Teen got electrocuted and died for using her phone in the shower while charging it...

[Techstorm970]

1 hour ago, NumLock21 said:

parents fault cause they do it too, so their kids do it as well.

 

smh

[Mr.Meerkat]

More reasons Murica is worse than the land of the Brits, due to building regulations, even light switches can't be in toilets/bathrooms/shower rooms  

And yes, a couple of years ago, they even 'removed' shaver sockets from toilets/bathroom so...I doubt this kind of accident would happen here (unless someone is using an extension or a battery bank). 

[acepro71]

I have done that a couple times i am still living

[leadeater]

16 hours ago, Zic05 said:

wow, that was dumb

Don't worry people learn from their mistakes.... oh nvm.

[leadeater]

16 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

2. A fast charger must have been used. Your typical charger is 5v 1A, which will hurt a lot but is unlikely to kill you, even when wet.

Still have to be careful with a standard charger if it's a wall plugin one, if poorly made a short at the device end could cause a failure in the charger then allowing direct wall voltage and current to flow.

 

That should never happen but not everything is well made.

 

16 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

3. The outlets were not gfci. The power would have cut immediately to the outlet. Where I live every outlet within a certain distance from water is required to be this sort of outlet.

GFCI or RCD devices are not fool proof/safe under all conditions so it's always best to treat every outlet the same, potentially lethal.

 

Quote

Severe electric shock or death can occur if a person touches the hot and neutral conductor at the same time - even if the circuit is GFCI-protected. This is because the current transformer within the GFCI protection device does not sense an imbalance between the departing and returning current, and the switching contacts remain closed.

http://www.ecmweb.com/content/gfci-basics

 

Quote

A residual-current circuit breaker cannot remove all risk of electric shock or fire. In particular, an RCD alone will not detect overload conditions, phase-to-neutral short circuits or phase-to-phase short circuits (see three-phase electric power). Over-current protection (fuses or circuit breakers) must be provided. Circuit breakers that combine the functions of an RCD with overcurrent protection respond to both types of fault. These are known as RCBOs and are available in 2-, 3- and 4-pole configurations. RCBOs will typically have separate circuits for detecting current imbalance and for overload current but use a common interrupting mechanism.

 

An RCD helps to protect against electric shock when current flows through a person from a phase (live / line / hot) to earth. It cannot protect against electric shock when current flows through a person from phase to neutral or from phase to phase, for example where a finger touches both live and neutral contacts in a light fitting; a device cannot differentiate between current flow through an intended load from flow through a person, though the RCD may still trip if the person is in contact with the ground (earth), as some current may still pass through the persons finger and body to earth.

 

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, ionbasa said:

5V1A is questionable in terms of electrocutions, but not entirely out of question.

A 5V source wouldn't kill you. You can lick a 9V battery and only get a slight tingle, batteries are capable of putting out extremely high amounts of surge current so that isn't the issue. There needs to be enough voltage to overcome the natural resistance of your body and it needs to be much higher than 5V or 9V or 12V, that is why in most countries the set regulation requirement is 50V before you must get at least limited electrical registration to be legally allowed to work on it. This is also why PoE is 48V (usually).

[Mooshi]

 

Ultimately, her parents failed her. Who TF gives a kid a smart phone?

[ionbasa]

6 minutes ago, leadeater said:

A 5V source wouldn't kill you. You can lick a 9V battery and only get a slight tingle, batteries are capable of putting out extremely high amounts of surge current so that isn't the issue. There needs to be enough voltage to overcome the natural resistance of your body and it needs to be much higher than 5V or 9V or 12V, that is why in most countries the set regulation requirement is 50V before you must get at least limited electrical registration to be legally allowed to work on it. This is also why PoE is 48V (usually).

Actually, it's not voltage that kills its current. Something over 4 Amps+ can be deadly if the current travels across your chest instead of down through your body. Secondly, the impedance of our skin plays a factor, but it's deceptive. Wetted skin has a much lower resistance, hence why you feel a 9v on your tongue and not on normal skin. Since the girl was in a bathtub, wetted skin resistance plays a role.

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, ionbasa said:

Actually, it's not voltage that kills its current. Something over 4 Amps+ can be deadly if the current travels across your chest instead of down through your body. Secondly, the impedance of our skin plays a factor, but it's deceptive. Wetted skin has a much lower resistance, hence why you feel a 9v on your tongue and not on normal skin. Since the girl was in a bathtub, wetted skin resistance plays a role.

