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Girl Electrocuted and Dies Tweeting In the Tub

Posted by samzenpus on from the soap-and-tweets-don't-mix dept.

Jeff Shantz writes "A 17-year-old Romanian girl is dead after being electrocuted while tweeting in the bath tub. Apparently, she plugged in her laptop after her battery started to die, and it is unclear as to whether or not she dropped the laptop in the water, or simply dripped enough water on the device to cause the shock. Needless to say, it is probably good advice not to tweet in the tub."

27 comments

  1. Darwin Award! by Q-Hack! · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is definitely a candidate... Nothing like a little chlorine in the gene pool.

    --
    Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
    1. Re:Darwin Award! by WiiVault · · Score: 1

      You so beat me to it. While I'm sorry that she had to pass away, I'm sure Romania will run better without more like her.

  2. +1 punny by russlar · · Score: 1

    The incident has been quickly picked up by several members of the Twitter community, most of which have been shocked by the news.

    BEST. PUN. EVER.

    --
    Anybody want my mod points?
  3. Transcript of last tweet by lupinstel · · Score: 1

    AARggghhh@romaniangirlintub

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
  4. Gives a new meaning... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...to tubgirl.

  5. Award? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How about nominating her for a Darwin award?

  6. Been there, done that by merreborn · · Score: 1

    I think my wife and I have both used a laptop in the tub at least once.

    Not both of us at the same time, mind you.

    1. Re:Been there, done that by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      Then you're not doing it right. Nothing like a nice clean wife's laptop for making a day start nicely.

    2. Re:Been there, done that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think my wife and I have both used a laptop in the tub at least once.

      You should find somewhere else to masturabate!

      Why the hell else would you need a laptop? There's nothing so important it can't wait 10 minutes while you take a bath.

  7. It's not the laptop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Laptops typically have power supplies that deliver 12 to 20 volts. That won't pump enough current through a person to kill them. Batteries are even lower voltage. She probably dropped the power brick in the water. That has access to wall voltages, which are enough to kill.

    1. Re:It's not the laptop by DanJ_UK · · Score: 2, Informative

      Volts don't kill you, amps do.

      --
      - Dan
    2. Re:It's not the laptop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Yeah! You are correct. Same thing that speed doesnt kill you while falling, but the sudden stop. The higher the voltage, the higher the amps. U/R=I. Human tissue is like VDR resistor. When the voltage goes up the resistance goes down, hence the sudden increse in amps. So volts are the cause for death, but amps do the killing.

    3. Re:It's not the laptop by sakdoctor · · Score: 2, Interesting

      From my laptop power brick:

      Input: 240v at 1 amp
      Output: 12v at 3 amps

      I wouldn't like either of these earthing though me.

    4. Re:It's not the laptop by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      Oh, DC milli-Amps at 12 Volts at the right places will kill you quite, quite dead. (Directly through your brain or your heart, for example.) What happens when we touch live electricity depends massively on the voltage at the other side of our body, such as our soaking wet feet or our dry, hands touch the other wire. The impedance or resistance we present to the load, and where that minimum impedance path runs on or thrugh our bodies, makes a huge difference (from my experience with server electrical safety). It's why we have "ground fault interrupters" in outlets, to detect if someone is acting as a connection to the ground and letting current go through where it shouldn't, and why system cases are supposed to be thoroughly, thoroughly grounded so if you touch the box, it's safe even if you touch another grounded object.

    5. Re:It's not the laptop by BitZtream · · Score: 1

      Your power supply consumes 240v at up to 1amp.
      It produces 12v at up to 3 amps depending on the resistance across the 12v load.
      You will never get 3 amps of current through your body with 120 volts, let alone 12.
      You also don't really understand electricity.

      In the case of a person in a bath tub, contrary to popular cultures belief, neither will kill you without some preexisting condition to help it along. The resistance of the body is simply too high to do enough damage to stop the heart, and again, contrary to popular belief, water is an absolutely shitty conductor of electricity until you start adding salts to it.

      12 volt to the fingers isn't even detectable to your senses.
      120 volt to the fingers, say if you had hold of the wrong part of a plug as you put it in the outlet, nice shock, will make you jump, won't kill you unless maybe you put it in your mouth.
      Throw a toaster in the bathtub and ... YOU WON'T FEEL A THING. Electricity takes the shortest path with the lowest resistance. That means when you throw something like say an extension cord into a bathtub with you that the electricity travels out one prong and RIGHT BACK IN THE OTHER ONE because THAT is the path of least resistance. It doesn't come out, travel through many more inchs of water, go all through your body, come out somewhere else, traversal through several more inches of water and finally return to the other prong as the resistance to do so is much much higher.

