The secret of electricity that everyone uses.

Where does he come from ~ Where does he go ?
Everyone uses it but hardly anyone talks about it.

Here, everyone can share their experiences and opinions about the most important thing in
civilization, electricity. Experiences with electric shocks and blackouts are also welcome.

 

Without the discovery we would probably never have got this song...and the great bass line!

One time i reached over to a desk lamp to turn it on not realizing it was already powered on and there wasnt a light bulb in it.....quite the shock i tell ya...110 - 120 volts of ZAP !.....survived to tell the tale but my index finger was burned black and blue for a few weeks and fngerpicking on the gee-tar was out of the question

 

the trick is electricity doesn't exist, its simply a difference in potential current, when the universe achieves equilibrium, there will be no electricity. and hence all the frozen pop-tarts will remain frozen..

 

It comes from spinny things mostly, and they spin right round baby right round, as long as you have something like steam or air or something like that to make them spin.

I electrocute myself very often, i don't know if i'm particularly resistant to electricity or there's just no more braincells to fry, but i can lick live wires confidently which is a cool superpower.

where did you come from cotton eye joe?

 

I already had a lot of them.

 

I've been brushing up on my physics lately, so I've had my old textbook, Harris Benson's "University Physics" (revised edition) as toilet reading. It has a lot to say about this subject. I doesn't teach being an electrician however, and I've learnt that the hard way. Just a personal note: when working on something that's possibly hooked up to a high-current mains, keep your other hand in the pocket.

From chapter 31: "Electromagnetic Induction"

Highly recommend it, at the moment I'm going through the sound chapter and rehashing stuff like wave functions and Fourier series.

And umh, I'm listening to a electro DJ set at the moment, that counts right?

 

I learned about electricity twice, once when I put a bobby pin in an electrical socket when I was about 5, and the other time went for some reason I decided I would swap the fuse on my Leslie cabinet in bare feet standing on a concrete floor and it was plugged in.

 

Ive been circuit bending cameras lately, and at times forget to discharge the capacitor for the flash. Big ouch. ive also been shocked by faulty wiring in my GF's apartment. That was scary.

There used to be this machine at disneyland, in the arcade, you would grab these two metal handles, and it would pump electricity through your hands, slowly raising the voltage to see how long you could last. I have no idea how they allowed it, as it legit hurt, and was for little kids lol. Well anyways, i went to disneyland all the time in my teen years. My high school gave us annual passes as part of a fundraiser, you sell enough magazine subscriptions and you get the pass. So my friends and i would sometimes go every day during the summer. Just causing all sorts of chaos. Jumping off the rides, stealing stuff from The Pirate's of the Caribbean ride, getting wasted on various substances, messing with foreign tourists, etc etc etc, just being hooligans. Well, back to electricity. My GF and i found out that you could do the Electricity machine with multiple people, as long as you held hands, the electricity would pass through. We also found that if you each grabbed one of the poles, and then instead of holding hands, you kissed, it worked, and the electricity would meet in the mouth. Not sure if this is allowed here, but one night we took a certain well known raver party d%@g, and just sat there feeding quarters into the machine and making out. Quite the sensation. We got kicked out after 10 minutes or so, as security was not very fond of us sloppily making out in the arcade. Good times. Photo of said machine attached.

I wish they still had it,

 

Also, I own an EV- no, not a Tesla, a little used Spark, paid $6k for it, little fkkr goes like stink for 80 miles or so on a good day, best second vehicle for local trips I've ever owned. Beats motorcycles off the line.
And due to the area I live, it is nuclear powered. Quite literally. Nothing sucks like a coal powered electric car.

 

True story. When I was about 7 I sneaked into my older brother's bedroom and found his electric guitar. He was an electronics engineer and there was all kinds of wires and stuff laying around. I knew it was an electric guitar so I thought, well, it needs to be plugged in. I found a mains plug with two wires coming out of it going nowhere and I twisted the ends onto some parts of the guitar (can't remember what) and plugged it into the mains... Loud bang followed by black smoke pouring from the guitar. I quickly unplugged it and put it back where I found it. He never mentioned it and he wasn't a guitar player so maybe he never even found out I blew it up. I guess that was my first foray into the music business.

 

and the kicker...

the machine wasn't even plugged in and was totally powered by suggestion, the true current of the universe, that passes through us without wires or visible means of transmission.

 

When I was 7 years old, I unscrewed the shade from a table lamp, unscrewed the light bulb, stuck my finger and turned it on.
The stars to the left are what I saw

 

Kind of what @Garamondo Furbish said, but doesn't mean it doesn't exist. But yeah, in order to have electric current you do need to connect two spots with different voltage levels.

It's like a descending water pipeline. The more voltage difference the steeper, The wider the pipeline the higher intensity.

So the famous third (earth) pin of modern plugs makes sure all the plugs have the same high/low voltage pin levels. Otherwise: the stories we've all heard or experienced. I've had a few electric discharges during my life, none of them major.

There's a lot of interesting things about it, but its use boils down to energy source and telecommunications. Almost at least, and the other uses aren't pretty
Well, there're some chemical uses outside energy source, like electrolysis to separate components in a liquid. And the basic magnetic turbine thing

 

Last edited: Feb 7, 2025 at 10:17 PM