What could be safer than working in a modern scientific lab?
Always be mindful of not only your own safety, but the safety of end users.

http://phys.org/news/2016-07-static-electricity-hawaii-lab-explosion.html

And just to reinforce the premise that it is charge, that is the most powerful force....

https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/what-if-i-were-1-charged/

 

Every lab I have worked at was periodically inspected for safety and anti-stat compliance. The lab manager who said "don't worry about it" should no longer be a lab manager.

 

I agree. I worked in a lab where someone walked into 200 kV X rays protected by only a 9mm sheet of lead supported on a crane. One slip up and he would have regretted it. Another guy picked up an earthed soldering iron only the earth wasn't mains earth but 600 V , 400 amp dc above it. As he applied it to his earthed circuit the soldering iron's lead disappeared in a flash.

 

This just answered one of my earliest questions about electricity:
What would happen if you stuffed all the electrons that would fit into a 1 meter brass sphere, into a 1 meter brass sphere?
What would the voltage be, compared to, perhaps, our planet?
I mean, a charged capacitor obviously has more electrons on one side than the other...right?
How far can you push that?
We have created a million volts, 50 million volts.
What's the limit?
Is there a limit?
What if you took all the electrons out of the sphere?

Some of the old timers might remember this question as it was asked about 5 years ago.
It was difficult to define how many electrons you can stuff into a given sphere, and the answers were equally disjoint.
Now I know. The answer is, KABOOM.
You can't significantly strip the electrons from a mass without incredible amounts of energy.
These things we call capacitors are merely playing with the tiniest edge of an electron imbalance.

 

The OP link again.
https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/what-if-i-were-1-charged/

I’ll use my own body as an example. My body has a mass of about 80 kg, which means that it contains something like

protons, and an almost exactly equal number of electrons. Losing 1% of those electrons would mean that my body acquires an electric charge of

electron charges, or about

Coulombs.
...
Suppose, for example, that in their rush to escape my body, those 40 million Coulombs split in half and flowed to opposite extremities. Say, each hand suddenly acquired a charge of 20 million Coulombs. The force between those two hands (spread apart, about 6 feet) would be

Newtons, which translates to about

pounds. Needless to say, my body would not retain its structural integrity.

Of course, in addition to the forces pushing the extremities of my body apart, there would also be a force similar in magnitude pulling me toward the ground. You may recall that when an electric charge is next to a grounded surface (like, say, the ground) it induces some opposite charge on that surface in a way that acts like an “image charge” of opposite sign. In my case, the earth would accumulate a huge amount of negative charge around my feet so as to create a force like that of an “image me.”
...
But my hypercharged self would not only crush the earth. It would also break open the vacuum itself. At the instant of losing those 1% of electrons, the electric potential at the edge of my body would be about 40exavolts. This is much larger than the voltage required to rip apart the vacuum and create electron-positron pairs. So my erstwhile body would be the locus of a vacuum instability, in which electrons were sucked in while positrons were blasted out.

In short, if I lost 1% of my electrons, I would not be a person anymore. I would be a bomb. A Coulomb bomb, if you will, with an energy equivalent to that of ten billion (modern) atomic bombs. Which would surely destroy the planet. All by removing just 1 out of every 100 of my electrons.

 

What's the limit?
Is there a limit?

That triggered more questions in my limited brain:

• Electrons have to come from somewhere, right? Ordinary matter has the same number of electrons as protons per atom. Is there an electron-proton imbalance in the universe?
• To produce charge, electrons migrate from one side of the capacitor, to the other side. Leaving one side with a surplus of electrons, and the other with atoms that have "holes" in them. So the limit would be one side with all of the other side's electrons in it? And the other side would be just proton-neutron nuclei??? like a plasma-like substance? Wouldn't this substance be torn apart due to its natural electromagnetic repulsion?

 

That triggered more questions in my limited brain:

• Electrons have to come from somewhere, right? Ordinary matter has the same number of electrons as protons per atom. Is there an electron-proton imbalance in the universe?
• To produce charge, electrons migrate from one side of the capacitor, to the other side. Leaving one side with a surplus of electrons, and the other with atoms that have "holes" in them. So the limit would be one side with all of the other side's electrons in it? And the other side would be just proton-neutron nuclei??? like a plasma-like substance? Wouldn't this substance be torn apart due to its natural electromagnetic repulsion?

