I have a question about grounding/earthing.People are grounding

katchum

I have a question about grounding/earthing.

People are grounding themselves because EMF's of electrical appliances are adding a voltage difference to us and the earth.

When someone grounds himself, the voltage difference immediately goes to zero. Electrons will flow to the body and these are beneficial to our health.

What my question is: if I'm grounded to the earth and I'm near a strong EMF, will there be a constant current going through me? Because I'm being charged by the EMF and that charge is going to the earth, over and over again.

I believe there isn't a constant current, because to have a current you need a difference in potential and there is not such thing, because I'm grounded to the earth.

What do you think?

the_emi_guy

Your question is difficult to interpret.

You need to explain what you mean by "people are grounding themselves" and "when someone grounds himself".

If you can be more specific with your question, such as "if I touch xxx with my left hand and yyy with my right hand will I have current flowing through my body?"

Bobbywhy

katchum, You wrote "Electrons will flow to the body and these are beneficial to our health."

Will you please explain how electrons are beneficial to our health?

Thank you,
Bobbywhy

rcgldr

People ground themselves when working with electronics that could be damaged by static. In the case of appliances, it's the appliances that are usually grounded, sometimes with ground fault interruption circuits to protect a person from being shocked. For people that work on high voltage lines, they wear a suit like a faraday cage (so current flows through the suit and not the person), are passengers in a helicopter (ungrounded), and use a probe plus a temporary cable connection whem moving from helicopter to wire and back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tzga6qAaBA

truesearch

Bobbywhy: If the post is referring to electric current then there are beneficial health aspects.
Hearts can be re-started with an electric current pulse, electrical impulses to the brain are used for treatments that I do not know much about.
The Victorians had machines to give mild electric shocks which were deemed beneficial.
I have such a machine.... it does no harm!!!

Studiot

Perhaps Katchum is referring to grounding straps trailed by some from automobiles to prevent motion sickness?

katchum

Looks like nobody heard about earthing. People ground themselves, because the voltage we get from EMF's (also known as EMF pollution) are making us feel depressed and unhealthy or fatigued. So grounding makes us connect to the earth in order to have a neutral voltage of zero. There are health benefits in doing this. As I'm working in the IT sector, I work a lot with the computer. So I bought a grounding mousepad. The whole 8 hours I'm working, I'll be grounded.

I suggest everyone watches this video about grounding:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te4WPdIsBtQ

These were the results after grounding:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8Ouw...feature=relmfu

The way to ground is: I touch the neutral ground wire of a socket and that's it!

If you are near a laptop or an iPad, you will notice that you get a charge of about 2-20 volt. You can measure this by touching one side of the AC volt meter while the other side of the volt meter is grounded to the earth (and touching the iPad with the other hand).

If you suddenly touch the ground wire, then the voltage goes to zero.

About the electron benefits: it is scientifically evidenced that electrons will help adding zeta potential to your blood, which increases your immune system, blood flow, lower blood pressure, lower obesitas, pain relief, anti-aging etc... Just google it and you will find articles about it.

Now, nobody has answered my question yet. Will there be a current going through me? I still believe it's "no", but there is a colleague at work who thinks it's "yes". So that's why I came to the physics forum to have experts looking into this. :(

I'll rephrase my question:
If I stand barefoot outside in the gras (connected to the earth), and I'm holding an iPad (or several of them) in my hands. Will there be a current going through me?

Danger

No one should ever take their scientific education from an infomercial.

katchum

That was just a teaser to get people interested in it.

