Uhhhm...what does it mean when electricity arcs between your fingertips?

Originally posted by AFewGoodWomen
I've seen a few threads on the weird fogs settling in over cities...they reek of burnt ozone and you can feel the electricity in the air, even though the skies above are clear.

Soooo....last week we had one of those nights, and I swear, I was sitting in a chair cross legged with my hands on my knees and I suddenly felt a jolt of electricity go up my body from the floor up, but it didn't hurt. it felt effin good...after the jolt, I raised my hands off of my knees and an arc of blue electricity went from my left hand to my right...

I happened again a few nights later...I checked the outlets to assure that the furniture wasn't sitting on a wire...bizarre...yet




AWESOME.

Anyone else??? Please chime in...I know you will (psst...I'm not crazy, muhahahaha

As I stated above^^^it happened again, this time I was on the couch with both feet on the floor and I was in jeans and shoes...the couch is cotton and foam...usual guts to it...WTH???

Originally posted by rickymouse
reply to post by j.r.c.b.

 

Current can flow through damp air without a spark at all, thousands of volts in fact. It happens in nature all the time. I don't think what The person said is probable but I just can't let improper evidence be used to disprove it. Nothing personal.

"Thousands of volts" is not a current, it's a potential. "Thousands of volts of current" is a nonsense statement, sort of like saying my kitchen faucet can deliver 60psi gallons, or the distance from Atlanta to Savannah is 60mph.

And, again, if current just flows in damp air, how does that help the OP's statement that she drew about a two foot arc between her hands? Not withstanding she's got a conductive body stuck between those hands that's got about 10K of resistance? Now you're putting your magically conducting damp air in parallel with that, further reducing the impedance between her hands.

Originally posted by AFewGoodWomen

Originally posted by timidgal
reply to post by AFewGoodWomen

 

It sounds like you might have somehow tapped into your body's natural energy field or aura without realizing it. There are many people who train to use this type of energy in the healing arts. You might have a natural ability to harness this energy. Has anything like this ever happened to you before?

No...but I hesitate to admit that I am a paranormal investigator...but this felt purely natural, I don't believe it was supernatural at all...just really effin cool.

I feel changed...in a way. Like I got a glimpse of something wonderful, a gift for a split second...but at the same time...like it's the way it's supposed to be. I don't know...words fail me.

The thing is, this is not supernatural at all. It's totally natural and feels exactly like you describe. It's an ability anyone can cultivate - it just comes more easily to some than others.

reply to post by Bedlam


You have to remember; the greater the voltage, the less current is needed to produce an effect. A fluorescent bulb uses much less current at 277 volts than it does at 120 volts. If enough electrical potential was built up in her body, it would be possible for it to discharge itself without a huge amount of current.

I'm thinking she may have become electrically isolated by the vinyl chair, making herself into a type of capacitor, just building up an electric charge waiting to be discharged. Maybe one of her elbows touched something creating a path to ground and caused the electric discharge between her hands. It is possible for there to be different electric potentials between different parts of the body. Its also possible that one part of her body became more electrically charged than the other and the discharge was natures way of balancing the charge. For some reason, that fog made the air between her hands have less resistance than her body for that moment and the static discharged.

It was probably some type of static discharge at high voltage and high frequency which explains why it did not burn her as the current involved would have to have been less and current is the thing that is damaging to the body.

Originally posted by FortAnthem
reply to post by Bedlam

 

You have to remember; the greater the voltage, the less current is needed to produce an effect. A fluorescent bulb uses much less current at 277 volts than it does at 120 volts. If enough electrical potential was built up in her body, it would be possible for it to discharge itself without a huge amount of current.

However, you've got a problem. She's conductive. And you're postulating over a million Volts of potential from hand to hand. Not happening.

I'm thinking she may have become electrically isolated by the vinyl chair, making herself into a type of capacitor, just building up an electric charge waiting to be discharged. Maybe one of her elbows touched something creating a path to ground and caused the electric discharge between her hands.

Once her elbow touched something creating a path to ground, the 10K impedance between one hand and the other would discharge any potential through her body. She'd arc from her elbow to the object, not hand to hand.

It is possible for there to be different electric potentials between different parts of the body.

