Immune to Electrocution

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Npstewart

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Anyone catch the history channel last night? "Stan Lee's Superhumans" (new show).

They had a guy on there that was immune to electrocution. He touched bare wires to his feet and held a hot plate, someone cracked an egg on the hot plate and made a omlet. Pretty Awesome
 
the title to the thread is deceiving. they have high skin resistance. While an interesting scientific curiousity, this is unfortunately a public disservice because someone's kid is going to try it and die.
 
If you get the voltage high enough, nobody is going to be immune to electricity.

Edit: Opps... I should look again when I get distracted:)
 
Now I'm kind of curious: How did they show that he was immune to electricity??

A 12 volt battery could cause a lot of impressive sparks when the wires are touched together, but wouldn't cause a shock unless you got it on bare muscle.
 
Npstewart said:
This appeared to be true, its not the first guy to be able to do it.
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Well the hot plate could certainly of been hot before it was shown?

And I do not believe any living creature is immune to electricity to the point they can be part of a circuit that operates something like an appliance.
 
I think the concept goes back to Tesla, who I seem to recall demonstrated that ultra high frequency power would travel across your skin without penetrating to vital systems. If the demo was carefully constructed, he might be using himself essentially as a conductor and the plate as a point of use.

But I might be wrong... DON'T try this based on my faulty memory.

http://www.elisanet.fi/dncmrc/safety.html
 
What I don't understand is how there is no apparent voltage drop through his body.

Unless he is made of pure copper, his body should present quite a bit of impedance. 1,000 ohms is a very conservative estimate.

Do the math. If the current passes through him, indicating that he is in series with the load, his body would present enough impedance to drop the voltage at the load to an unusable level.

I smell a rat somewhere.....
 
K8MHZ said:
Do the math. If the current passes through him, indicating that he is in series with the load, his body would present enough impedance to drop the voltage at the load to an unusable level.
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And that dropped voltage would be given up to heat, which could be bad for flesh.
 
I can't claim to explain this, but even the points in the story don't add up:

-There's no apparent voltage drop suggesting an incredibly low resistance in the guy's body.

-His story is that he discovered his talent by coming in contact with the primary on a distribution transformer with no ill effects.

-So, he's capable of short-circuiting 220 volts, but he didn't short-circuit the medium-voltage conductor he touched...?

He only conducts electricity when convenient? :roll:

-John
 
Jraef said:
I think the concept goes back to Tesla, who I seem to recall demonstrated that ultra high frequency power would travel across your skin without penetrating to vital systems.
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Of course! The Skin Effect. :grin:
 
LarryFine said:
Of course! The Skin Effect. :grin:
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That is exactly what it is, not really a new concept, people have been doing shows like this for years, in fact there is a great act on Americas got talent (Made it to the semi finals) that uses Tesla coils, Faraday suits, and "electric gutiars". Thye draw arcs to them from the Tesla coils and use the "gutiars" to change the frequency of the arcs to make them play music. This week they did "Iron Man", it was pretty cool.

http://www.nbc.com/americas-got-talent/video/week-10-arcattack/1242355/
 
zog said:
That is exactly what it is, not really a new concept, people have been doing shows like this for years, in fact there is a great act on Americas got talent (Made it to the semi finals) that uses Tesla coils, Faraday suits, and "electric gutiars". Thye draw arcs to them from the Tesla coils and use the "gutiars" to change the frequency of the arcs to make them play music. This week they did "Iron Man", it was pretty cool.

http://www.nbc.com/americas-got-talent/video/week-10-arcattack/1242355/
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Skin effect is negligible at 50Hz.

Tesla coils operate at a very high frequency to achieve some of those results. There is no comparison between a person playing with a Tesla coil and a person sticking a 210 volt 50 Hz main in their mouth.
 
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