      This is a fake, just like all most all of the other retarded 'electricuted with standard house current' stories you hear. It simply doesn't happen that way. You have to make an effort to electrocute yourself in the bathtub, it doesn't happen by accident.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    6. Re:It's not the laptop by BitZtream · · Score: 1

      Spoken like someone with no clue.

      The resistance of the body doesn't change with voltage. The amps increase because of the way electricity works, it has nothing to do with the resistance changing. As the formula you posted states, more volts = more amps, has nothing to do with the body, nor does the chemical composition of the body change quick enough during electricution to actually lower the resistance of the body while it is still alive.

      Neither the 'volts' nor the 'amps' are the cause of death or do the killing, your statement shows a complete failure to grasp the English language even though you are trying to be witty by basically claiming both do the killing. Stop trying to be cute, you aren't.

      You die because your heart fails. Your heart fails for a variety of reasons when too much electrical current passes through the body, depending on things such as frequency of the AC (DC having a freq of 0 of course), voltage, how saline your body is at the moment, how long you stay connected, how sweaty you are, amount of surface area providing electrical contact, relative distance from the heart or brain stem, and about 4 billion other factors that play into the situation.

      Stop spewing crap you heard in your highschool shop class, they just told you that shit to keep you from doing something amazingly stupid and actually getting hurt. Its far easier to make you afraid of electricity than to educate you about what you REALLY need to be afraid of.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    7. Re:It's not the laptop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The resistance of the body doesn't change with voltage.

      Ohms law doesn't apply to all materials, and there's also "dielectric breakdown" . You fail pedantry!

    8. Re:It's not the laptop by clone53421 · · Score: 1

      Throw a toaster in the bathtub and ... YOU WON'T FEEL A THING.

      Correct.

      However, lift the wet toaster out of the water while standing in the tub and you will, assuming the circuit hasn't turned off due to a GFCI or circuit breaker.

      As you said, pure (deionized) water is a pretty awful conductor. However, pure water is relatively rare. Normal water that you'd fill the bathtub with, especially if it has anything in it (sweat, soap), is likely going to conduct a fair amount of current at household voltage.

      --
      Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
  8. Ouch by Scienceman123 · · Score: 0

    Watt a horrible occurrence. I wonder if charges will be pressed? This has the potential to be big.

    1. Re:Ouch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No it doesn't. If you drop a hair dryer in the tub and kill yourself, the hair dryer maker can't be held liable. You're just a dumbass. Same here.

    2. Re:Ouch by Scienceman123 · · Score: 0

      Bad puns | | | | Your head

  9. Ground fault interrupter, anyone? by EWAdams · · Score: 1

    There is no longer any reason why ANYbody should be electrocuted in the bathtub. This technology is at least 20 years old, and probably much older than that.

    --
    I piss off bigots.
    1. Re:Ground fault interrupter, anyone? by fm6 · · Score: 1

      And mandatory in new bathrooms where I live. Still, I wouldn't use my laptop in a tub, GFI or not. Captain Murphy has enough business.

    2. Re:Ground fault interrupter, anyone? by Ellis+D.+Tripp · · Score: 1

      A GFCI will do NOTHING to save you from a shock off the secondary side of the laptop's power supply. The secondary is completely isolated from the AC powerline, and without a return path, the GFCI will never trip.

      The most likely culprit here would be the high voltage inverter that drives the CCFL backlight for the LCD screen.

      --
      Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
    3. Re:Ground fault interrupter, anyone? by clone53421 · · Score: 1

      If you RTFA you'll see that she apparently was next to the bathtub, not in it, and presumably (according to early police reports) attempted to plug in the laptop while her hands were still wet. She was found dead with a burn on her left palm. At that time, nothing appeared amiss with the laptop itself. Electrocution was the assumed cause of death, however, according to the article, the true cause of death has yet to be determined.

      --
      Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
  10. GFI for the kitchen, bathroom, pool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    its not rocket science

  11. Horrible by insane_coder · · Score: 1

    "The incident has been quickly picked up by several members of the Twitter community, most of which have been shocked by the news."

    Is this really an appropriate story to make such a pun?

    --
    You can be an insane coder too, read: Insane Coding