Sure. We call that "a current". The relation is fairly straightforward: E = IR. In this case, the R part is about 10K. So if I wanted to put, say, a volt of potential across her hands, I could do so by flowing 0.1mA across her from hand to hand. Voila! A volt of potential will appear. And if I wanted 1.5MV across her hands, I could do so by running 150A through her body. But then you've got 225MW of power dissipation to deal with.

Its also possible that one part of her body became more electrically charged than the other and the discharge was natures way of balancing the charge. For some reason, that fog made the air between her hands have less resistance than her body for that moment and the static discharged.

You can't have a static potential difference across a conductor.

reply to post by Bedlam

Sure. We call that "a current". The relation is fairly straightforward: E = IR. In this case, the R part is about 10K.

10k ohms of resistance is not always present in the human body. It can vary based on the healthiness of an individual, how dry or wet they are and even how tired they are at any particular time.

There are a lot of factors involved and not every person has the same electrical resistance. For instance, men tend to have lower resistance than women. Just like for the resistors used in electronics, the resistance of a person's arm depends on the arm's length and diameter. Resistance goes up with length and down with diameter. Since men tend to have thicker arms and legs (more muscle), they usually have lower resistance. (An implication of this is that the lethal current for men is higher than that for women.) A rough value for the internal resistance of the human body is 300-1,000 Ohms. Naturally, the resistance also depends on the path that electricity takes through the body - if the electricity goes in the left hand and out the right foot, then the resistance will be much higher than if it goes in and out of adjacent fingers.

Within the body, the tissues with the greatest resistance are bone and fat - nerves and muscle have the least resistance. That said, the majority of the body's resistance is in the skin - the dead, dry cells of the epidermis (the skin's outer layer) are very poor conductors. Depending on the person, the resistance of dry skin is usually between 1,000-100,000 Ohms. The skin's resistance is much lower if it is wet or burnt/blistered. This means that when a person is electrocuted in real life, the body's resistance drops as the skin is burned. To determine a person's total resistance, just add together the resistance of each part of the body - remember that the electricity must pass through the skin twice (on the way in and on the way out), so the total resistance is:

Rtotal = Rskin(in) + Rinternal + Rskin(out)

Another interesting point to consider is that in addition to acting like a resistor, the epidermis acts like a capacitor if placed in contact with a piece of metal (the underlying tissue is like one plate of a capacitor and the metal surface is like the other plate - the dry epidermis is the less-conductive material or "dielectric" in between) . In cases of electrocution by a DC voltage source, this capacitive property has little importance. But if the electrocution is by an AC source, the epidermis's natural resistance is "shorted out", allowing the current to bypass that part of the body's resistance and making the body's total resistance much lower.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department of Physics

If her body was acting as a capacitor, the static electricity would have been building up on the outside of her skin and would not need to pass through her body in order to discharge. The distance between her two hands could have equaled a potential difference and, if her two hands had unequal static charges built up around them, the spark may have been natures way of equalizing the charge. It may have been that her body's resistance was greater than the air's resistance at that time due to whatever weird phenomena that fog created in her area, allowing the charge to dissipate through the air rather than through her body.

You can't have a static potential difference across a conductor.

Her body is not a conductor, it is a resistor with various levels of resistance throughout the various parts of the body. It would be very possible for a potential difference to build up on her body, especially in a statically charged environment. A conductor is a material that allows electricity to flow freely through it, like copper. Skin, with a resistance of 10k ohms is, by definition, a resistor.

Hmmmm...all very good answers , probably. I have ADD...I sure of it. If I can find a way do replicate this again...I will post...but until then, no one is running any wires through me...kay?

Originally posted by FortAnthem
reply to post by Bedlam

10k ohms of resistance is not always present in the human body. It can vary based on the healthiness of an individual, how dry or wet they are and even how tired they are at any particular time.

So, you think it makes a lot of difference here if she's got somewhere between 300 ohms to 10k of resistance, with 1.5MV of potential across her hands? Really? A lower value just means that she's got to have even MORE current across her to get that potential - it's not helping your argument.

Another interesting point to consider is that in addition to acting like a resistor, the epidermis acts like a capacitor if placed in contact with a piece of metal ...

It acts like a really leaky capacitor with a low punch-through voltage.

