Re: really cool link to so cool effect's

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: Mddeming-at-aol-dot-com 


In a message dated 5/20/04 7:37:32 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:
Original poster: Jim Lux <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>

At 03:02 PM 5/14/2004 -0600, you wrote:
 >Original poster: "Hydrogen18" <hydrogen18-at-hydrogen18-dot-com>
 >I'm not trying to call anyone a coward, but the statement that it should not
 >be done by some1 who has never done it before doesnt make sense. Someone did
 >it and succeeded first. Whats the whole point of giving advice on how to do
 >it then telling people to hire someone and just sit by and watch.
 >
 >---Eric

I'd venture to say that the folks who did this first did it
accidentally.  How many of the list members have been standing a bit too
close to their coil holding something conductive and had a streamer hit it
or had streamers emerge from it.  With a NST coil, this isn't likely to
kill or permanently injure you, but it still is a surprise, and it does, in
fact, often hurt.

This stunt falls in the category of "not certain death, but still
remarkably dangerous, with many traps for the unwary"...  I suspect that
the most common bad side effect isn't death by electrocution (which
requires serveral bad things to happen, simultaneously), but RF burns,
which are sufficiently painful that it discourages you from doing whatever
it was that caused them, and blunt trauma sorts of things (falling off the
platform).

It's like various fire eating stunts.  Lots of ways to get hurt seriously,
even more to get hurt in a minor way, and learn something from it.

So, to paraphrase Eric's statement a bit:

"Someone did it and didn't fail catastrophically first, and learned from
their experience."

This is like the old barrel over Niagra Falls trick. One day, a couple of 
inches off to one side, or a little more current due to rain,  and splat!
There are also painless internal RF burns, and the permanent nerve damage 
that may not show up for years.

Matt D.

On average,  Russian Roulette is harmless 83 1/3 % of the time. Do you feel 
lucky today?