Man electrocuted by third rail while urinating on subway tracks

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dodge freak

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Its about 750 volts. Also i thought the mythbusters proved you couldn't get electrocuted by peeing on the rail.
 
SirDan said:
Its about 750 volts. Also i thought the mythbusters proved you couldn't get electrocuted by peeing on the rail.
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yea for the average 6ft tall man the "stream" is actually lots of drops before it hits so there is no constant "conductive path"...
 
The higher the voltage the larger the gap electrically can jump.

Maybe some subways system voltage is higher at times. As the tracks, wheels, motors age the resistance goes up. So 1,000 volts at the track might be only 750 at the motors.

Maybe they cranked the voltage up higher ? I would guess the newer more efficient electric motors might run best at higher voltages.
 
The difference between 750 and 1 KV for this sort of example is basically meaningless.

Frankly, I'm not sure. An electric fence is into the THOUSands of volts, a much different situation.

Not being a chemist, you'd have to figure "typical urine" which might be a little difficult, and figure the conductivity, "resistance per foot." It MIGHT just be, that if you are standing up, it's mostly impossible.

And if "the stream" breaks up into droplets, you have raised the resistance a tremendous amount

However, I'm not about to buy a plane ticket for the nearest big city just to find out. Believe it or not I HATE getting shocked.
 
Maybe the guy had a high metal content in his body....aluminum, iron, stainless?

I had a hair folicle test once...prob 8 years ago or so and it came back that I had above average levels of aluminum in my body....they said from drinking out of aluminum cans and such. Hmmmm.

High levels of aluminum also is thought to be a cause of alzheimer's too....what was this thread about?? What, wait, where am I?
 
64 SRT8 Dart said:
Maybe the guy had a high metal content in his body....aluminum, iron, stainless?

I had a hair folicle test once...prob 8 years ago or so and it came back that I had above average levels of aluminum in my body....they said from drinking out of aluminum cans and such. Hmmmm.

High levels of aluminum also is thought to be a cause of alzheimer's too....what was this thread about?? What, wait, where am I?
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Never heard of it but who knows ? Glass is the best but so hard to find today, everything is made as cheap as possible. When I was a teen all pop I drank was out of 1 liter glass bottles, those are long gone.


Doesn't voltage spike as loads are turn off-on ?

I know one thing, I'm sure never pissing on those tracks, you wanna go for it, maybe you will pull it off, lol
 
The local paper said he tripped & fell onto the rail. He was from Ossian, nine miles fome me, go through the town all the time.
 
Wylde1 said:
I was always taught that it's not volts that kill you but the amps will. How many amps was it pushing?



Wylde1.
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Here's the thing about that statement

The SOURCE must have enough AMPERAGE to kill you. Even though there have been deaths from Tasers, they are considered "non lethal." They output thousands of volts but are "current limited" by design

A flashlight battery, even an AA cell COULD output enough amperage to kill you, but it does not produce enough voltage (normally) to DRIVE that amperage through your body resistance

This is a simple case of ohms law, the basis of which is I (current) = E (voltage) / R (resistance)

So if you RAISE resistance, current goes down, but if you RAISE voltage, current goes up

This means that if your body is wet and sweaty, or you fell on something that cut into your flesh with the electrode, your body resistance went DOWN and so the current through your body needs less VOLTAGE to drive it

If you took enough AA cells in series to develop, say, 24V, and hooked it up to needles inserted in your chest, I'd bet money you'd be dead

Many power supplies, like ignition transformers for oil burners and neon sign transformers are "supposed" to be current limited and "supposed" to be non lethal

ON THE OTHER hand, some modern high energy ignition systems CAN be lethal!!

So it's a COMBINATION of how high or low your body resistance is---

whether the source can output enough voltage to drive a lethal amount of current through your body in that condition---

and whether the source can output enough current to come up with a "lethal dose" and it "ain't" very much.

If you were to hook a SMALL flashlight bulb in series with a voltage/ current source and kept turning it up while you were "hooked up" by the time the light showed any color -- you'd be dead. A few milliamps (thousanths of an amp) is all it takes

About 100 milliamps at 60 HZ AC is considered lethal, about .1 amp

It also depends on the TYPE of power. Very high frequencies are not as deadly, and DC is not as deadly as 60 HZ AC, often considered one of the most deadly power frequencies, and of course in common use

Additionally, your lethal dose depends on your health condition, and your heart condition. Sometimes, in some people, it doesn't take much to disrupt their nervous system. Even a bad shock that drives someone into a sever panic / anxiety condition could kill them. And of course if the shock is bad enough to cause heart fibrillation -- you're done unless help is nearby
 
67Dart273 said:
Here's the thing about that statement

The SOURCE must have enough AMPERAGE to kill you. Even though there have been deaths from Tasers, they are considered "non lethal." They output thousands of volts but are "current limited" by design

A flashlight battery, even an AA cell COULD output enough amperage to kill you, but it does not produce enough voltage (normally) to DRIVE that amperage through your body resistance

This is a simple case of ohms law, the basis of which is I (current) = E (voltage) / R (resistance)

So if you RAISE resistance, current goes down, but if you RAISE voltage, current goes up

This means that if your body is wet and sweaty, or you fell on something that cut into your flesh with the electrode, your body resistance went DOWN and so the current through your body needs less VOLTAGE to drive it

If you took enough AA cells in series to develop, say, 24V, and hooked it up to needles inserted in your chest, I'd bet money you'd be dead

Many power supplies, like ignition transformers for oil burners and neon sign transformers are "supposed" to be current limited and "supposed" to be non lethal

ON THE OTHER hand, some modern high energy ignition systems CAN be lethal!!

So it's a COMBINATION of how high or low your body resistance is---

whether the source can output enough voltage to drive a lethal amount of current through your body in that condition---

and whether the source can output enough current to come up with a "lethal dose" and it "ain't" very much.

If you were to hook a SMALL flashlight bulb in series with a voltage/ current source and kept turning it up while you were "hooked up" by the time the light showed any color -- you'd be dead. A few milliamps (thousanths of an amp) is all it takes

About 100 milliamps at 60 HZ AC is considered lethal, about .1 amp

It also depends on the TYPE of power. Very high frequencies are not as deadly, and DC is not as deadly as 60 HZ AC, often considered one of the most deadly power frequencies, and of course in common use

Additionally, your lethal dose depends on your health condition, and your heart condition. Sometimes, in some people, it doesn't take much to disrupt their nervous system. Even a bad shock that drives someone into a sever panic / anxiety condition could kill them. And of course if the shock is bad enough to cause heart fibrillation -- you're done unless help is nearby
Click to expand...

i used to hang onto two spark plug wires on my 65 with a MSD blaster coil for a morning wake up... HA
 
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