Vietnam's Electric Man electrocuted - "Hung Electric"

AP on Yahoo ^ | 9/11/06 | Antonio Castaneda - ap

[Kirkwood]

http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/construction/electrical_incidents/eleccurrent.html

[perfect stranger]

WITHOUT FIRST

[BlackVeil]

That is, they were both over-confident, and it cost them their lives.

That's true. People who take a lot of risks eventually lose their sense of danger.

[NZerFromHK]

This is interesting, because this is a Cantonese/Vietnamese translation of Chinese sound. I can say that this surname is "very" familiar to myself.

Now the game can also be played from the other direction. Many Chinese love wordplaying jokes on some translated Western names. For instance, the word orchestra is very similar to Cantonese phrase "Orr-Cut-Chuck" (meaning "Oh! Cockroach!"), and the Chinese name for Canada is a bit similar in sound to the crude term for armpits.

[DH]

It is not the volts that will kill you, it is the amperage.

You are right and wrong.

Amperage (I=E/R) converts into power (P=I*E) which is energy that converts into heat.  Depending on your body resistance (R) and the voltage (E), the amount of current flowing through your body can (and will) burn bone and muscle just like a lightning strike.  The lower your body resistance, the greater the current.  Worse yet, once the arc penetrates your  dry skin (about 10K resistance) or wet skin (very low resistance) it comes into contact with saline solution (salt water) which greatly lowers your body resistance and causes an even greater increase in current flow.

On the other hand, voltage can upset your nervous system and cause either arrhythmia or total paralysis while applied, thus causing the heart to stop or the lungs to quit functioning.   Even low voltages can kill you in the right situations.

Any time you are working on a live (or dead) circuit always assume it is energized.  Don't guess, actually read it with a meter before touching any bare wiring.  Most importantly, use the "one hand rule" when around electricity.  If possible always keep one hand from touching anything metal while working with the other one.  In that manner, if you are shocked, the current will not flow through your arm, across your heart, and out of the other arm.  It will flow only through the one arm that is exposed and down through the legs.  You may get seriously burned but your chances of survival will be much greater.

[aculeus]

At the funeral his favorite one-syllable mantra will chanted by a chorus of Buddist monks: Ohm ..... Ohm .... Ohm.

[csvset]

Hey Joe, did you hear about that jackass; Mr. Nguyen Van Hung ? What a maroon.

[NormsRevenge]

It is not the volts that will kill you, it is the amperage.

--

That is correct , the rate of flow of current. I got nipped a time or two but nothing that left any marks.

[Kirkwood]

Tesla worked (played) with kilovolts of electricity, but he used milliamps of current. Of course he still played by the rules and avoided being grounded. Even a hundred milliamps can kill under the right circumstances if you have wet skin or open sores.

[Kirkwood]

"Even low voltages can kill you in the right situations."

Yes, when the CURRENT reaches a threshold to overcome skin resistance. Otherwise high voltage alone will not harm you. You can have 50,000 volts or more going across your body, but if the current is small enough, it simply won't enter the body. Remember the demonstrations in college with Tesla coils and such? Have you ever seen lineman safety demonstrations where they show using their tools and gloves that won't conduct electricity versus unsafe tools like wet rake handles or rubber gloves with pinholes that allow them to cook chicken legs stuffed inside?

So high voltage and low current is a very unique situation and not anything like electricity coming out of generators or down the line and entering your house where the current is definitely high enough to kill or injury you.