How dangerous was this?

[ultimatemythbuster]

No damage done to either yourself or the motherboard.  The circuit that you complete to turn the PC on is a very low voltage and current, so you would not be injured, and if your motherboard still works then it's fine too.

[Canada EH]

10 hours ago, Bleedingyamato said:

I think Mythbusters tested something about electricity once and mentioned something about this.

 

Or you could just google it on the interweb!

[Bleedingyamato]

39 minutes ago, Canada EH said:

Or you could just google it on the interweb!

I don't have that much interest atm to bother looking. 

 

Besides, other people had already provided the answer so there wouldn't have been a point to my searching on Google.  ?

[Rodniz]

I used to start old hardware with my fingers touching the both pins, never damaged anything, or myself. Ur fine man

[corrado33]

15 hours ago, Canada EH said:

It aint voltage that kills its amperage. Plus there needs to be enough voltage to break skin resistance, so blood would do it. You can feel a buzz even off a 9V battery.

 

1 hour ago, Brennan_Price said:

It isn't the voltage you have to worry about. It is the current that you have to worry about. It could be a high voltage with low current and you would be fine but if the tables were turned and you had a low voltage and a stupidly high current then that could kill you.

 

Edit: I forgot to mention that it is the high voltage that allows it to penetrate the skin because if the voltage is low then it wont even come into contact theoretically.

First off OP, you did absolutely no damage to anything, including yourself. 

 

Secondly, the above posters are incorrect. It IS the voltage you have to worry about. Without a high enough voltage no current will be transmitted through your body. 100 A at 1V DC will do literally nothing do you. Don't believe me? Watch someone who knows a hell of a lot more about it prove it. You can put multiple hundreds of Amps across your tongue but without the voltage required to overcome your body's resistance, NOTHING will happen. There are also videos of photoinduction (I miss his videos, he doesn't post anymore) holding a metal wrench and putting it between two contacts to melt it. Hundreds and hundreds of amps, but he didn't get shocked because it was low voltage. It IS the voltage. If the voltage is large enough to overcome your body's resistance, it most likely has enough power to stop your heart. We don't have many high voltage, very low current limited sources around us. Usually it's high voltage, high power.

 

 

[Canada EH]

1 hour ago, corrado33 said:

Without a high enough voltage no current will be transmitted through your body.

Did you read my post that you quoted?

 

Quote

Plus there needs to be enough voltage to break skin resistance

 

[Mr.Meerkat]

21 hours ago, Jovidah said:

12volt fatalities

Just give it a couple of Amps (like a few thousands) and you'll be fried to a crisp  (that's why people can survive lightning strikes as it's a high voltage but only at like 0.001Amps).

[SpaceGhostC2C]

2 hours ago, corrado33 said:

 

Secondly, the above posters are incorrect. It IS the voltage you have to worry about. Without a high enough voltage no current will be transmitted through your body.

 

Without sufficient voltage, no current will be transmitted... and because it is current that kills, then it helps to keep voltages below a certain level, yes. But they are absolutely right: it is current, and only current, that kills. The voltage you need for said current to circulate is a different matter.

On the other hand, high voltages without barely any current are absolutely harmless (unless you have some health condition). Which kind of voltages you think non-lethal electrified fences have? Hint: it's in the order of thousands of volts  

[corrado33]

24 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Without sufficient voltage, no current will be transmitted... and because it is current that kills, then it helps to keep voltages below a certain level, yes. But they are absolutely right: it is current, and only current, that kills. The voltage you need for said current to circulate is a different matter.

On the other hand, high voltages without barely any current are absolutely harmless (unless you have some health condition). Which kind of voltages you think non-lethal electrified fences have? Hint: it's in the order of thousands of volts  

Without voltage there IS NO current. So how can current be the killer without the voltage? There is no need to worry about a high CURRENT power source. There is a very large need to worry about a high VOLTAGE power source. Why is that? Have you ever seen a high voltage power source? They're plastered in stickers not to touch them, where everyday we use low voltage sources with no such warnings. Current, alone, cannot kill, because it cannot exist without the voltage driving it. Therefore voltage is the root cause. Current is simply the effect. 

 

Like the video said. It's like saying bullets kill and guns are harmless. 

 

And yes, I'm well aware how electric fences and how "plasma balls" work.

[Curious Pineapple]

Do a simple test. Grab both terminals of a car battery and tell me if you die or not. They can deliver thousands of amps. You need about 30mA across the heart, so grabbing live and neutral wires with one hand is very unlikely to kill, as I am still alive, it kind of backs it up. You also have to take frequency into account and the skin effect. That's why plasma balls don't hurt or kill. You can get come pretty healthy arcs from a plasma ball to your finger by putting a pin on the top upside down. You feel nothing apart from the burning of your skin.

 

23 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

Like the video said. It's like saying bullets kill and guns are harmless.

Ever put a gun in a vice and hit the firing cap with a nail? That is a good analogy actually. Although it is the current through the heart that causes heart failure, the current flow can't exist without enough pressure to push it. The voltage required to allow that current flow isn't a static number as there are so many factors to account for, but about 30mA across the heart will stop it.

 

Oh, and no-one can die from licking a 9v battery, unless they maybe inhale or swallow it. There is no way in hell the current flow will reach the heart, not going to happen.

[mariushm]

53 minutes ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Oh, and no-one can die from licking a 9v battery, unless they maybe inhale or swallow it. There is no way in hell the current flow will reach the heart, not going to happen.

http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-50.html

 

(1999) A US Navy safety publication describes injuries incurred while doing don't's. One page described the fate of a sailor playing with a multimeter in an unauthorized manner. He was curious about the resistance level of the human body. He had a Simpson 260 multimeter, a small unit powered by a 9-volt battery. That may not seem powerful enough to be dangerous… but it can be deadly in the wrong hands.