An imbalance implies work (force-displacement path integral) so you would expect that over time (maybe a very long time) to see a equilibrium of charges in the universe at large scales that's overall neutral like with a good wire conductor of current in a dynamic circuit with energy moving from one place to next.

Like in the example post #5 (and the OP) above you would never get close to even a 1% total atomic charge separation with all the equivalent electrical power of an atomic bomb.

With a typical good conductor at normal household currents the number of electrons/nuclei that (electro)migrate is so tiny a number of the possible number of free electrons the forces are small but it does happen at high current density like inside computer chips where conductors have very small cross sections and dimensions.

 

electrons are not really one of nature's four forces. The four are, in order of strongest first...strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, electromagnetic force and gravity. The strong nuclear force is far and away the strongest. An electron has electromagnetic charge but electrons also have mass and spin. The word charge only refers to how much electromagnetism they have. Electrons are mutually repulsive so to "stuff them into a sphere" as you say would require a large negative charge outside the sphere to push them in. The force between the outside charge and the electrons inside would become greater as more electrons were stuffed inside.

 

1) BR-549 has finally posted something I could understand.
2) This has led to the invention of Kaboomium 138 (Symbol Ka subscript 138) in my feeble mind.
Need a Darth Vader Death Star? No Problem. Just materialize a few grams of Ka138 on the surface of a planet and, Kaboom. No planet.
This has been a very feel good experience because I learned something I have long wondered about.
There is a limit, and it's barely on the edge of starting to add or remove all the electrons that will physically fit in a mass.
The problem is that I was trying to find it in the field of electronics, and the answer is in the field of physics.
Gratitude.

 

1) BR-549 has finally posted something I could understand.

Personally, I'm still trying to wrap my head around it... but I have to hand it to BR, he's finally posted something with solid scientific references...

 

Personally, I'm still trying to wrap my head around it... but I have to hand it to BR, he's finally posted something with solid scientific references...

He might have posted a lot of things with adequate references. The problem is with me. I can't understand most of what he posts...not even enough to tell if it's valid or not.
My B.S. detector is weak with this one.

 

He might have posted a lot of things with adequate references. The problem is with me. I can't understand most of what he posts...not even enough to tell if it's valid or not.
My B.S. detector is weak with this one.

Mine is not 100% reliable, either. But I tend to trust posts depending on their references... and even then, even A-list scientists can screw up. So I always keep a tiny grain of skepticism so as not fall into 100% gullibility.

 

Ordinary matter has the same number of electrons as protons per atom.

Ordinary matter has an equal number of captive electrons, but my understanding is that our planet is fairly slopping over with spare electrons.

 

Ordinary matter has an equal number of captive electrons, but my understanding is that our planet is fairly slopping over with spare electrons.

Remember a very old thread of mine, Planet to Planet lightning?

 

Just a reminder. Charge is not a property of mass. Mass is a property of charge.

All force and all matter come from electrons (left handed charge) and protons (right handed charge).
These two asymmetrical charges is where all physical "stuff" comes from.

You may collect an electron from any environment and/or location, and compare it to a proton from any environment and/or location, ...and the AMOUNT of those two charges will be constant and equal.

BUT the density of those two charges will be vastly different. The area of the charge and the charge field varies greatly. Negative and positive charges are asymmetrical in density. (not amount) This is why they are asymmetrical in mass. Mass is charge density.

This asymmetrical effect is caused by handedness. A left handed (negative electron) charge orientates the magnetic field to low density. (the magnetic momentum is anti parallel to the angular momentum of the charge) It acts like a low pass filter and keeps the frequency low. Low frequency means low density which means low mass.

A right handed (positive proton) charge orientates the magnetic field to high density. (the magnetic momentum is parallel to the angular momentum of the charge) It acts like a high pass filter and keeps the frequency high. High frequency means high density which means high mass.

Mass is not the amount of charge.......it is the density of the charge. This is how a charge particle can change mass, without changing the amount of charge. This is why electrons and protons have the same amount of charge, but have different masses.

If the two charges have the same density.......they will combine and dissolve each other. (into EM radiation) (matter-antimatter reaction)

If there was no difference in the density between the two charges..........there would be no matter at all.

Edit...replaced kinetic with angular.

 

Just when things were starting to be coherent.

 

Just when things were starting to be coherent.

I agree... BR, no offense, but could you please post a reference of the statements you've just made?