do I give off electricity?

[Tater Rocket]

Ok, I was trying the 12 volt battery conversion for my solitaire and was just messing around. I had the battery in there, had a spacer of wood that conducted through a resistor at the back end. I stuck a needle in the positive hole, and touched a PR base home made red LED to the positive. Lo and behold, it started glowing!!! Not brightly mind you, but glowing nonetheless. The only thing touching the negative lead was my finger, and my finger was touching nothing else. I am wondering HOW in the world is this possible?

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Your body does produce an electromagnetic field, but it is extremely low power and wouldn't cause this.

Your skin conducts electricity. People don't make very good electrical insulators because of the water content in our bodies.

Just the same, I'm surprised enough amperage could flowed through you to light up the LED!

You must have an electrifying personality

Mark

 

[Tater Rocket]

Well, turns out the anodizing is not perfect and is either scratched or is conducting. Still, it is surprising isnt it? I tested it and was getting 90 micro amps, which is not bad for going through anodizing, into my left hand, through my body and out the right. Now if only I could find my **** yellow led so I could test it, I would be fine. But alas, all 4 LEDs I do know where they are, are soldered into bulbs. I really should order some LED's, but then again, I really should be saving money for college.... Oh well, will have to find a happy medium in there somewhere.

 

[Quickbeam]

Now you're talking my field (biology/chemistry)! Your body can easily conduct electricity due the fact that the water in your body contains electrolytes (ions). First, though, the electricity needs to get through your outer layers of skin which are not very conductive at low levels of current. I suspect that your hands were a little sweaty while handling the LED. Your sweat contains enough elecrolytes that the electricity can be conducted easily through to the lower layers of your skin and the rest of your body. Your body just completed the circuit between the battery and the LED.

DP

 

[Tater Rocket]

36 mega ohms. Thats what I got after washing my hands with just water. Is this a high or low amount for the human body? I retested the current and got 30 micro amps after that. Not sure how accurate this is because the rating for the setting is 320-3200 micro amps. But still, the LED was glowing a bit.

 

[Quickbeam]

Everyone's different. But if your hands were even the slightest bit damp, you can bet you'll conduct electricity because the electrolytes from your skin will contaminate the water. Your hands need to be super dry (and no, dry hands are not any protection from electricity except at harmless levels anyway - don't go grabbing exposed household wires with bare hands or anything!). Here's a neat experiment to demonstrate how electrolytes work: (for safety, DO NOT try this experiment with anything but 2 or 3 AA batteries in series!) hook up leads to your battery and LED. Get De-Ionized water (no, tap water won't work, but distilled might) from Wal-mart - check the water aisle. Create a circuit between negative side of the battery and LED but dip exposed leads from the positive sides of the circuit into a small clean non-conductive container of de-ionized water (I would recommend clean small upsidedown plastic lid like a film container lid), so your LED and battery are connected on the negative side and the positive side has 1 lead from each in the water - no light.... Add salt to the water and the LED should turn on. The salt adds electrolytes which conduct the electricity. You can see the same trick used to scam people into buying "super-duper vitamins" to supposedly show how "energy can't flow without our $50 vitamins!". They empty a vitamin capsule in the water - it just does the same thing as the salt.

DP

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

But ... did you look in the mirror to see if your eyes were glowing?

 

[Quickbeam]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Luffokc:
But ... did you look in the mirror to see if your eyes were glowing?

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Here's a funny one you'll get a kick out of, my Dad's Dad was a bit of an experimentor - made his own "diathermy" machine - basically it's a microwave oven that sends it's microwaves through 2 pads that can be placed on the body. Great for warming the tissue from the inside out (which helps it heal rapidly, provided you don't set it too high and boil the person's insides - I think this is why they aren't used today). He tried it out on my Dad, and my Dad could hold on to a fluorscent tube by each end and it would light because there was so much EMF radiation flowing through his body. Wild, eh? Hmmm.... Maybe that explains why I turned out the way I did....

DP

 

[Go Go Gadget Flashlight]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Spudgunr:
36 mega ohms. Thats what I got after washing my hands with just water. Is this a high or low amount for the human body? I retested the current and got 30 micro amps after that. Not sure how accurate this is because the rating for the setting is 320-3200 micro amps. But still, the LED was glowing a bit.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's odd. I measured my resistance as 1 Mohm. But, when I put myself in a 4.5v White LED circuit, I only had 5 uA and a very dim glow.

I would have thought that the lower resistance would have let more current through.

Touching the wires to my tongue gave 75uA. Must be the spit! Hehe!

Interesting experiment.

