{"id":171,"date":"2005-04-24T14:47:37","date_gmt":"2005-04-24T19:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/04\/24\/alternating-current-first-hand\/"},"modified":"2005-04-24T15:53:23","modified_gmt":"2005-04-24T20:53:23","slug":"alternating-current-first-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/2005\/04\/24\/alternating-current-first-hand\/","title":{"rendered":"Alternating Current, First Hand."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jenny<\/a>
\nI’m not much of a scientist, but I sometimes (like I imagine everyone does) I think about how amazing electricity is. One of the things that has always seemed strange to me is how the wall power is A\/C and power from batteries is D\/C. Alternating current vs. direct current. Yesterday I got to experience A\/C first hand. It’s been a long time since I’ve been shocked–I remember pretty clearly the times I’ve felt the power of electricity, notably in elementary school where we all held hands and felt a little zap flow through the group. Later, and more memorably, at some type of fair or event at the Riverwalk in Jacksonville, Florida. There was a demonstration of the power of electricity that required holding two bars as the power was slowly turned up until you couldn’t take it any longer. That was enough for me to realize that I didn’t like being shocked. At all.<\/p>\n

Yesterday that all came flooding back as I tried hooking up our new stove. The plastic cover where the giant three pronged stove plug is inserted came off. I noticed it had a bunch of wood dust from where I had to saw the counter to fit the stove in–we’re upgrading from an extremely old drop in stove to a regular, slide in stove. In all my wisdom, I decided that I had better clean the dust out, just to be safe. It never occurred to me to remove the fuse for circuit that powers the kitchen. Once it finally did, I had already experienced an alternating current first hand. It was as if time slowed down for that brief second. I almost saw, extracorporeally, my self jumping back and yelping like a kicked dog as I felt the strong pulses of energy flowing from my fingertips through my entire body.<\/p>\n

The feeling is so foreign, so unnatural that nothing I can relate to compares to it. It’s as if you’re being shake violently, except you’re not moving, as if every muscle in your body was tensing and relaxing involuntarily. I can’t stand the feeling. I’ve talked to electricians who tell stories of being shocked and don’t seem to think much of it. For me, it’s on of the most repulsive things that can happen. It’s been years since it happened last, and now after a reminder of what it feels like again fresh in my memory, I hope it will be years, or never, until the next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not much of a scientist, but I sometimes (like I imagine everyone does) I think about how amazing electricity is. One of the things that has always seemed strange to me is how the wall power is A\/C and power from batteries is D\/C. Alternating current vs. direct current. Yesterday I got to experience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppj2P-2L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}