Don't want to die D:

[JNightshade]

"What's that burning smell?"
"Oh, it's just my cock melting."

 

[dream431ca]

You know what the average voltage is when you get shocked from rubbing on a carpet and touching something metal? 5000 - 8000 volts...volts cannot kill you, it's the amps that kill you. If you ever get shocked by 20000 volts, you'll get burned. If you get shocked by 20000 amps and 0.00000000001 volts, it's like getting hit by a freight train at 600 Mph.

 

[madog]

You know what the average voltage is when you get shocked from rubbing on a carpet and touching something metal? 5000 - 8000 volts...volts cannot kill you, it's the amps that kill you. If you ever get shocked by 20000 volts, you'll get burned. If you get shocked by 20000 amps and 0.00000000001 volts, it's like getting hit by a freight train at 600 Mph.

That is one hell of a train.

 

[JNightshade]

If you get shocked by 1000000 amps and 1000000 volts, it's like Mother Theresa rose from the dead, grew a penis, and sodomized you.

 

[sinkoman]

If you get shocked by 1000000 amps and 1000000 volts, it's like Mother Theresa rose from the dead, grew a penis, and sodomized you.

Yeah, I think we already went over this :/

 

[Parrot of doom]

If you get shocked by 20000 amps and 0.00000000001 volts, it's like getting hit by a freight train at 600 Mph.

Please explain how this is possible - unless you happen to be a T-1000.

 

[Parrot of doom]

What would be the best way to play around with Zener diodes, without shorting out the battery used?

I want to hook up a couple of Zener diodes I got the other day to a 12V gel cell I have, but i'm not dumb enough to just stick it across both leads.

I just want to get some current through it so that I can take some readings off the diodes with my Multimeter.

But yeah, as previously stated, I know that when I hit the Zener breakdown voltage, that right there would be a short. And I don't want a 12V Lead Acid Battery to meltdown in my room.

So what would you guys (IE Parrot) do? What I was thinking of doing is just putting a 30V cap into the circuit, so that it's just virtual current, but then i've got to go through all the trouble of wiring up a 555 for 60HZ, then find a transistor that can handle an unrestricted 12V 3AH battery, all of which is a PITA.

So what would you guys do?

Crikey, you're starting to dredge up electronics lessons from my college years, and most times I didn't bother going

I guess it depends on what you're testing for. If all you want to do is find the voltage at which a Zener starts passing current the other way, than perhaps you could just wire a potentiometer in series with the zener? Start the pot on its highest setting and slowly reduce the resistance perhaps? I dunno mate, its a very long time since I studied all this. You would also need to know the load created by putting your meter in series in the circuit, chances are its going to be extremely low but if you're doing any kind of calculations you'll need to know what its internal resistance is.

If you're mucking around with AC voltages, than you could perhaps try things like a bridge diode rectifier, although you don't need zeners for that.

Oh, I'm sure you know not to short out capacitors with anything other than a resistor

 

[sinkoman]

Crikey, you're starting to dredge up electronics lessons from my college years, and most times I didn't bother going

I guess it depends on what you're testing for. If all you want to do is find the voltage at which a Zener starts passing current the other way, than perhaps you could just wire a potentiometer in series with the zener? Start the pot on its highest setting and slowly reduce the resistance perhaps? I dunno mate, its a very long time since I studied all this. You would also need to know the load created by putting your meter in series in the circuit, chances are its going to be extremely low but if you're doing any kind of calculations you'll need to know what its internal resistance is.

If you're mucking around with AC voltages, than you could perhaps try things like a bridge diode rectifier, although you don't need zeners for that.

Oh, I'm sure you know not to short out capacitors with anything other than a resistor

Bleh, just ended up shuffling through equations, and then putting the proper size resistor infront of it.

But I noticed that, when I passed a 9V battery through it, it still let the current through. This being a 10V Zener diode. I used a 12V gel cell and it kept it at about 10.16V, but the 8V comming from the 9V battery went through like nothing was there.

Maybe I don't properly understand zener diodes, but I thought they only allow current through once it hits the zener voltage, then keeps the current AT the zener voltage, even if the current goes way up in electromotive force.

Oh and yeah, I know about bleeder circuits.

But I didn't know about them a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately for me, I was having some fun charging up some 2K uF caps and then letting them go on the ground line of my gel cell.

Was a bit crushed to learn that they're probably fried

 

[Parrot of doom]

What was the tolerance for the zener which let current flow at 9V? And what was the battery voltage?