Comment on Home renovations
Dave@lemmy.nz 2 weeks ago
Ok but for real, that wouldn’t work, right? How would them holding it complete the circuit? The circuit is just gonna be from one screw to the top of the pole back through another screw, not the part the person is holding.
I mean, a car battery isn’t going to do anything even if you could complete a circuit. You can just grab the terminals on a car battery, 12V isn’t high enough to be noticeable on dry skin.
You’d want to solder on the hot lead of an extension cord hooked up to 120 if you wanted to make sure they never touch that pole again.
Disclaimer: don’t do this, it’ll probably kill.
A electric horse fence is a better option. Will zing you but isn’t lethal and also has an intermittent current. Specifically designed to be touched by living things without harm. But stay away from cattle fencing, that can kill someone with a heart condition.
You would have to try pretty hard to kill yourself with a hotwire even if you had a heart condition. Like lay on your side on the ground and grab the hotwire so maybe the circuit went through your heart and not entirely followed the shortest path to ground along your side.
I think there is potential for some non lethal zapping if done right (one terminal to the poles other to ground)
Your skin is where most of the body’s resistance is, and electrocution / shock can occur at much lower voltages if applied internally/ to a cut.
There’s an urban legend about a navy Electrical engineer stopping his heart by trying to measure his internal resistance with a voltmeter- he stabbed one probe into each of his thumbs and the portion of a single volt the meter uses to test resistance going across his heart was enough to cause afib.
Now, with pole dancing, theres some potential, for a sweaty bikini to make contact with both an electrified pole and the interior of the dancer’s labia, conducting enough electricity to impart a noticeable shock.
No matter the voltage though, I think the main problem is the body being part of the least resistive, or any, path to ground. Unless the screws holding the bottom of the pole also protruded through the downstairs neighbor’s ceiling, and you run the negative wire out your window and into theirs, connecting both ends of the pole to the battery…
Even if you had wires on both ends of the pole, nothing would go into the person because the path of least resistance would be the pole. You would have to energize the pole and directly connect the person to the other wire in order to complete the circuit. Then the resistance of the human body becomes an issue, and using this paper as a reference, the worst case scenario of internal body resistance is ~300 ohm, and the threshold for immediate cardiac symptoms is ~100 mA.
Then, 12V / 300 ohm = 40 mA. So closer than I’d like, but probably not fatal even in the absolute worst case scenario where there is no electrical resistance provided by the skin and a direct electrical path through the heart.
I was thinking no fatal but feel able. Seems like I was way overestimating the ability of sweat as a saline solution conductor to pull power away from the pole and create a shock on the bits below though.
Not if the person two floors downstairs is in on it
For someone to get electrocuted, the current needs to flow through their body. Electricity always follows the path of least resistance, so there’s basically no way to do that from upstairs.
If you attach both terminals of the battery (or a stripped extension wire) that wouldn’t do it. Assuming the pole is conductive, the electricity would just go into the screws, into the pole, across to the other screw and out. If the pole isn’t conductive it would probably do nothing at all. Maybe the floor is conductive, in which case it would go into the screw, through the floor/ceiling and out the other screw. There’s just no way to do it where the electricity flows from a screw, down the pole, into the body of the pole dancer, then somehow back out and up to the battery.
Even if the person who owned the stripper pole wanted to electrocute themselves it would be difficult. Assuming the pole is conductive, if you attached one electrode near the ceiling and one near the floor, the electricity would just flow through the pole. It wouldn’t make a detour to go through the body of the pole dancer. You’d basically have to clip one side of the battery to your toe, the other side to the stripper pole, and then grab the pole with your hands. And, even then, it might not do it – you’d have to have sweaty hands and toes to make the path through your body conductive.
I really hate the movie trope where people can get electrocuted by stepping into a puddle that has something electricity-related in it. It’s almost as bad as the trope that you get blasted backwards if you’re hit by a bullet / shotgun blast.
so there’s basically no way to do that from upstairs.
Incorrect.
stripper poles are tubes and spin on bearings. follow these instructions and you can most certainly electrocute someone with one.
You’ve put a worrying amount of thought into this.
🤣 I really didn’t. I used to be a contractor and just understand how this stuff works.
best way to not kill yourself is to know the thousands of ways to die.
What makes you think that will work? That sounds like a very complicated way of just connecting the common to live with no human in the loop.
Ikr, this at least makes the pole get hot because current is actually running through part of it.
But at no point is a human part of the path of least resistance for the electricity.
the gauge of metal the pole is made from is pretty thin. on top of that, it’s very likely to be made from aluminum.
if electricity follows the path of least resistance, it would be through the person.
Does this work by creating a resistance in the wire (zig zags) so that anywhere you touch on the pole causes you to become the path of least resistance? I’m just having a hard time following but it intrigues me
Nah, that wouldn’t. But if you connected just the hot line (right eye of the outlet smiley face) that would do it. Wouldn’t recommend it because you could kill them by electrocution or kill even more people with a fire.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You can short the terminals on a car battery with your body with no issue, but It might melt the hardware and set the floor on fire! What they should really do is connect a HV source and charge up the pole. Won’t cause any lasting harm, but hopefully it’ll convince them they drove a screw through a live wire.
asbestos@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Who the hell told you you can short a car battery with your body? You absolutely can’t.
socsa@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
You definitely can.
Source: am high level electrical engineer.
Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
That’s not a short, by definition.
tomiant@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Oh yeah? What level?
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Is this a semantic argument about my use of “short”?
Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
The way you worded it makes it sound like it’s very easy to short a battery with your body, not that attempting to short a battery will cause “no issue” because it won’t actually work.
asbestos@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Did you mean short circuit the battery using your bare hands?