This is from last year. I found it in my favourites folder.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asi...ic/4252692.stm
I'm just wondering whether anyone thinks there's a hint of hyperbole in there or whether the journalist passed CSE general science? ???
It's a good read anyway.
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Don't suppose you have another link for that story, I have great difficulty viewing the BBC news website. It's excluded by the Chinese firewall!
Here's the jist of the story:
Man's static jacket sparks alert
An Australian man built up so much static electricity in his clothes as he walked that he burned carpets, melted plastic and sparked a mass evacuation.
Frank Clewer, of the western Victorian city of Warrnambool, was wearing a synthetic nylon jacket and a woollen shirt when he went for a job interview.
As he walked into the building, the carpet ignited from the 40,000 volts of static electricity that had built up.
...
Perplexed firemen evacuated the building and cut its electricity supply, thinking the burns could have been caused by a power surge.
...
Mr Clewer said that after leaving the building, he scorched a piece of plastic in his car.
His clothes were measured by firemen as carrying an electrical charge of 40,000 volts, the Reuters news agency quoted Mr Barton as saying.
The fire official added that the charge was close to being high enough to cause the items to spontaneously combust.
Wouldn't the bloke himself have, like, exploded or something? :o
Static charge always sticks to the outside, so the guy wouldn't even have been aware of it.
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