this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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90s Memes

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[–] Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Sorry homie, op is right as far as getting shocked. 1.5v isn't high enough to feel with your hands. Hell, you can grab both terminals of a 12v car battery and it won't do anything to you.

Those little strips do work by heating a resistive wire though, so it's completely possible that you just heated up the spot you pressed enough to hurt a little. Unless you were a particularly curious or accident prone kid, you probably didn't have a reference for the sensation of getting shocked, so you'd assume that's what happened.

I accidentally touched the hot prong of a radio when i was a kid and thought I got punched by a ghost until i did it again years later. Kids have no idea what's going on.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

punched by a ghost

Huh, being shocked does kind of feel like that.

[–] Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 days ago

Especially as a kid that has no concept of what 120v going from hand to bare foot on concrete feels like. Tenses up your big muscles in the shoulder and peck just like a good punch.

Just another entry on the list of dumb shit that's almost killed me.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Wait, which part of the radio is the prong?

[–] Hawke@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

I can only assume they were plugging in the mains cord.

Either that or a tube radio with the tube heated up enough to burn?

[–] edgemaster72@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

you can grab both terminals of a 12v car battery and it won’t do anything to you.

What if I have a Gene Simmons-esque tongue that I can somehow manage to touch to both terminals?

[–] Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 days ago

Good question. I've put my tongue across a 9v battery a number of times to check them. Fully charged, it's uncomfortable but bearable. A 33% is pretty big, so I assume that 12V probably hurts enough that you wouldn't want to do it for long. I doubt it'd do much damage if it was brief though.

I looked, and it seems like the resistance of the tongue is between 10k and 1M ohms. Assuming the average value of 100k ohms, 12V is current limited to 0.12mA and 1.44 milliwatts. It takes like 10 watts to run the average LED lightbulb, which makes it about 7000x more powerful. Gene would be okay.