Recent content by Cyclix

Nope I haven't done that at all. But I can still tell you why the mains voltage had to be considered the most dangerous one :) It is because those 30,000 volts are only supplied for a very, very short time; probably a microsecond or so. Make that pulse a whole second long and the mains voltage...

webberfolds, moving racecars affect each mostly through the Bernoulli's principle. When moving side by side they tend to get closer together and will do so until they crash with each other. The drivers need to constantly steer away from each other. This is because the air between them moves...

And there you have it, increase the voltage, the danger goes up. Conversely, you can't increase the supplied current and somehow expect that it starts flowing where it didn't flow before. So given a non dangerous live circuit and a grounded organism touching it, we can only make it dangerous by...

Cripes! I've never thought about it this way. So in an incandescent bulb we have a great durable device capable of producing both light and heat and it costs less than its individual heating and illuminating counterparts with the same specs. A 2000W heater costs more than 20 100W bulbs and it...

There is a fallacy in this argumentation. You are involving variable resistance in the equation but not adjusting the other important parameter (voltage) at the same rate. If we lower the voltage with the same factor as the resistance we will see again that if the input voltage is not enough to...

If CFLs are indeed losing brightness faster than LED bulbs then that would be the only reason to switch. In my (not so thorough) research I failed to see any other advantage. Also when comparing bulbs side by side in stores, I can never find a LED with better stats than the best CFL they have...

Exactly. So it's voltage alone that decides whether that fixed puny amount of current flows. Lower voltage: it won't flow. Higher voltage: it will flow. The source itself could supply 90mA or 543624A - if the voltage is not high enough, nothing will happen. 20 V across the hands can't push those...

This is not true at all. Voltage alone decides the deadlines since current does not play a real role in dielectric breakdown. The Ohm's law cannot be used: if I touch the +12V rail of my PC's power supply while grounded nothing will happen although it is rated for 15A. Even 600A at several volts...

Well I am using a computer power supply to charge an ultra capacitor. I use the light bulb as a current limiter because the short circuit protection of the power supply keeps kicking in when I connect just the capacitor. It is working great but I have to stick around while the cap is charging...

Thanks for the replies, guys. I can't seem to find zener diodes capable of handling the current I am working with. I have a 55W headlight bulb, and the the cap in series. My power supply outputs 4A in this configuration. So I need a zener capable of handling 4A right? Are comparators discrete...

Hi all I need to disconnect the power once a given voltage drop at some component (a capacitor in this case) is reached. For example at first the voltage between the leads is 0 and starts climbing up once there is power. When the voltage reaches 2.0 V, I want the power to be cut off...