"Adam Russell" wrote in
:


"Snooze" wrote in message
. com...

"Adam Russell" wrote in message
...
Evolution in action. He'll either learn what futility is, or
he'll actually educate himself on electric fences and not
subscribe to ignorant hysteria. I'll bet he's even touched his
tongue to a battery as a child, but somehow he thinks that should
have electrocuted him.

I'm pretty sure it takes more than 9v to scare off a racoon. So
how much voltage would you use that would do the job but not hurt
the child?
I know you can die from as little as 50v. Even less if you got
imaginative.



Don't let your kids wear wool socks on a low humidity day...imagine
what would happen if they discovered they can shuffle around the
house and zap each other with a few thousand volts. A typical static
electricity shock is about 2000 - 4000 volts.

Of course a amperage involved is so low, that aside from the
surprise, no damage is done. Ever taken a weak 9v battery and tapped
it against your tongue? A fresh battery hurts a little, but a weak
one gives a little tingling sensation.

A consumer grade electric fence is harmless, it will give a mild
shock, but nothing dangerous. I couldn't find the specifications
online, so guestimating, if an electric fence transformer draws 120v
A/C @ 1 amp, the output would be 4000 v A/C at .03 amp.

That's just a mild shocker, pretty safe..if it was D/C on the
otherhand is a different story.

You dont know much about electricity it appears. Static electricity
is completely different from transformer electricity. When you get a
shock from static electricity it is 2-4k for only an extreme fraction
of a second. I dont remember how short exactly (1ms comes to mind),
but it is the brevity that saves you. As it swiftly runs out of
electrons the voltage falls to zero. Power out of your wall does not
fall off. At all. That 120v will deliver 1mA or 15A depending on the
resistance of what you are powering and only limited by your circuit
breaker or fuse. If you were to put a penny in the fusebox it could
deliver 1000's of amps with no problem except that the wires would get
hot. So putting it through a transformer will not reduce the amperage
available to any safe amount. 4000v will kill you, and it matters
not whether it is DC or AC.

As others have said, voltage doesn't kill, current does. If you want
proof, go to a children's museum with a Van de Graf generator and observe
as kid after kid cheats death at the expense of hairstyling. The Van de
Graf Should be putting out least 10,000 V.

That said, it exceeding more likely for current to force a path through
your body as electric potential (voltage) increases. So for most intents
and purposes high voltage will kill you, but it also requires sustained
current running through your body, screwing with your normal electrical
functions and overheating your cells. (The current does not have to be
high at all.) Now don't go sticking your finger in a socket or
something, thinking you'll be able to let go after a short time, because
you won't.

If anything, DC is "safer" than AC, but I believe this involves
transmission losses that don't occur due the electric field generated by
the oscillating alternating current. But the tranmission losses should
be neglible at short distances and "safe" in this sense is not relevant.
(Does AC make it more diffult to remove your hand from an outlet? That
could be another reason, but I'm not too sure about it).

Static electricity is a capacitive discharge (as is lightning and battery
power). The only difference between that and electricity from an outlet
is that there is nothing resupplying the capacitor and so the duration is
short, depending on the size of the capacitor. (Just because you usually
get DC power from batteries and AC power from an outlet doesn't mean they
can't be the other way around. It wouldn't be efficient, but you could
do it).

Running electricity through a step-up transformer will step up the
voltage at the expense of (I'm not sure I remember this correctly, but
what else would it be?) current. (Inside a block transformer, you may
also have a rectifier that converts AC to DC). You will also have
current losses from the conversion and needless to say, just because you
are on a 15A line, it doesn't mean the device or transformer will draw
the full 15A. The input and output ratings should be printed on the
transformer block. All other things being equal, the calculation above
is still missing a sqrt(2) since the source is AC (in addition to
conversion losses which I am guess could be 30%.)

The term "transformer electricity" should probably be reserved for
Autobots and Decepticons.

[rec.gardens]