BBC Mumbo-jumbo science

Cornucopia

Watching Monday night's "How Safe is Your Home", and they had an item about household electrical safety.

Now, there are lots of ways of potentially illustrating how dangerous household electrical faults are (the Mythbusters always have some good ideas on this).

But the Beeb decided for unfathomable reasons to take the punter householder to a high-voltage lab, dress her in a chain-mail suit and fire lightening bolts at her.

Great TV (maybe) but lousy science. Made worse by their so-called expert saying: "look how dangerous it is" and "this is what can happen to you at home" - or words to that effect

SpammyTheSpammer

get someone to suck their fingers and put them onto live wires innit?

hullight

This was shown on BBC One, what did you expect? :rotfl:

The saucy outfit she wears is an example of a Faraday shield, so she is safe.

If the title of the programme is a question, it's probably not worth watching.

Elsewhere

They should show more realistic scenarios.

For instance, a friend's father was killed in his garage - standing on a wet floor holding a faulty piece of electrical equipment. Or there was the time I was waiting at traffic lights and a man cutting his lawn with an electric mower in the garden alongside the road ran over his wire and was electrocuted.

I have a vague memories of public information films about overloaded sockets catching fire, but I assume modern wiring would preclude that. Although patronising, those films were down-to-earth.

For instance...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWcFAJ1_bok

Once we bought a house where the previous owner had a very poor grasp of DIY. There was a large shed at the bottom of the garden. The electric supply was a spur off one of the internal sockets run to a (internal) socket nailed just under the overhang of the summerhouse roof (on the outside). A 13 amp plug was plugged into this - then its wire ran all along the top of the fence, culminating in a double powerpoint in the shed. Lethal.

OK, the BBCs science is accurate, but irrelevant. They need to be less gimmicky

yangptangkipperbang

Elsewhere wrote: »

OK, the BBCs science is accurate, but irrelevant. They need to be less gimmicky

Nah ! dummin' dahn ennit ??

Cornucopia

Elsewhere wrote: »

They should show more realistic scenarios...

Actually, they do sound like scenarios from Casualty.

They need to be less gimmicky

Exactly. You'd have to be seriously unlucky to get struck by lightening whilst standing in your kitchen.

geerex

Elsewhere wrote: »

For instance, a friend's father was killed in his garage - standing on a wet floor holding a faulty piece of electrical equipment. Or there was the time I was waiting at traffic lights and a man cutting his lawn with an electric mower in the garden alongside the road ran over his wire and was electrocuted.

Did that really happen? This century? I mean, there's a hell of a lot of safety cut-outs to stop this these days. Sounds like an urban myth.

Anyhoo....


This is the same BBC that continues to promote multiculturalism, the same BBC that says white flight from London is a good thing, the same BBC that is so impartial and balanced that it takes sides in the Palestine conflict.

In short, the BBC is less trustworthy than all other mainstream media - at least they don't deny their agendas.

rustyboy21

Try stripping a 3 core electric cable with your teeth , not realising you put a plug on the other end and plugged it in! was thrown 6 foot across my bedroom. Did happen when I was 16 though, have a bit more sense now. ( switch it off at the plug first ! lol Joking)

Azari

geerex wrote: »

Did that really happen? This century? I mean, there's a hell of a lot of safety cut-outs to stop this these days. Sounds like an urban myth.

Although it could happen (and probably has), you would have to be incredibly unlucky to die like that.

The most likely way of killing yourself electrically as a result of using a mower would be to have no (or faulty) RCD, no (or detached) earth, and to pick up the cable after scraping it with the mower so that the live is exposed but the blade does not sever the cable and short it.

Elsewhere

geerex wrote: »

Did that really happen? This century? I mean, there's a hell of a lot of safety cut-outs to stop this these days. Sounds like an urban myth.

.

It must have been in the late 70's /early 80's, and it was in Herbert Avenue in Poole - I was on my journey home from where I worked at the time. I don't know how badly the man was injured; he was mowing his front garden with an electric mower then suddenly he fell to the ground and a woman rushed up to him. I suppose it could have been a heart attack, but he was a young guy.

It's one of those vivid, shocking memories that stick with you.

geerex

Elsewhere wrote: »

It must have been in the late 70's /early 80's, and it was in Herbert Avenue in Poole - I was on my journey home from where I worked at the time. I don't know how badly the man was injured; he was mowing his front garden with an electric mower then suddenly he fell to the ground and a woman rushed up to him. I suppose it could have been a heart attack, but he was a young guy.

It's one of those vivid, shocking memories that stick with you.

Young guys can have heart attacks too.

Regardless, it's fair to say that this type of incident is far less likely than even 30 years ago.