Current kills yes but you still need the voltage, voltage is equivalent to push and you need enough to overcome the human body resistance. 1V at 1000Amps will not kill you if applied to your hand, it will to your heart but who is cutting their chest open and directly attaching live wires?

 

Batteries as I said can give off a lot of current, in the hundreds for instantaneous (not a small 9V battery ofc, just be careful with batteries i.e. Samsung).

[Carclis]

6 hours ago, BuckGup said:

The bigger question is why doesn't she have safety fuses in a bathroom socket

Even if there were safety devices installed such as fuses or RCD's it probably wouldn't have prevented this from happening. Safety mechanisms such as those are quite good at protecting the circuits themselves and all connected devices but not so much when it comes to saving people.

[SteveGrabowski0]

8 hours ago, Soonercoop21 said:

How's death for a charge?

A shocking result.

[TheComputerdude]

21 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

This seems more like a perfect storm of 3 items.

 

1: The girl was not informed enough to know not to use a phone while its charging in water.

 

2. A fast charger must have been used. Your typical charger is 5v 1A, which will hurt a lot but is unlikely to kill you, even when wet.

 

3. The outlets were not gfci. The power would have cut immediately to the outlet. Where I live every outlet within a certain distance from water is required to be this sort of outlet.

Yeah, you right BUT to all you dumb people reading this forum going "hmm well my outlet is gcfi and my phone is so old it doesn't know what quick charge is sooooo I can just charge my phone and take a bath right?" NEVER EVER DO THIS NO MATTER WHAT  

[TheComputerdude]

5 hours ago, Mooshi said:

 

Ultimately, her parents failed her. Who TF gives a kid a smart phone?

dude, she was 14 I can't think of a single 14 year old who doesn't have a phone. Also, guys need to stop with the Darwin jokes a girl just died in a tragic (maybe avoidable) but a tragic accident. Talk about electricity and educate people especially teenagers who may not think about that and who just want to use their dead phone and take a bath. But please DONT MAKE DARWIN JOKES somebody died.

[ProjectBox153]

1 minute ago, TheComputerdude said:

dude, she was 14 I can't think of a single 14 year old who doesn't have a phone.

Honestly, I know of 11 and 12 year old's with phones better than mine. 

[cymbalist]

22 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

This seems more like a perfect storm of 3 items.

 

1: The girl was not informed enough to know not to use a phone while its charging in water.

 

2. A fast charger must have been used. Your typical charger is 5v 1A, which will hurt a lot but is unlikely to kill you, even when wet.

 

3. The outlets were not gfci. The power would have cut immediately to the outlet. Where I live every outlet within a certain distance from water is required to be this sort of outlet.

that 1A is enough to kill 100's of people, the human heart stops around 0.03A if i remember correctly. 

[leadeater]

55 minutes ago, cymbalist said:

that 1A is enough to kill 100's of people, the human heart stops around 0.03A if i remember correctly. 

Lethal amperage is measured across the heart, that is 5V 1A maximum output capacity of the charger which is different. A device also won't draw the maximum amperage it is rated at all the time, and how much amperage is dependent on resistance (DC) or impedance (AC).

 

First you need a high enough voltage to overcome the resistance/impedance of the human body for current to start to flow. If that is too low current will not flow through you to ground, it is possible for current to flow across your skin and leave via an easier path like between the contacts of a battery or from phase to neutral.

 

Once there is a condition of high enough voltage and you get an electric shock what happens is your skin and starts to break down lowering the resistance/impedance so the current starts to increase, the higher the voltage and current the faster this will happen.

 

How and where you get shocked is a factor two, the worst possible is to create a path where the current wants flow across your heart e.g. grabbing the phase and neutral wires of a wall socket with each hand.

 

Not that I would actually advise doing this but if you get a 9V battery and connect two wires to the terminals then touch them to your skin far apart you won't feel anything, now start moving the wires along your skin closer to each other. Once the distance is short enough you'll start to feel the current flow, the closer the wires the more you'll feel it. As the wires are getting closer you are reducing the resistance of the circuit and once low enough current will flow and will increase as the wires get closer. The current across your heart while doing this will be zero.

 

Since I = V / R you can work out the rough, very rough, current. Wet or broken skin is considered to have roughly 1,000 Ohms of resistance so 110mA of current, 0.11 = 110 / 1000.