The sailor took a probe in each hand to measure his bodily resistance from thumb to thumb. But the probes had sharp tips, and in his excitement he pressed his thumbs hard enough against the probes to break the skin. Once the salty conducting fluid known as blood was available, the current from the multimeter travelled right across the sailor's heart, disrupting the electrical regulation of his heartbeat. He died before he could record his Ohms.

The lesson? The Navy issues very few objects which are designed to be stuck into the human body.

 

[...]

How, you might ask, with only a 9V battery? Easy. One of the "rules of thumb" that the Navy teaches is the 1-10-100 rule of current. This rule states that 1mA of current through the human body can be felt, 10mA of current is sufficient to make muscles contract to the point where you cannot let go of a power source, and 100mA is sufficient to stop the heart. Let's look at Ohm's law. Ohm's law (for DC systems - I will not discuss AC here) is written as E=IR, where E is voltage in volts, I is current in Amps, and R is resistance in Ohms.

When we did the experiment in the electrical safety class to determine our body's resistance, we found a resistance of 500K Ohms. Using 9V and 500K Ohms in the equation, we come up with a current of 18 microAmps, below the "feel" threshold of 1mA. However, removing the insulation of skin from our curious sailor here, the resistance through the very good conducting electrolytes of the body is sharply lower. Around 100 ohms, in fact, resulting in a current of 90mA - sufficient to stop our sailor's heart and kill him.

 

// NOTE : modern multimeters limit the current and use much lower voltages when testing resistance, even those powered by 9v batteries.

Most try to keep the voltage below around 0.6v in an effort to allow the multimeter to  be used more in circuits (where more than 0.6v would usually go through diodes or turn on mosfets etc ).

Some may go up to power supply input but that's usually 2v..3.3v and the multimeters use a regulator inside to get that voltage from whatever voltage the battery gives them.

So these days you wouldn't die from stabbing yourself with multimeter probes

[SpaceGhostC2C]

2 hours ago, corrado33 said:

And yes, I'm well aware how electric fences and how "plasma balls" work.

That's hard to reconcile with the nonsense you are writing.

 

High voltage + low current = no harm

Low voltage + high current = death

Too low voltage = no current, therefore no harm, because "no current"

 

There really isn't any way around it.

 

Btw: bulelts kill, guns don't. Try killing someone with an unloaded gun - that's what a high voltage with a low current is. On the other hand, try forcing a bullet into someone's skull with anything, gun or not: the person dies. Sure, certain guns make it easier to get the bullet through, low power devices may make the bullet bounce. Still, projectiles kill, whether arrows, bullets, or cannonballs. Empty guns or rubberball-point arrows don't, no matter the gun or the bow used.

[corrado33]

3 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

That's hard to reconcile with the nonsense you are writing.

 

High voltage + low current = no harm

Low voltage + high current = death

Too low voltage = no current, therefore no harm, because "no current"

 

There really isn't any way around it.

 

Btw: bulelts kill, guns don't. Try killing someone with an unloaded gun - that's what a high voltage with a low current is. On the other hand, try forcing a bullet into someone's skull with anything, gun or not: the person dies. Sure, certain guns make it easier to get the bullet through, low power devices may make the bullet bounce. Still, projectiles kill, whether arrows, bullets, or cannonballs. Empty guns or rubberball-point arrows don't, no matter the gun or the bow used.

And I'M the one writing nonsense? 

 

Let's have a bit of fun with this. Going with your analogy, heart failure doesn't kill, it's the lack of blood to your brain that kills you. Cancer doesn't kill you, it's your organs shutting down from lack of nutrients/among other things that kills you. Cyanide doesn't kill, the resulting lack of oxygen is what kills you. 

 

The nail in the road didn't cause your flat tire, it's the air rushing out of the tire that did that.

 

The lack of oil in your engine didn't cause engine failure, it's the friction that welded the engine together.

 

A failed CPU fan didn't kill that CPU, it was the heat that killed it.

 

 

None of these things make sense. The effect would not exist without the cause. One cause, multiple effects. The current is the EFFECT of the voltage. The voltage is the cause. 

 

And no, low voltage high current does not equal death. Did you even watch the video of the guy putting a 150 AMP source across his tongue at 4V? Is that too low of a voltage for you? Did you see him TOUCHING 20V 150 A source? Still too low of a voltage for you? 

[Shadow_Storm56]

It's like between 2 and 12 volts.... i wouldent lick it but it still wouldent hurt you even then 

[Brennan Price]

19 hours ago, corrado33 said:

 

First off OP, you did absolutely no damage to anything, including yourself. 

 

Secondly, the above posters are incorrect. It IS the voltage you have to worry about. Without a high enough voltage no current will be transmitted through your body. 100 A at 1V DC will do literally nothing do you. Don't believe me? Watch someone who knows a hell of a lot more about it prove it. You can put multiple hundreds of Amps across your tongue but without the voltage required to overcome your body's resistance, NOTHING will happen. There are also videos of photoinduction (I miss his videos, he doesn't post anymore) holding a metal wrench and putting it between two contacts to melt it. Hundreds and hundreds of amps, but he didn't get shocked because it was low voltage. It IS the voltage. If the voltage is large enough to overcome your body's resistance, it most likely has enough power to stop your heart. We don't have many high voltage, very low current limited sources around us. Usually it's high voltage, high power.

 

 

May I also just say that I did include the fact that there has to be enough voltage to actually penetrate the skin... I do know this stuff.

[JonU]

Since there is at least one person thoroughly convinced that voltage is what kills, maybe this paper from the physics department at Ohio State can settle the issue. Then there is this Q&A from the physics department at the University of Illinois.