BP and Static Locked?

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

I don't get over here very often.

I wanted to make a comment on the BP and Static post, even give a little bit of useful information, but the thread is locked.

Howcum?

[Dick Dastardly]

Ho Driftwood Pard,

Give this a poke with yer rodent.

http://www.brimstonepistoleros.com/Articles/staticelectricity.html

I got it to open real easy.

Yer Parrd,

DD-DLoS

[Cuts Crooked]

Howdy Driftwood,

I locked it because I didn't want it to become a bickerfest over which attitude wuz right. Most  of the information is there for pards to make up their own minds, but iffin y'all got sumpthin pertinant to add I'll open it fer ya tonight.

[Driftwood Johnson]

Nah, I'll make my comments here.

I wanted to reply to the gent who thought that static gets blamed for a lot of things it doesn't do and then made some comments regarding computer manufacturers being overcautious in their warnings about static electricity.

I work in the electronics industry, and every year I have to take a refresher course in ESD (Electro Static Discharge). ESD is the industry term for static electricity and the damage it can do to electronics. Somebody stated that lightning is basically ESD on steroids, and that is correct. When you look through a microscope at the damage done by microscopic static discharges, too small to be detected by the human body, to delicate microelectronic components and circuitry, you would think you are looking at a bomb field. Every year companies like mine lose money on product that has been returned because adequate static discharge precautions have not been taken. One thing the poster did not realize was that even if no damage is evident right away, latent damage may have happened from improper handling of static sensitive components. Latent damage that may be undetactable now but may result in failure at a later date. Every electronics technician knows that before handling sensitive electronic components, they must put themselves at the same potential as the component.This does not necessesarily mean relying on the third plug of a power cord.

I've seen the photos of the huge static charges cascading over the pile of Black Powder, and they are very impressive indeed. The reason the powder doesn't ignite is that the powder is a reasonably good conductor, and the charge passes through the powder without encountering much heat generating resistance in the powder. It is heat that ignites Black Powder. When the piece of flint strikes the frizzen on a flintlock, tiny shards of steel are scraped off the frizzen, and it is those shards of steel, glowing white hot that fall into the pile of powder in the pan. The tiny white hot shards contain a lot of heat and are able to impart the heat very efficiently to the powder, igniting it.

The human body can detect a static charge starting around 3,000 volts. Less than that we don't feel. When one shuffles across a rug on a dry day a static charge of as much as 10,000 volts may be built up on our bodies. Very little current, but the voltage is high. A charge of 10,000 volts jumping through the air becomes visible because the air, which acts as an insulator, is heated by the current passing through it. That's why we see a spark when we grap a doorknob after shuffling across the rug. The air becomes heated and glows, just like the gas in a flourescent bulb glows as a current passes through it.That's what we see when lightning passes from a cloud to the earth. Super heated air that is glowing. Somewhere in the continuum between a little spark jumping from our fingertip to the massive static discharge of lightning, there will be a voltage AND current level that will create enough heated air to ignite anything, including Black Powder.