EDIT: OK, so I reread the first post. 12 volts! That makes more sense.
I got 43 uA that way.

 

[chetvaldes]

Quickbeam:
That is "funny" along the lines of early X-ray experiments where the subjects all died hideously from cancer. Seriously, that kind of story freaks me out! Anyway, on a lighter note: the glowing of LEDs through skin conduction says a lot about how little current is needed to produce light, even though the supposedly critical voltage isn't attained. This characteristic is used as a "feature" on some flashlights- the glow makes for easy location in the dark without significantly draining the battery. Some people say LEDs are the most efficient in this ultra low power range in terms of light/watt.
Chet
p.s. Did your dad suffer any long term effects from his microwave mega-exposure?

 

[Quickbeam]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Did your dad suffer any long term effects from his microwave mega-exposure?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Not as far as we know - This all happened when he was about 10. The diathermy machine was actually used on him to help heal a badly sprained ankle from skiing - the ankle was back to normal the same day as the accident! Too dangerous for the MD's to use, though - too many accidental burns.

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Contrary to popular opinion, microwaves aren't dangerous unless the intensity is high enough to burn or cook you.

Think about it; microwaves carry less energy per photon than infra-red radiation (heat), which carry less than visible light. When microwave ovens first came out, people were warned that they could cause eye damage -- but only when the intensity was high enough to actually cook the proteins in the eye.

I've read about fairly recent experiments with using microwaves to heat an animal's (or person's) whole body, and the animals in question were actually healthier than the control specimens (didn't have to use up as much energy to maintain body temperature, etc.).

Of course, the history of science is full of harmless procedures that were later discovered to be far from harmless...

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

microwaves are still used to cure certain illnesses. A few years back, when I was cycling a lot, I got problems with one of my knees. The doctor gave my knee a couple of microwave doses. He set up sort of capacitor blades to the left and right of my sore knee. It warmed up the knee from the inside, just lightly. However it took quite a number of sessions, over several weeks, until I felt an improvement. And I still doubt that the MW treatment cured my knee; I rather think it healed because I stopped cycling and gave it a rest.
Anyway, microwave "treatments" are very common these days to most of us: The radiation emitted by cellphones (in the 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz range) is nothing else! And sometimes, when I talk long, I think I can feel the heat induced in my head by the cellphone, just behind the ear.

Wolfgang

 

[Brock]

wus, LOL. If you can feel 5mw you are pretty sensitive. Although I should talk since I go running at night with a Photon3 set to the medium setting.

 

[L.E.D.]

microwave energy carries less energy than infra-red, but biological components like lipids absorb the energy from the microwave much more severely than infra-red. More of the microwave photons increase the atomic frequency (heat) of water or any biological componenets it hits. Glass, Ceramics, and most oil-based polymers (polystyrene) absorb only a very small amount of microwave energy and the rest is transmitted (passes through). Metals reflects microwave energy! Remember when some idiot put aluminium foil in the microwave and it almost overheated? I sure do, an idiot in a home-ec class did it! (I was in English but the english teacher wasn't there that day so we had to go to another class room)

 

[L.E.D.]

I don't know if microwaves can misalign chromosomes (cancer) that they hit like X-rays can? do they? Microwaves are MUUUCH less energy than X-ray. Gamma Rays DEFINITELY misalign chromosomes! I think they actually fry the whole cell! Whatever gamma hits gets it's atomic frequency (heat) increased very quickly, right?

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

The damage done by x-rays and gamma rays isn't because they 'heat' up the proteins they hit.

Ionizing radiation literally knocks electrons loose from the atoms they hit. A protein that has one or more of its atoms ionized is much more chemically reactive, and quite likely to become damaged as a result.

With the really energetic radiation, like x- and gamma rays, the electon that gets knocked loose goes banging around knocking other electrons loose as well, causing further damage deeper within the body. Momentum transfers may also break some chemical bonds, as well.

I believe I've read studies indicating that the body can usually repair damaged DNA unless it has been doubly (or more) damaged.

Microwaves aren't ionizing, so they really aren't likely to damage DNA. The increased heat may affect other metabolically active proteins -- many reactions proceed at different rates at different temperatures, or may produce more undesirable byproducts. But unless you get hotspots in your tissues, it shouldn't be significant.

 

[LEDagent]

So all of you are saying, basically, that one cannot get cancer by standing too close to a microwave in operation?

My parents always yell at me when i stand so close to my microwave as i heat up my food.

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

I think it would be safe to say that in more than 99.99% of the cases, standing directly in front of a microwave while it is operating won't significantly increase your chances of cancer.

At least, not from the microwaves... The food might be carcinogenic.