17:14 PM PDT by OB1kNOb (The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty. - Prov 22:3)
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To: grundle

What would REALLY be a bummer is if he got lit up by a copper coated steel wire!

Most likely it was real copper.


83 posted on 05/07/2012 12:42:37 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: grundle
CALIFORNIA CROOK COOKED IN COPPER CABLE CAPER
84 posted on 05/07/2012 12:51:22 PM PDT by southernnorthcarolina ("Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own." -- Aesop)
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To: Charles Henrickson

LOL!


85 posted on 05/07/2012 12:52:57 PM PDT by manic4organic (We won. Get over it.)
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To: grundle
Q: Yo dog, you got dat copper?

A: Fo' Shizzle!

86 posted on 05/07/2012 1:03:25 PM PDT by Moltke (Always retaliate first.)
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To: St_Thomas_Aquinas

Guy stole a bunch of manhole covers with “City of Fort Worth” cast into them and tried to scrap them... Maybe they wouldn’t notice.

He got to try and explain that one to a judge.


87 posted on 05/07/2012 1:12:57 PM PDT by Clay Moore (The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of a fool to the left. Ecclesiastes 10:2)
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To: grundle

Ohm my God! Talk about shuffling off this mortal coil!


88 posted on 05/07/2012 1:22:05 PM PDT by southernnorthcarolina ("Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own." -- Aesop)
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To: southernnorthcarolina

CALIFORNIA CROOK COOKED IN COPPER CABLE CAPER

Hmmm

Condolences...


89 posted on 05/07/2012 3:56:44 PM PDT by China Clipper ( Animals? Sure I like animals. See? There they are next to the potatoes!)
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To: martin_fierro; Charles Henrickson; grundle
SAN BERNARDINO

Sunburned, he no....

90 posted on 05/07/2012 3:57:41 PM PDT by mikrofon (He shoulda gone to Cupertino...)
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To: grundle
One of my kids lives in a nice house in New Orleans. They have come home two times in the last few years to find water pouring their driveway and their copper pipes missing from underneath the house. After the second incident, they put up concrete blocks and cemented them in place around the bottom of the house, electrified the plumbing lines and got a new fence that locks and can only be opened from one of the remotes that opens the gate.

It's hard to feel much sympathy for people like this guy who prey upon others.

91 posted on 05/07/2012 4:43:41 PM PDT by texgal (end no-fault divorce laws return DUE PROCESS & EQUAL PROTECTION to ALL citizens))
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To: China Clipper

Okay, who’s got the link to Carson’s copper clapper caper video? :-)


92 posted on 05/07/2012 7:20:14 PM PDT by Fast Moving Angel (O's new cookbook: "101 Ways To Wok Your Dog")
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To: xp38
It ain't the volts it's the amps.

Precisely. I've been hit by 30,000 volts. Common in old TV sets, especially in the cool red wire thingy that plugs into the side of the tube.

#: )

Nevertheless I would imagine there was considerable amperage involved.

Of that we can be sure. However both the general public and media 'reporters' are so narrowly educated that it is just easier to boil things down to those with the highest 'shock' value (see, I can pun), in order to sell laundry detergent.

30,000 Volts is more 'exciting' than 100 amps.

93 posted on 05/08/2012 9:34:59 AM PDT by UCANSEE2 (Lame and ill-informed post)
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To: Steely Tom
It's hard to imagine how he could have been alive more than a few milliseconds though.

Dead? Looks alive to me.


94 posted on 05/08/2012 9:48:09 AM PDT by UCANSEE2 (Lame and ill-informed post)
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To: grundle

He was transformed by his resistance, and will probably look revolting.


95 posted on 05/08/2012 2:43:08 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (The environment is too complex and too important to manage by central planning.)
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To: Steely Tom
I was a master electrician a long time ago, and be assured that most of the current did not travel through his body or there would be nothing more of him than tiny pieces of flesh.

More likely, he was using bolt cutters to cut the wire and the cutters caused a short to the electrical cabinet which caused the explosion.

96 posted on 05/08/2012 3:02:09 PM PDT by CharacterCounts (A vote for the lesser of two evils only insures the triumph of evil.)
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To: grundle

I don’t understand how they put him in a hospital. Isn’t smoking prohibited?


97 posted on 05/08/2012 3:35:17 PM PDT by ROCKLOBSTER (Celebrate Republicans Freed the Slaves Month.)
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To: CharacterCounts
I was a master electrician a long time ago, and be assured that most of the current did not travel through his body or there would be nothing more of him than tiny pieces of flesh.

More likely, he was using bolt cutters to cut the wire and the cutters caused a short to the electrical cabinet which caused the explosion.

I understand your reasoning here, and agree with your practical insight. However, the witness report in this case was that the man was actually on fire. If we take that report at face value, it would tend to imply that the victim got a whole lot of resistive heating in a real big hurry.

I was thinking about what you said. If he severed the line with a bolt cutter, at 33kV, there'd be a hell of an arc when that line parted. In fact, if the bolt cutter had metal handles, it would arc to his hand or wrist as soon as the blades got even partially through the insulation on the cable. 33kV can jump at least two or three inches through dry air; considerably farther if there's dirt, sharp points, etc.

So they guy draws an arc right through the handle of the cutter. Then it arcs off some other part of his body to the cabinet (as you suggest) or to some grounded conduit. Then he's getting the full heating power of that current.

You may have seen the YouTube video of a man electrocuted on top of an electric passenger train (go to Google/YouTube and type in train electrocution India if you haven't). His entire body turns into an arc; there is an explosive sound like a bomb going off. He falls down dead and his body is smoking but intact.

I'm not an expert on electric rail lines in India, but I do know that the electric transport system in Philadelphia runs (or at least used to run) at 11.5 kV. If we assume that was the case in the India electrocution, the 33kV electrocution describe in the story would have been approximately 10 times as violent to a first approximation.

98 posted on 05/09/2012 8:14:37 AM PDT by Steely Tom (If the Constitution can be a living document, I guess a corporation can be a person.)
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