Above, swimming with 200,000 volts. Sure it’s safe. Tin hats protect you. Only do this at home. “Continue reading” for further details of this pleasant dip in a pool. 5 photos, 1 video. Tesla coil sparks strike me in the pool wearing a “tin-foil hat”. It is made of aluminium foil and tape on a aluminium rod support. The back of the foil goes down into the water and is a low inductance path to the water. I also have two solid wires into the pool. There is no sensation at all when sparks hit me. Not shown well are the fine protective steel wires that protect my face. Taken in our backyard swimming pool. The salt water pool is very conductive like a big ground so there is no sensation.
The video above was taken at my Open day by Graeme Minchin. People associate water and electricity with danger. Like dropping the hairdryer in the bathtub. But the danger only occurs if the water forms a path to you then ground ie if you touch the taps, bath drain or wet grounded floor.
The chain mail glove has a copper braid attached otherwise it would be a problem if I had my hand right out of the water. Only small sparks here as I don’t want wild sparks onto my nose. Photo technique for the left photo was a flash PLUS a 0.5 second exposure to catch more sparks but still freeze the water ripples. The smaller point and shoot camera was a better shot from the end of the swiming pool as it shows the TC. Water was 17 C and not pleasant. I used a 12 inch loudspeaker magnet as a divers weight to allow me to sit on the bottom.
This early swimming pool photo has a sort of Matrix feel about it. A long exposure averages out the ripples and makes them invisible. For a laugh see the humorous comments when posted to G+.
“Tin foil hats” originate from those rather alternative people who believe that it protects aliens from reading their minds. Some guys at MIT even did a scientific study to show it does not protect from all radiation. Covered by the Discovery Channel Canada video. Discovery USA screened “Is it possible?” in the USA on 3 occasions April 7 – May 2. My stuff was featured for 7 mins and the title was Dr Electric, human lightning rod….hmmm. Sounds like I need some colored tights and wear my undies on the outside – perhaps 2 pairs. Directed by Neil Thomas (Thunderbird Films) who flew in from Canada. It was filmed by cameraman Dean Lomax on Nov, 7 2009. A long 13 hour shoot for 4 hours footage on one camera and 3h on the other. Filmed on location (my home in Bunbury, Western Australia) and shows lots of big sparks and stunts including sparks onto me while in a swimming pool. Hey, I even blew up a few watermelons. Video runs 8 mins. Vid…
A shot from Bruce Jorgensen who got into the pool to get the water level shot.
Below are some shots from the Open Day 2014. Some LN2 was thrown into the pool. Unfortunately a circuit breaker cut out and prevented some good “sparks in clouds” shots.
I have been asked about a lightning strike to water and how close is “safe”. Electroshock fishing is a method of making fish swim towards a (positive) pulsed DC electrode and stunning then for a minute or two. It is not apparently damaging to the fish and is used for counting fish in lakes and streams. This will not be the same as cardiac standstill in a human but the order of magnitude is there. Its range for 250V, 1.5 A is 1-6 feet in a typical freshwater stream. So if 1 A works at 6 feet and 100,000 A is a typical lightning stroke then how far is safe? The lightning will be reduced by the cube of distance as it goes into a volume of water, not in a single line. Cube root of 100,000 is 46. Multiplied by 6 feet, this is 278 feet. Rounded this is 300 feet or 100 m. So 100 m in freshwater like a big lake. Seawater has 400 times the conductivity so reduce this by cube root of 400 = 7. So 40 feet or about 15 m is the fish stunning distance from a lightning strike in the sea. Want to be really safe by a factor of 30? Then stay 50 m away from a lightning stroke in the sea. (If you trust my math…) Interestingly, my non-science oriented son said a guess of 20 m as being safe. I could have saved myself the time to do the calculations.
Related pages
Tesla coil 4 inch Version 2
G+ post humorous comments
Try something else
Jacobs LadderExternal links
Tin foil hats – Wikipedia
German pool sparks 2008
Electroshock fishing
Seawater has 400 times the conductivity
Photo Date: 2007 – 2014