Ipad electric shock

[darthtony]

In my ipad 4 gen, if you touch the metal frame in a certain way, it gives a slight electrical shock(like an annoying tingle) only when it is charging(original charger). I have seen similar behaviour in some other consumer equipment like laptops etc. Why is something like this happening? I read somewhere that it is due to the fact that the metal parts arent grounded, but still why isnt it happening when it is not charging? Can someone explain this to me a little better?

[Sebastian]

I don't know for sure, but it is probably a small current passing through some insulation and/or the EMI capacitor of the charger.

[Zepnat]

I've experience this many times and can usually light one of those neon testers by touching some metal parts, but as I understand it it's perfectly safe although very annoying, there's a small chance you could drop something due to the unexpected shock.

It's due to the charger being double insulated with no ground wire,  and the tiniest bit of electricity being capacitively coupled (safe) from the mains side of the charger.

[SoundTech-LG]

capacitively coupled (safe)

unless the cap fails...

[DanielS]

I read somewhere that it is due to the fact that the metal parts arent grounded, but still why isnt it happening when it is not charging? Can someone explain this to me a little better?

When plugged into the charger, there is likely some leakage current coming in from the mains and since the adapter is only a two-pin thing, there is nowhere to reference the ground to so you end up with a floating voltage.

You will often have a 1Meg or 10Meg resistor from output ground to mains neutra" to discharge static but if your AC plug is reversed, it will be connected to live instead, same if there is a Y-cap between output ground and mains neutral.

If you get shocks from a laptop which has a three pin power plug, then you have a grounding issue.

Your building wiring or outlets may have live and neutral swapped.

[Rufus]

We recently had a thread about this

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/ac-electrical-leakage-from-surface-pro-3!/15/

[mikerj]

All Apple products with exposed metal cases suffer from this, e.g. early iPhone and iPods.