Once a Student came in my Electronics repair shop (1970). I was working on a tube type guitar amplifier when he broke my concentration by saying "What is a rectifier?" Well, I answered rather quitely "One is right Hereeeeee! I pointed to one in the circuit and it shocked the crap out of me. (it was in a bridge circuit that had 117 VAC hooked to it. After I stopped convulsing , he said "OK, thanks."and walked out.

That was one of my most embarrassing moments of my life.

Oh I've had electric shocks but I was an electrician for a few years. I've lost count of the times I've touched live 240v cables. Is it wrong that I actually quite like the sensation?

And Dave, you are right, I haven't been doing much bot building but hopefully that'll all change in the new year

I have been lucky and have only reversed the voltages on my ez-b v3 and blew a fuse. Speaking of shocks, I had a wall that built up A LOT of static electricity(near an air filter machine that made static electricity to filter out particles) and when I went to switch the light switch on I got a huge shock that made me jump across the room! I've also stuck wires in outlets as a kid... blush

OK, if we are going to talk shocks...

Once I was talking on the phone during a thunderstorm (land line, copper, one of those hold really heavy Bell 500 sets.... this was 30+ years ago, when I was in high school) and lightning hit a tree right outside my house. A shock went from the mouthpiece of the phone into my chin. As if that didn't hurt enough, my whole body spasm-ed, and my right arm drove the phone handset into my jaw. Didn't break it, but I had a huge bruise and couldn't comfortably eat or talk for a week. The answering machine on that line was fried, as was the one on my mother's phone line, and apparently my van was also hit because the stereo was dead when I went out the next morning.

I also lost a car stereo a couple of years ago when my car was hit by lightning while I was driving it, but other than the stereo, the car acted as a Faraday cage and protected me from getting shocked.

Alan

Alan, you don't have much luck with lightning! Good thing you weren't doing 88mph!

@Rich... as smart as Alan is, I doubt he had a flux capacitor.... Queue Huey Lewis....

Lol.

I also used to have a cat that liked getting static shocks. After being pet, she would go to the nearest metal surface (well,she was't that smart, she would try on bookshelves and chairs too) and touch her nose to it, then bite the air when she got shocked, but would then keep repeating it to try and get another shock.

Alan

I fried a number of cmos chips by handling them as I would TTLs. Only later learning they were much more sensitive to static shock. I fried two very expensive static ram chips (circo mid 80s) that way. Since then I've always touched the ground before touching components.