I suspect you mean donning a full metal faraday cage suit and walking between two tesla coils. Well, these are smart guys, and they're doing it, so.... :) And they've done it many times with no issues. If Terry had a pacemaker I'd probably say no, but he says he doesn't get any more of a tingle off this than you would off a doorknob in winter.
So, what would it take for his protective gear to fail? IOW, how could we write this into a mystery novel? A tear in the fabric? A trailing thread or wire? A stronger-than-expected surge from the coil?
Just curious, John, but would you characterize this activity as an "extreme sport"?
A tear in the fabric wouldn't really bother anything; he might get a little tingling around the hole. Trailing wire would just make the show less spectacular.
In order to give him a shock at all, the sections of the fabric between which the spark is going in and where it's exiting would have to become completely disconnected from one another, so the electricity would flow partially through his body instead. Like, if one of his gloves became disconnected from his arm piece. In order to become potentially fatal, his helmet would have to come off and he'd have to take a hit to the head, or perhaps if somehow both of his sleeves came disconnected from his torso, enough juice would flow through his torso to stop his heart.
However, it'd pretty much take a deliberate act of sabotage to do that, and at least three different people would have to miss it while he was suiting up. His torso is covered once by a full suit of fine chainmail that goes from neck to knees and to the ends of his arms, then is covered again by linked mail. All the pieces overlap by quite a bit, and they're all multiply-strapped together.
That suit isn't even beginning to be stressed by those coils. A direct natural lightning hit would no doubt melt the suit at the contact point and could give him some nasty burns, and there may be enough induction current to knock him unconscious, but I doubt even that would actually kill him.
They're planning twice as big a coil for the future and I don't think Terry needs to do a thing to his suit for it.
Perfectly safe but one question did come up while we were watching the piece of wood catch fire – how much current is actually flowing through the suit? Has anyone measured it?
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2009-06-15 06:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-15 06:23 pm (UTC)I suspect you mean donning a full metal faraday cage suit and walking between two tesla coils. Well, these are smart guys, and they're doing it, so.... :) And they've done it many times with no issues. If Terry had a pacemaker I'd probably say no, but he says he doesn't get any more of a tingle off this than you would off a doorknob in winter.
I helped him suit up, and that suit is very good.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-15 06:29 pm (UTC)Just curious, John, but would you characterize this activity as an "extreme sport"?
no subject
Date: 2009-06-15 06:37 pm (UTC)In order to give him a shock at all, the sections of the fabric between which the spark is going in and where it's exiting would have to become completely disconnected from one another, so the electricity would flow partially through his body instead. Like, if one of his gloves became disconnected from his arm piece. In order to become potentially fatal, his helmet would have to come off and he'd have to take a hit to the head, or perhaps if somehow both of his sleeves came disconnected from his torso, enough juice would flow through his torso to stop his heart.
However, it'd pretty much take a deliberate act of sabotage to do that, and at least three different people would have to miss it while he was suiting up. His torso is covered once by a full suit of fine chainmail that goes from neck to knees and to the ends of his arms, then is covered again by linked mail. All the pieces overlap by quite a bit, and they're all multiply-strapped together.
That suit isn't even beginning to be stressed by those coils. A direct natural lightning hit would no doubt melt the suit at the contact point and could give him some nasty burns, and there may be enough induction current to knock him unconscious, but I doubt even that would actually kill him.
They're planning twice as big a coil for the future and I don't think Terry needs to do a thing to his suit for it.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-15 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-15 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-15 09:18 pm (UTC)