And the Darwin award goes to...
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Hmm, capacitors. When I was a radio tech in the Air Force, I maintained, among other things, a collection of 1kw HF transmitters. Most maintenance was just swapping out power supplies, as these often blew. The power supply slid out at the bottom of the unit, and was about 20cm by 20cm square, and about 50cm long. They weighed about 50kg, so you slid one nearly out, then grabbed it, from the top, around the bottom, and staggered quickly to the workbench about 10m away. For 1kw of RF power, the DC power supply rectifying diodes had terminals around 7mm thick, and you can imagine the size of the smoothing capacitors, a bit smaller than a coke can. One day as I took the full weight of one of these babies, I discovered that those smoothing capacitor's exposed their terminals at the underneath of the PSU module, and these were pressing into my hand with some pressure, and discharging very slowly, but I could do nothing except try and make for the workbench a lot quicker.
When I went to US Army technical training as a prank we used to charge capacitors and then throw them to someone. The natural reaction was to catch it. We would only use small caps so as not to hurt anybody. It was good fun and, although shocked, no one got hurt in the process. :-D
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We had a guy here that was killed last night while trying to steal copper from a roof-mounted air conditioner - that was on at the time. Several melted tools were found in the immediate vicinity. Apparently, he tried to cut through a 480-vot power line with hand tools.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
