He's right on safety.

Post #14,615 by Andrew Grygus 10/22/01 2:33:35 PM Reply	He's right on safety. Twice the voltage will push twice the current through your body. Since your body resistance is far too high for even 220 to push 7 Amps, that breaker will not blow. In any case, it isn't the current that kills, it's the fact it's AC. The 60-Cycle (Hz, for you newbies) frequencey messes up your heart beat, so only a few miliamps is probably enough to kill you, but 220 will do it more surely than 110 under less than ideal conditions. Using 220 volts instead of 110 is purely a matter of using less copper, not safety. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #14,621 by Ashton 10/22/01 2:55:37 PM Reply	Then too: you actually have 220V coming in.. From the pole (or underground) transformer, with a ground center-tap for 2 X 110 circuits within the house A zealot could obtain (for most things) 220V rated appliances, even bulbs (just change the sockets and use Euro lamps). You could 'save' some copper too! - at negligible expense of frying self with bathroom heaters + wet bodies - in a trice instead of longer, slower. Kids + paperclips (or equiv) already manage to off selves with 110 - I shudder when in UK.. at equivalent risk made much larger. A. PS - last I heard, the best guess for lethal current directly across the heart: is quite less than one milliamp - no one wants to volunteer to see if it's really as low as ~ 100 microamps, for certain hearts and susceptible ones. (With all the parallel paths - this is not the same as "arm to arm" volts VS resistance / impedance, of course - that frequent connection point may be where the 'few milliamps' figure comes from.)
Post #14,668 by CRConrad 10/22/01 7:16:43 PM Reply	Isn't that exactly Edison's old anti-Tesla PR you're burpin?
Post #14,672 by Ashton 10/22/01 7:44:09 PM Reply	Yabut.. that's a can o'worms anyway. I'm by no means an expert on physiological effects of DC, AC and pulses, but have worked with and around the mix, and experienced various 'kinds' of shocks. Heard the caveats and saw a few cases where they weren't heeded. As you are doubtless aware (would I disbelieve a sig? ;-) Edison was in deep shit re the ^&#$ wiresize to get his DC sent all over the place, and T. 'solved' that cold / but with er side effects*.. Hence the pre Waggener-Edstrom spin about electrocuting elephants and such. (Did we really think those Wag-Ed droids were smart enough to invent spin? And they majored in Marketing!?) Anyway, PBS, BBC have shown various documentaries over here re the big brouhaha, the difficulties of Tesla (who worked briefly with Edison.. couldn't at all cotton to The Great One's tendency to assimilate and exterminate, so left.) Great soap opera 'bout the corporate mindset and greed generally. Tesla was fun - wish I could have seen that Colorado lab making lightning all around the building. Makes our puny 500 KV (DC) C-W generator pretty tame. Ashton
Post #14,695 by Andrew Grygus 10/22/01 9:54:42 PM Reply	The very one - but Tesla pulled the wool . . . . over the eyes of the press with an "AC Current" safety demo where the AC he used was in RF range, so the current travels only on the very outside of the conductor (his skin, in other words). This killed Edison's campagn, but it didn't negate the fact of the newly installed AC electric chair at Sing Sing prison. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #14,729 by Ashton 10/23/01 3:20:37 AM Reply	Yeah, wasn't that sneaky? - out M$'d M$..
Post #14,738 by CRConrad 10/23/01 6:29:14 AM Reply	But the POINT is, DC would have fried 'em just as well!
Post #14,780 by Andrew Grygus 10/23/01 11:24:21 AM Reply	"Fry" is the operative word here. The objective of Sing Sing prison was to eliminate the smoke, smell and sizzle of a powerful DC jolt by using a lesser AC one that stopped the heart. How successful this was would require comparative experimentation, which I do not care to engage in at this time (though captured Taliban might be good research subjects). [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]

Welcome to IWETHEY!