[NumLock21]

2 hours ago, TheComputerdude said:

dude, she was 14 I can't think of a single 14 year old who doesn't have a phone. Also, guys need to stop with the Darwin jokes a girl just died in a tragic (maybe avoidable) but a tragic accident. Talk about electricity and educate people especially teenagers who may not think about that and who just want to use their dead phone and take a bath. But please DONT MAKE DARWIN JOKES somebody died.

Yes, it's sad someone with a full life ahead of her, just got cut short. The problem is on the parents, because they do the exact same thing. It's shocking, that they actually run a extension cord from the wall outlet, to their tub so they can use their phone, while it's still charging. Their daughter see her parents do it, so it must be okay, does it too, and sadly paid the ultimate price. 

Their daughter typically spends 2 1/2 hours in the tub. If her typical showering time is a lot less, say 20 to 30 minutes, she was not out by then. Would her parents sense something is wrong, go check it out, and maybe have a chance to save her?

I can't seem to find the golden time for first aid, when it comes to electrocution.

 

 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_hour_(medicine)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_of_opportunity

[leadeater]

9 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

It's shocking

I see what you didn't do but did do 

 

Sorry love myself some terrible puns.

[AshleyAshes]

9 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

I can't seem to find the golden time for first aid, when it comes to electrocution.

It didn't even necessarily have to be the electricity that killed her.  Even a short shock could knock someone unconscious and you don't have to be unconscious underwater for long before you drown.

[NumLock21]

A bit of fun fact about Charles Darwin!

 

He got a mountain named after him on his 25th birthday. It was a gift from Captain Robert Fitzroy, after he saved the ship and the entire crew from a gigantic piece of ice that broke off a iceberg. Mount Darwin, is the highest peak in Tierra del Fuego, located in Chile. There are 2 more mountains name after him and they're located in California and Australia. Charles Darwin is also a geologist, so getting a mountain name after him, is like the best birthday gift ever.

 

Mount Darwin (b-day gift)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Darwin_(Andes)

 

Others name after him

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Darwin_(Tasmania)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Darwin_(California)

 

[Grinners]

I've been zapped with 50,000 volts for 5 seconds head to toe (TASER); can confirm it's the amps that will kill you, not volts alone. 

 

 

[TheComputerdude]

1 hour ago, NumLock21 said:

Yes, it's sad someone with a full life ahead of her, just got cut short. The problem is on the parents, because they do the exact same thing. It's shocking, that they actually run a extension cord from the wall outlet, to their tub so they can use their phone, while it's still charging. Their daughter see her parents do it, so it must be okay, does it too, and sadly paid the ultimate price. 

Their daughter typically spends 2 1/2 hours in the tub. If her typical showering time is a lot less, say 20 to 30 minutes, she was not out by then. Would her parents sense something is wrong, go check it out, and maybe have a chance to save her?

I can't seem to find the golden time for first aid, when it comes to electrocution.

 

 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_hour_(medicine)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_of_opportunity

Yeah that is messed up I wonder if the extension cord fell into the tub and that was what electrocuted her 

[Unhelpful]

On 7/12/2017 at 11:08 AM, Coaxialgamer said:

come on , that's completely different . You can't reasonably be suggesting that a phone and a toaster use anywhere near the same amount of power .

It isn't clear from the article if he was actually charging the phone while actively showering .  Knowing the typical amount of power produced by phone chargers , it's unlikely the 5-20V electricity from the charger itself killed her . 

If i had to guess  i'd say, the charging block itself ( which would have been outside the shower  , because it would need to be plugged into an outlet )  likely shorted in some way that the 120V bypassed into the charging cord . that could have been caused by a crappy charger , a splash of water or any other amount of things . Many people use haird dryers after a shower , and high humidity can produce these results . It's totally possible she just chose to charge her phone after showering .

Stop putting spaces before your punctuation. You're going out of your way to be incorrect and it's fucking killing me.

[Sauron]

5V 1A shouldn't kill you, she probably tried to plug it in with her hand wet and must have created a straight line to the socket

[NumLock21]

16 minutes ago, TheComputerdude said:

Yeah that is messed up I wonder if the extension cord fell into the tub and that was what electrocuted her 

They said, she dropped the phone into the tub. And have discovered burned marks on her hand, when she went to grab it.

Also is science class removed due to school budget cuts? This type of lesson where water and electricity don't mix, is taught in elementary.