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Re: question on safety



Original poster: Gregory Morris <gbmorris@xxxxxxxxx>

Hi Michael,

I can't say much about the caps (though I would recommend against such experimentation to find an answer), I will tell you that your primary source is likely not fatal. Being new to the hobby and something of a fool, I have shocked myself with my 9kV 30mA NST once or twice, and the worst I have gotten is a slowly fleeting pain in the arm which was connected to the hand that touched some live object. Certainly nothing which seemed like it could have killed me either. Obviously this differs for each source, and is by no means a suggestion that you not exercise utmost caution when operating your Tesla Coil, but take it as a warning from quickly gained experience, and hopefully you will be able to rest a little easier when showing it to your friends and such.

Greg

Tesla list wrote:
Original poster: "Michael Ong" <omenowner725@xxxxxxxxxxx>

hello, today i was presenting my tesla coil for my school project, and i got asked if it was fatal to touch the spark gap or charged caps. I honestly didn't know the answer to this question and was wondering if anyone could answer it for me. my coil runs at 8kv 30ma with a cap size of .01uf and i have always just assumed it was unsafe to touch and in any case will give you a burn, who cares if it will kill you. the chart on my class room says that 30ma is close to "possibly" fatal, but it seems like there are a lot of factors like the voltage, the path it takes through your body, your body resistance at the time, and the climate conditions that plan key roles. anyways i was wondering if there was an easy answer to this question of how many amps/volts will kill you or if there are just too many factors that are undetermined to correctly give an answer. thanks again for the help
-Michael