Here is some of the research by Gaetan Chevalier, Ph.D.: http://humanscience.tripod.com/siteb...physiology.pdf

And I think I just found my answer by reading this research. It says that when you are grounded to the earth, the capacity induced voltages are cancelled out, which means you can't have a current going through your body. The amount of electrons in your body stays the same...:

Excerpt:
Generally speaking, if a subject is not conductively connected to an AC voltage source (such as a
power outlet) any AC voltage induced on the body occurs because of capacitive coupling between the
source and the body. Capacitive coupling is the mechanism by which an electric field on one
conductor acts across a poorly conducting medium (or dielectric), such as air, to influence charges on
a nearby conductor. In essence, a wire carrying an AC voltage acts as one plate of a capacitor, with the
conductive tissues and fluids of the human body acting as another plate. The human body is composed
of a number of tissues and fluid spaces with finite electrical conductivity. The term, “cable
properties,” is used to describe the conductive aspects of elongated cells such as nerves and muscles
(29), and sheets of cells called epithelia (25). AC fields induce voltages in body tissues even when no
current is flowing in the AC circuit. The amount of this induced voltage depends on the source 14
14
voltage, the magnitude of the capacitive link between source and body and on the capacitive link
between the body and the source’s voltage reference, normally the potential of the earth. The degree of
capacitive coupling is highly dependent on the geometry of a particular situation (2).
Electrification of the body from more distant and higher frequency sources of electromagnetic
radiation takes place because the conductive tissues in the body act as antennas. As long as a person is
in conductive contact with the earth, however, electrons can flow rapidly back and forth between the
body and the earth with each AC cycle, as long as the spectral content is not of too high a frequency.
The earth is a vast and stable source of electrons and is therefore a “source” and a “sink” that can
essentially “swallow” noise-producing fields (17). Hence the earthed body is maintained at the same
potential as the ground plane, and any voltages (or noise) that might be induced from external sources
are effectively cancelled. Using the earthing system described in the present study, Applewhite (2) has
documented this alternating flow between the body and the earth and vice versa.

Studiot

So what is your point?

Bobbywhy

katchum, Here on Physics Forums there is no need to provide "teasers to get people interested..." Any reasonable new scientific discovery stands by itself on evidence--Unlike this "Earthing/Grounding" stuff.

You have not obeyed the rules here, specifically: "Physics Forums is not intended as an alternative to the usual professional venues for discussion and review of new ideas, e.g. personal contacts, conferences, and peer review before publication. If you have a new theory or idea, this is not the place to look for feedback on it or help in developing it."

I've reported your post to the Monitor here and asked that this thread be locked for nonconformance with the Rules.

HallsofIvy

Well, that's why I always wear my aluminum beanie!

Q_Goest

Hi katchum,
My sister believes in this stuff too. She has a blanket she keeps on her bed at night that is grounded because she thinks there is some kind of health benefit in it. I suspect there's a lot of misinformation out there about this phenomenon, primarily by people trying to sell you stuff like blankets for your bed that ground you while you sleep.

The phenomenon is real and I think the excerpt you posted does explain it reasonably well. I'm not an electrical engineer and I have little background in electrical stuff but I get the gist of it and I decided to measure the induced voltage potential between myself and ground with a multimeter.

First, the multimeter indicates zero voltage if placed on the DC setting, which I suppose is to be expected. There is no build up of electrons in a person's body due to this phenomenon. There would be for a static electric charge, but not for this particular phenomenon. So there is no build up of electrical charge in your body. There are no excess electrons being added to your body or pulled off of it. Your body has zero electrical potential from this.

However, if the multimeter is placed on the AC setting, I get a small voltage potential between myself and ground, about 0.1 to 0.5 VAC. That actually surprised me so I did some experiments. One thing you read is that you should walk barefoot to help reduce this voltage, so I tried that. The result was the voltage potential actually doubled from 0.1 to 0.2 VAC. So much for walking barefoot.

You asked before about electron flow in the body. You said:
If I read your excerpt, it says:
So if you place yourself "in conductive contact with the earth", such as by grounding yourself with a grounding strap, it says that "electrons can flow rapidly back and forth between the body and the earth with each AC cycle". That means there is a current flowing (however minor) between you and the earth if you're grounded. So if your intent is to stop current flowing through you, you should not ground yourself.

I personally don't think there's a health issue with any of this. The biggest health issue is that you'll waste money trying to ground yourself instead of using that money for things that really CAN help improve your health. In the mean time, the scam artists get your money and smile.

micromass

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