Pulse charging capacitors

[TinselKoala]

Yup, that's it.

Nearly killed myself yesterday, too. I was packing up to go to work, and I grabbed that brown dual cap stack, and just as my fingers closed on it I realized I hadn't put on the safety short the previous night, and I had been operating the VDG while having coffee...ZAP! Only a small charge but it got me good, I can still feel it in my hand tonight. I've been around this stuff for so long that I simply cannot touch stuff with both hands--my reflexes are that conditioned. And lately I've been noticing that I hesitate even with just one hand.
If I had grabbed that stack with both hands I'd probably bring on a heart attack.

Please, be careful with big HV capacitors. They can suck up charge when you aren't looking, so it's good practice to keep them shorted with a jumper when not in use. And for goodness sake, keep one hand in your pocket!

[turniton]

OCH!!! well, you got your internal battery's charged!
seriously, i have been there many a time and it hurts each time, hope your feeling better! i'm an old technician and each time it still stings... i learned to put a high megohm resistor across my caps

i'm watching your neat videos on that site...very cool.

I started thinking again...

Charge separation in a parallel-plate capacitor causes an internal electric field. A dielectric (orange) reduces the field and increases the capacitance.

A capacitor converts charge to electric field and stores it as an electric field.

large conductors = large surface area, least resistance to surface charge or put another way, the larger the surface area, the less resistance to incoming charge and storage.

all charge is on the surface area, not inside the conductor. and creating field from charge on the surface of that conductor.

Your opinions

[broli]

Looks like death is near you TK. You better watch out. Tomorrow I'll take some time watching some of the disruptice discharge experiments of yours.

[turniton]

every multi-conductor geometry has capacitance.

[turniton]

displacement current