"NY" wrote in message
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"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
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On Wed, 31 Mar 2021 22:06:03 +0100, NY wrote:

"Fredxx" wrote in message
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We were told similar by our physics master, except I don't think the
advice was to regularly use the back of your hand instead of a neon
tester, just that if ever you were in a situation where you *had* to
find out whether something was live or not, and you had no
alternative, then use the back of your hand rather than pinching it
between fingers, or sticking your tongue on it!

I wonder how many kids of nowadays test PP3 batteries that way?

I knew a woman at university who could feel very low voltages with her
bare fingers (no need for tongues!). She could tell instantly whether an
AA battery was fully charged or almost flat. She always touched a door
handle or a car door with her elbow through her clothes to discharge
most of the static charge that she may have acquired walking across a
carpet or from the tyres rolling on the road.

SWMBO used to (interesting it's no longer the case) be able to sense
electric storms long before they happened.

My theory was it something to do with the ****ed nerves of MS being more
sensitive to electrickery.

There could well be a lot of truth to this. The woman I knew had
"hypermobile joints" (she could bend her hands a long way backwards at the
wrists etc) and later in life developed a strange syndrome which meant
that if she was ever injured (or had surgery) she would feel the pain for
a long time after the wound had healed - which was bad news as she needed
an operation for something and decided that the normally short-term pain
of an incision would go on for so long afterwards that she couldn't face
the operation.

Yeah, there was one of those with hypermobile joints on "Michael Mosley:
What's My Diagnosis" and they spelt out some real medical downsides with
that condition. Forget the detail now. Very interesting because I was
fascinated
by that condition as a teenager, presumably because someone I knew had it.