What is the voltage of an average carpet static shock? Can you make it lethal?

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Solution 1

The energy in a typical static charge from walking across a carpet is too low to kill a human. It may be a few milliJoules.

The energy available is approximately Voltage x Charge. The current that passes through your body depends on that voltage divided by the effective resistance of your body (including any clothing, shoes and other material in the discharge path). But the time this current flows is very small because the amount of charge is very small.

Since energy is a conserved quantity, there is nothing you can do with the available voltage or current that will make a more dangerous amount of energy available.

Solution 2

A hospital-type defibrillator provides capacitor-discharge with hundreds of joules per pulse. Carpet/doorknob sparks are quite a bit less:

Carpet shocks:

  • 750V, 0.04mJ - Spark threshold, visible in darkness
  • 4KV, 1.2 mJoules - Winter doorknob spark, small snap, little pinprick
  • 7KV, 3.7 mJoules - Fairly nasty spark, louder snap. Ouch.
  • 35KV, 100 mJoules - Highest measured spark: northshore Alaska winter, vinyl truck seat.
  • Taser, tens/hundreds of mJoules, repeating pulse
  • 100KV, half a joule - VandeGraaff machine with chain of children connected

Defibrillator designers say that the "danger zone" for producing fibrillation is in the range of joules or few tens of joules. Lower than that, and the impulses cannot trigger fibrillation in normal hearts. And far higher, instead we get "defib" or "cardioversion" effects where the pulse momentarily overrides the heart's natural pacemaker. Note that this applies to external defib, as with paddle electrodes applied to skin.

Can we make it lethal? Yes, just stab a piece of coathanger into your chest muscles, and apply the spark directly! ;) That's "internal defibrillation" using implanted electrodes. One of the early heart researchers managed to kill himself in just this way, by applying quite small pulses to his chest electrodes, but with pulses adjusted to be in the center of the phase/amplitude "lethal window" in his heart's QRS waveform. If you doorknob-zap an implanted chest electrode, probably you won't die the first time, but don't repeat the experiment over and over, because eventually you'll accidentally miss the lucky conditions.

The old trick with the VandeGraaff machine and the row of schoolkids holding hands is probably unwise. If the last kid in the chain happens to have a serious undiagnosed heart condition, the big zap from the stored charge is near the lower threshold of actually causing harm.

Solution 3

I think I heard somewhere that it was in the thousands of volts, but it had extremely, extremely low amps.

Well, you heard wrong.

Electrostatic discharges from humans can be thousands of volts and several amps.

The reason it doesn't kill you is because it's a very small amount of electric charge, and so the discharge only lasts for a very short duration.

Background:

ESD tests with an intervening metal object are referred to as "hand/metal" tests. They are meant to represent the general case of a hand with any interposed metal object such as a ring, watch, bracelet, tool or key. The hand/metal discharge has become a de facto worst-case standard for ESD-testing of high-quality industrial and consumer equip­ment. Peak currents that result from it are typically an order of magnitude higher than discharge currents from a hand alone, without an intervening metal object.

Evidently a smooth, round electrode of moder­ate diameter causes far higher currents with far shorter rise times than a sharp electrode

Some results:

Peak currents don't differ greatly, ranging from 19 to 29A, as electrodes are changed from sharp (Fig. 5(a)) to rounded (the 1-2 mm ball of Fig. 5(c)).

Once again the ring [on finger] is at least as great a threat as an ESD electrode, as an 8 mm dia­meter ball tip. Peak currents at this 4 kV level range to 23A

30 A electrostatic discharge 15 kV IEC 8 mm ball electrode (10-15%)

Classification of ESD Hand/Metal Current Waves Versus Approach Speed, Voltage, Electrode Geometry and Humidity

Here's another for comparison:

Fig. 2. Discharge current of a human holding a 5 cm key at 1 kV, arm bent.

Fig. 2. Discharge current of a human holding a 5 cm key at 1 kV, arm bent.

ESD: Waveform calculation, field and current of human and simulator ESD

So if discharges from a finger are an order of magnitude lower, we can guess that they peak around 3 A. You can see that these peak currents only last a few nanoseconds, though.

(Yes, people intentionally shock themselves many times at thousands of volts for science.)

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HyperLuminal
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Updated on April 15, 2021

Comments

  • HyperLuminal
    HyperLuminal over 2 years

    I think I heard somewhere that it was in the thousands of volts, but it had extremely, extremely low amps. Could you somehow transform the current to make it larger or something? Or does the equation of volt*amp apply, making the overall power still merely an annoying sting?

  • endolith
    endolith over 6 years
    The idea that "it's the current that kills, not the voltage" is misleading. It's the energy that kills. You need high voltage to get current to pass through the body, and you need enough energy to cause fibrillation or burns. Which is why high voltage power supplies are typically dangerous and high current power supplies are often not.
  • endolith
    endolith over 6 years
    "One of the early heart researchers managed to kill himself in just this way" [citation needed]
  • wbeaty
    wbeaty over 6 years
    It was a late 1980s Scientific American article on heart research history, with colored 2D plots of stimulator energy vs advance/retard phase of QRS wave. Different stimulation energy and phase give different pacemaker results. The center of the plotted circles was an unknown, neither advancing nor retarding. When the researcher probed it (experimenting on himself alone in the lab,) he discovered that it triggers lethal arrhythmia. Dead scientists found by colleagues. Google doesn't turn anything up. I think I have a photocopy in old basement cabinets. Similar: Commotio cordis
  • Zach Saucier
    Zach Saucier over 6 years
    So can it be lethal?
  • endolith
    endolith over 6 years
    @ZachSaucier like lightning?