i now officially suck at electronics!!

[username]

well while i was messing around with my bits and bobs i accidently connected an electrolytic capacitor incorrectly accross a 12 volt battery!
bang!! it almost had me eye out!!
has anyone here hand and eeerrrr mishaps with electronics?

oh and i also burnd my finger really badly!! and now i cant play on the psp as well as i could!! nnnnnnoooooooooooooooooo :lol:

[element42]

Well, it's part of my job as a physics technician to regularly mis-connect diodes, capacitors etc. I often get shocked / burned / incapacitated / poisoned by mercury fumes. If you think 12v and an exploding capactior is bad, you should try setting up the exploding custard powder experiment. Oh the fun I have :D

[infoxicated]

As a former electrician I've had my share of bangs and mishaps.

My favourite has to be the time I used a screwdriver to close the contacts inside a fuse box containing a 415v three phase supply across three 120 amp fuses. So that I didn't have to close the safety cover on the box and use the actual lever, I put my screwdriver into the mechanism and used it as the lever. Ka-boom!

Turns out that the safety cover is a pretty useful feature of a fusebox - it stops the blinding light released when the fuses blow from, well, blinding.

My workmate who was standing behind me in the small hut said that all he saw was my silhouette against the opposite wall, accompanied by a bang that echoed around the room. Credit to him, he stopped running after about fifty yards and came back to see if I was okay.

I was fine - a little red in the face from the heat and energy, and my ears were ringing for a few hours, but other than that I'd gotten away with it.

[Roger]

Nothing very impressive, but I once had an mishap with an external SCSI-drive connected to my computer at work. Can't remember why (probably for easy swapping of drives) but I'd left the lid off the drive casing.

While fiddling about with ID-settings or something, I touched the metal frame with both hands... Hey presto - 220 volts running through me, giving the old ticker a buzz. Didn't suffer any injuries, luckily.

[element42]

there's nothing quite like a mains shock :). the last time it happened to me, i thought my wife had grabbed me from behind into a bear hug. nope, i was being fried!

[eLhabib]

you must have a rather strong wife then, ey? :wink:

[element42]

strong, yes... that's it, she's strong. hmmm.
actually she's not very strong, and not the kind of person who'd be inclined to grab me suddenly. it was just that in the split second after getting shocked when i was trying to work out what had happened to me, it seemed more probable that that was what had happened, and not that I had done something wrong... :D

[Tomahawk]

Hi,

I always try to stay away from electricity as far as I can. Shocks of any kind would surley not go well with my pacemaker I guess....

Anyway, some woman once asked me to help her recharge the battery of her car. What she didn't tell me was that the battery worked fine - she was just low on gas! As I connected the batteries of her car and mine, I got some nice sparks flying but luckily didn't get hurt....

Greets,

Tom

[Jittery-Joe]

username: I did almost the exact same thing sometime last year, so I feel for ya man. Last time I plug anything in backwards...

[username]

once i opend a camera with a flash (this was just when i was getting into electrnics) and forgot to discharg the capacitor. of course i had to think: WOW I WANDER WHAT THAT DOES? so of course i touched it- BANG i had 2 massive lines on my finger from the leads. i was only 6 years old at the time so i was crying my eyes out!! :D