What is the average static shock (in volts) that you get from touching a doorknob?
I cannot answer this question directly but I can say that body voltages can vary from zero up to 35000 V and above. In general you don't feel shocks unless your body voltage is above about 3000-4000 V. Getting out of a car, about 8000-10000 V is not uncommon. In general the likelihood of achieving a certain body voltage decreases as the voltage increases, so voltages of a few hundred volts are "normal", and a few thousand volts not uncommon, but tens of thousands of volts are more unusual.
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- Dr Jeremy Smallwood has been working as a static electricity consultant since 1987. He started his company Electrostatic Solutions Ltd to give top level static electricity research and development and consultancy services in 1997.
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4 comments:
is there some method by which we can store or accumulate energy from a static shock?
It is possible to store the energy of static electricity, but it is so little energy it is questionable whether it would be worth it! The average shock does not have enough energy to even make a torch bulb flash.
I am interested in using static shocks to trigger relay or a transistor. Do I put it through a capacitor or a coil first? I thought I could maybe use a transistor with out using an amp or anything..
Any tips?
Oliver . Kellow at gmail.com
You could use an electrostatic discharge to drive a small transistor or mosfet. I would dump the current into a capacitor to store the charge. It would be wise to put some sort of voltage limiting (e.g. zener diode) to prevent damage of a mosfet by larger discharges. You would probably need to use the output of the fet/transistor to trigger some relay driver circuit.
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