Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange
Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [safety]

Your health and safety while working on electrical devices, and designing devices that will not shock, set fire to, or otherwise harm the user of the device.

Electrical Engineering can often involve high voltages, high currents, and other aspects that can have decisively negative effects on the health and lives of yourself and others.

Questions can range from the safe use of a part or device (within the scope defined in the help center.), safety protocols in Electrical Engineering, and how to fix a dangerous design.

recommended reading

The Fatal Current
Effects relative to voltage, current, frequency, time of exposure

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Does a dangling wire really electrocute me if I'm standing in water?

We've all seen this scenario in movies; somebody has to cross a room half filled with water and there is a dangling electric wire that shoots sparks everywhere. The poor person has to cross the room but cannot do so because if the wire hits the…
S. Rotos
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Safe current limit for human contact?

What's the point below which electrical current is generally considered safe for "casual" human contact? Is either voltage or amperage more "dangerous" (e.g. high voltage / low amperage vs. low voltage / high amperage), or is the only consideration…
Mark Harrison
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Is it safe to sleep in the same room with a car battery?

I sleep in the same room with 2 car batteries. I'm not a battery person so I don't know what type they are. I tried looking for voltage but didn't find it printed on the battery. They're standard acid batteries, I use them to power LED lights and…
MichaelX
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Electrocution in rubber swimming pool?

This doesn't immediately look so good, but if you think about it, why shouldn't it be? If the extension cord drops in, why should the electricity choose to flow through any of them, instead of just the ~1 inch of water to the other pole?
user7962
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Safety Guidelines for Ultraviolet LEDs?

I'm interested in using some UV LEDs to light some projects. Specifically, painting some designs on RC aircraft with florescent paint and illuminating them with UV light for night time visibility. The LEDs I'm considering are 400-405nm, 5mm,…
Mark Harrison
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Safety of Villard cascade

My teenage son has been building Cockcroft-Walton multipliers in his spare time lately, and I'm potentially a little concerned in case he electrocutes himself. His circuit is powered by 4 AA cells in series (6V), and judging by the spark gap he's…
HGros
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Safety precautions when making a commercial electronic product

I have designed and fabricated an electronic device. High level explanation for this device is as follows: The device designed scans the environment for RFID tags and when a tag gets too close to the scanner it triggers and alarm and then sends out…
JoeyB
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How should unidentifiable breakers and fuses be represented in arc flash studies?

When analyzing arc flash hazards in industrial power systems, I have encountered situations in which visual inspection reveals the manufacturer and the trip rating only. The breaker or fuse model cannot be determined from documentation or visual…
njivy
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Why are typically fatal currents non-lethal when they pass through your body for a short time?

I've been reading up on electrical safety, and the commonly cited controversial quote "it's not the volts that kills you, it's the amps". What I have gotten out of these sources is that it is in fact the amperes that stop one's heart, but the…
hedgepig
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Conductive Lubricant for Connectors?

I'm making a safety disconnect for an experimental RC craft. It will be tethered to the ground, and if it goes out of control the tether will pull a plug disconnecting the power. I will make the plug from a male Deans connector (pictured below)…
Mark Harrison
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USB Fuse to protect USB ports?

I shorted by accident a circuit creating large voltage to my computer, luckily MBA has some sort of shorting protections -- yet this kind of thing should not happen. I would like to have a fuse between my microprocessor and my computer. What are…
hhh
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Health considerations when disassembling consumer electronics

I'm doing some simple diy projects with my Arduino board so I buy various electronic parts (pretty much all the basics like resistors, capacitors, etc..) to experiment and see how things work. Recently I thought that it could be a good idea to hunt…
Eugene S
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Are touch lamps safe?

I've used "touch lamps", where you turn it on and off by touching the lamp. As I understand it, this works by putting a small electrical voltage through the human body: touching the lamp completes the circuit, allowing electricity to flow from the…
D.W.
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Emergency stop switch loop to shut down possibly many equipment items

I need to design an E-stop system - any number of normally closed switches, anywhere from one to possibly as many as 30 identical pieces of equipment that all need to be informed of a switch opening, everything connected in a single loop. Surely…
jasonharper
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Why is touching the live wire of a socket dangerous inside an apartment few stories up?

Let's say I touched the live wire of a power socket in my apartment that is located at the fourth floor of an apartment building. The current needs to flow through my body to ground in order for me to get shocked. According to some sources the human…
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