Girl Electrocuted and Dies Tweeting In the Tub 27
Jeff Shantz writes "A 17-year-old Romanian girl is dead after being electrocuted while tweeting in the bath tub. Apparently, she plugged in her laptop after her battery started to die, and it is unclear as to whether or not she dropped the laptop in the water, or simply dripped enough water on the device to cause the shock. Needless to say, it is probably good advice not to tweet in the tub."
Darwin Award! (Score:3, Interesting)
This is definitely a candidate... Nothing like a little chlorine in the gene pool.
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+1 punny (Score:2)
The incident has been quickly picked up by several members of the Twitter community, most of which have been shocked by the news.
BEST. PUN. EVER.
Transcript of last tweet (Score:1)
AARggghhh@romaniangirlintub
Been there, done that (Score:2)
I think my wife and I have both used a laptop in the tub at least once.
Not both of us at the same time, mind you.
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Yeah! You are correct. Same thing that speed doesnt kill you while falling, but the sudden stop. The higher the voltage, the higher the amps. U/R=I. Human tissue is like VDR resistor. When the voltage goes up the resistance goes down, hence the sudden increse in amps. So volts are the cause for death, but amps do the killing.
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Spoken like someone with no clue.
The resistance of the body doesn't change with voltage. The amps increase because of the way electricity works, it has nothing to do with the resistance changing. As the formula you posted states, more volts = more amps, has nothing to do with the body, nor does the chemical composition of the body change quick enough during electricution to actually lower the resistance of the body while it is still alive.
Neither the 'volts' nor the 'amps' are the cause of death or do the
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From my laptop power brick:
Input: 240v at 1 amp
Output: 12v at 3 amps
I wouldn't like either of these earthing though me.
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Your power supply consumes 240v at up to 1amp.
It produces 12v at up to 3 amps depending on the resistance across the 12v load.
You will never get 3 amps of current through your body with 120 volts, let alone 12.
You also don't really understand electricity.
In the case of a person in a bath tub, contrary to popular cultures belief, neither will kill you without some preexisting condition to help it along. The resistance of the body is simply too high to do enough damage to stop the heart, and again, contrary
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Throw a toaster in the bathtub and ... YOU WON'T FEEL A THING.
Correct.
However, lift the wet toaster out of the water while standing in the tub and you will, assuming the circuit hasn't turned off due to a GFCI or circuit breaker.
As you said, pure (deionized) water is a pretty awful conductor. However, pure water is relatively rare. Normal water that you'd fill the bathtub with, especially if it has anything in it (sweat, soap), is likely going to conduct a fair amount of current at household voltage.
Ground fault interrupter, anyone? (Score:2)
There is no longer any reason why ANYbody should be electrocuted in the bathtub. This technology is at least 20 years old, and probably much older than that.
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And mandatory in new bathrooms where I live. Still, I wouldn't use my laptop in a tub, GFI or not. Captain Murphy has enough business.
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A GFCI will do NOTHING to save you from a shock off the secondary side of the laptop's power supply. The secondary is completely isolated from the AC powerline, and without a return path, the GFCI will never trip.
The most likely culprit here would be the high voltage inverter that drives the CCFL backlight for the LCD screen.
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If you RTFA you'll see that she apparently was next to the bathtub, not in it, and presumably (according to early police reports) attempted to plug in the laptop while her hands were still wet. She was found dead with a burn on her left palm. At that time, nothing appeared amiss with the laptop itself. Electrocution was the assumed cause of death, however, according to the article, the true cause of death has yet to be determined.
Horrible (Score:1)
Is this really an appropriate story to make such a pun?