If her body was acting as a capacitor, the static electricity would have been building up on the outside of her skin and would not need to pass through her body in order to discharge. The distance between her two hands could have equaled a potential difference and, if her two hands had unequal static charges built up around them, the spark may have been natures way of equalizing the charge. It may have been that her body's resistance was greater than the air's resistance at that time due to whatever weird phenomena that fog created in her area, allowing the charge to dissipate through the air rather than through her body.

The cite you used is telling you that dry skin has a higher impedance, about 10k, with wet skin having less, about 300-1000 ohms. They're also telling you that in the case of AC, especially very high frequency AC like, say, RF, the capacitance of the epidermis can bypass the ~4.7K dry skin resistance and make dry skin pass AC current as if it were wet. However. we're still talking a 10K dry resistance.

Think a 4.7K resistor in parallel with a small cap of a few hundred pf, that group in series with a 300 ohm resistor, then another 4.7K in parallel with another small cap. Even with the caps there, it's still about 10K.

You can't get a static differential across it. Also, the epidermis doesn't have a >1.5MV breakdown voltage. If you got 1.5MV on "the outside of her body" so that you had 1.5MV potential difference between hands, even if she had the world's least leaky epidermis, it would have punched through and equalized.

Her body is not a conductor, it is a resistor with various levels of resistance throughout the various parts of the body. It would be very possible for a potential difference to build up on her body, especially in a statically charged environment. A conductor is a material that allows electricity to flow freely through it, like copper. Skin, with a resistance of 10k ohms is, by definition, a resistor.

Resistors are conductors. Just not as good as a perfect conductor. Even copper is a resistor, I use copper strap resistors for current measurement all the time. See also: current shunt.

A potential difference across a resistor causes a current flow. As I pointed out, the current will be E/R. If E = 1.5MV, and R is about 10K, then I = 150A, in order to sustain that potential difference.

reply to post by AFewGoodWomen


Consider yourself lucky

Dude... that's pretty awesome.
Are you a Jedi Knight?

reply to post by AFewGoodWomen


It means
YOU #ING SUPA MAN

reply to post by AFewGoodWomen


In all seriousness, the simple fix is to simply touch any tap / faucet in your apartment.

This "grounds" you and all built up 'leccy' is offloaded .

try it ... hope this helps.

Originally posted by Timely
reply to post by AFewGoodWomen

 

In all seriousness, the simple fix is to simply touch any tap / faucet in your apartment.

This "grounds" you and all built up 'leccy' is offloaded .

try it ... hope this helps.

Helps what...a million orgasms pulsing through your body at the speed of light. Uhhh....think I may try to harness this...lol

Seriously. lofl

reply to post by AFewGoodWomen


Sorry, I wasn't aware of this being market research into the next level of " Rabbit ears " ( sorry beezer )

Big kudos if you can make it battery free ...

Edit: Who'd of thunk, free energy would have 'arrived ' in this form ??

Originally posted by L8RT8RZ
If the floor is carpeted, it's even more likely. The air is drier in the winter season and static builds up more readily.

When I was little in school, we used to take our shoes off and shuffle our socks on the carpet to zap other kids. The only time it didn't work was when you tried to zap another kid that was also trying to zap you.

How you could build up voltage in one hand and not the other is pretty amazing though!

Means your Dynamo

Incredible.

It seems as if we are starting to redefine the laws of physics as a species.
I'm sure your experience is completely unique, but that doesn't mean it's not going to happen more often.

I mean, one should not be able to create a spark gap between their own fingers - as it is physically impossible.
It is like the equivalent of a gun being able to shoot itself...if that makes any sense.

Some of us are ascending a lot quicker than expected!
You are truly special and unique, OP.

The only thing I can relate to the is massive amounts of fog we have been having. Its absurd!

reply to post by Apollo7


My leg vibrates a lot and has for years since i keep my cell phone there and it is set on vibrate. Even if my phone is not in that pocket my leg will sometimes vibrate. I guess it is like an amputee that loses their leg and they still feel an itch there.

reply to post by AFewGoodWomen


I've had visible arcs from static discharge, but you piqued my interest with the fog thing. Just last night by me, fogbstarted settling in, and it had, what I think would be the smell you're describing as "burnt ozone", because it smelled a lot like an "ozone air purifier" I used to have. (by the way, those things don't actually purify anything, but they make the air smell really good without spraying chemicals. Though some people get sick from the smell.)