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Statically Charged Man Ignites Office
Call Me Black Cloud writes "And you think your coworker with BO is annoying? In this story carried by Reuters, a man wearing a nylon jacket over a wool shirt built up such a static charge that he left a trail of scorched carpet and melted plastic in his wake. After he melted plastic in his car he sought help from firefighters called to the scene, who measured his static field at 40,000 volts." Obviously, despite the fact that this is carried by Reuters, you should take some of the 'facts' presented here with some NaCl.
Eletrical Current is measued in Amps, not Volts.
That alone is enough to make me seriously doubt this whole business.
morcego
Any authoritative debunkings yet?
The entire story is laughable, but the most obvious problem is this:
Firefighters took possession of Clewer's jacket and stored it in the courtyard of the fire station, where it continued to give off a strong electrical current.
How does a statically charged jacket "give off an electric current" -- and why would firefighters take possession of it anyway? All they'd need to do to discharge it is pour a bucket of water over it.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Minutes of Warnambool City Council meeting:
1. Make up BS story about "static" man
2. Put Warnambool on map.
3. Tourism
4. Profit
If someone will travel to bumphuk, nowhere to see the virgin mary in someones month old pea soup, they might travel to Warnambool to meet "static man".
Just say salt, don't be so fucking pretentious.
2. WTF is the FIRE department doing with a volt/amp meter? Most (cheap) volt meters don't measure past 1000 volts AC/DC.
I imagine they have to be prepared to deal with fires or other problems caused by downed powerlines, often before the electric company shows up 5 hours later.
What?
What the hell is salt going to do with that?
Dude, he meant to take a story with a grain of salt, despite Reuters being a very reputable source of news.
Statically charged jacket would not give off a current unless discharged. The reporter, if the story is true, was ignorantly referring to the electrical field strength (which was measured in volts in the article). Firefighters would have the meter for this because they sometimes have to find out if a downed wire is still live.
Now for the story: it's begging a lot of questions. 1) How could the jacket hold its charge after being handled? 2) How could he re-build up such a charge after discharging into the carpet? 3) How could he not notice the massive jolts he'd get touching metal furnishings or even his computer? There's a strong whiff of bs from this story.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
A static electricity field meter is something firefighters bring with them? That sounds awfully suspect.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
If it's a hoax, it's fooled a lot of people.
And sadly, that's quite easy. All you have to do to fool the news media is fool one semi-reputable source (in this case Reuters). Soon enough all the other newspapers will pick it up like you're living in an echo chamber.
AccountKiller
I'll still wait for the official Snopes lowdown on this one...
(How could he have gone through his day like that without touching anything metal, like a doorknob or his car door?)
Our local telephone directory service unambiguously lists the person named in the Warrnambool Standard article linked in the parent.
Maybe the knee jerk skeptics from Zonk down could back up their skepticism with some fact checking, but I guess that is asking a bit much.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
OK... this is a nonsense story. 40 kV is voltage, not current. You can build up 40 kV every time you walk on a nylon carpet, or you rub against a cat's skin. We have all had sparks pass between our hand and our keyboard we sit down, or with the wall when we have had rubber shoes on.
(Tip: this is annoying, but just touch the wall with a key and you'll not feel the spark.)
Voltage is not dangerous "unless". To spark a fire you need not just voltage, but current as well. A 30 kV spark discharge from your hand at 0.1 uA (micro-ampere) would do a lot less harm than a 30 kV powerline at 100 Amps (the latter would incinerate you instantly).
To set a carpet on fire you would need quite a lot of current. If this carpet was set on fire by a shirt (how, by the way: was he rubbing his chest on the floor?), then it was a weird carpet fire waiting to happen anyway.
But of course this makes a cute story to fill an otherwise empty page. Myths always do.
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BDOS ERR ON A:>