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Re: FAQ questions...
Tesla List wrote:
>
> >From chip-at-poodle.pupman-dot-comMon Jul 8 22:54:39 1996
> Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1996 22:54:17 -0600 (MDT)
> From: Chip Atkinson <chip-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com>
> To: Tesla List <tesla-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com>
> Subject: FAQ questions...
>
> Greetings,
>
> I am starting to work on the safety FAQ, but naturally am having some
> questions. (I'd like to be as accurate as possible)
>
> 1) Is it true that it takes 10 Joules of electricity to kill someone?
> (If not, how much is it?)
>
> 2) Is a watt in AC roughly volts*amps? I believe that a watt is VA in
> DC, and if you are dealing with RMS Volts and amps, does that make it
> true for AC?
>
> Thanks for your attention. More questions will follow I'm sure.
>
> Chip
Chip,
I am sure 10 Joules of energy can kill, but it is more a matter of
voltage and current. The skin is usually broken through and a shock felt
by as little as 50 volts. I have heard that it take about 10-100ma to
kill. I question this. What kills one guy is just a nasty shock to
another. (different bodily tolerances, heat conditions, skin resistances
etc. It is tough to quantify the matter more.
AC watts are volt-amps in a purely resistive AC circuit (like frying a
human being.) But not in Tesla coil power circuitry. the correct term
is VAR, volt-amps-reactive. This tells the listener that a simple
current and voltage measurement was taken in an AC circuit with known
reactance present, but without a phase angle, tells little more.
Richard Hull, TCBOR