15 yr old boy dies attempting to construct a Jacobs ladder

[joeqsmith]

I just read about this yesterday.   The article talks about them finding a mircowave battery pack plugged into the outlet.  I assume the reporters just didn't know it was a transformer.  I am surprised it does not happen more often with how many people are trying to measure the output voltages of their MOTs with their DMMs.   

http://nypost.com/2016/04/20/teen-kills-himself-trying-youtube-science-experiment/

http://www.fox19.com/story/31771052/police-teen-electrocuted-performing-youtube-experiment-morgan-woceichowski


 

[Tom45]

I set my house on fire with a Jacobs ladder built using a neon transformer when I was about that age. I got it put out by the time the fire trucks arrived. That was over 50 years ago.

[MatthewMorgan]

The grounddad is asking for censorship because they did not monitor they child:
"Youtube was the culprit. It needs to be stopped. We need to monitor what's being put out to our kids," added the grandfather. "There's no going back. This can enlighten other parents too."

[chris_leyson]

To be honest I'm not surprised this sort of thing doesn't happen more often. Been there, done the Jacobs ladder, Tesla coil thing and Cockroft Walton multipliers as a kid but with boiler ignition transformers, still enough amps available to kill. I was sensible and knew what I could or could not touch safely.

[apis]

I think some youtubers really should be better att explaining the dangers and proper safety procedures when posting videos of dangerous experiments. Things like this are bound to happen and people will blame youtube, science and engineering and call for censorship.

[CJay]

That's terribly sad, I really hope it's not repeated.

I do believe there's a duty of care to make people aware of the dangers of this sort of experiment but I believe it should be on the shoulders of the video creators, not the host.

[Brumby]

I do believe there's a duty of care to make people aware of the dangers of this sort of experiment but I believe it should be on the shoulders of the video creators, not the host.

Absolutely agree.  The host is just providing a platform and it would be impractical to expect them to have competence in every subject presented, let alone the responsibility to intercede.

The video producer, however, should be more than aware of the risks - and should, IMO, be required to address safety issues as part of their presentation, especially when there can be an interest from viewers with absolutely no practical experience in a field.

[Jeroen3]

I think some youtubers really should be better att explaining the dangers and proper safety procedures when posting videos of dangerous experiments. Things like this are bound to happen and people will blame youtube, science and engineering and call for censorship.

Teach children the dangers of electricity before physics class in high school.
Mehdi Sadaghdar is doing a good job at showing the dangers though.

[Ian.M]

Sad

Even as a young teenager (long before the WWW) I knew that electricity is dangerous above a few tens of volts or at high currents.   I had a Neon sign transformer and I did experiment with it, but I always had it on an insulating surface, stepped back, plugged it in and switched it on at the wall outlet, and unplugged it before working on any part of the circuit.  I also used a shorting stick on any HV capacitors before handling them. I'm still here because I didn't want to become a crispy critter so was careful and methodical, especially when working with stuff like my 1600V dry battery bank.

Banning electrical videos from Youtube will not help, as the information is out there in so many other places including books and university websites, (e.g. http://wonders.physics.wisc.edu/jacob-s-ladder.htm) often with no safety warnings.

At the end of the day, its the parents responsibility to teach their kids to assess risks and consequences, and forbid excessively dangerous activities for their individual experience level.  Excessive caution on the part of the parents is counterproductive as that produces a young adult who is at risk as soon as they are old enough to ignore their parents and 'cut loose'.   Safety lessons in school can help, but the bright kids that are most at risk are often several years ahead of their grade in subjects that interest them so are likely to be experimenting before they've had the safety lessons.

[3db]

Surely there must also be a high level of parental responsibility too.
I was interested in electronics from about the age of nine.
I was encouraged but was also banned from anything that involved the mains.
I'll confess that I disobeyed and got a shock.
I did however gain a very healthy respect for electricity after that day.

[nctnico]

I think some youtubers really should be better att explaining the dangers and proper safety procedures when posting videos of dangerous experiments. Things like this are bound to happen and people will blame youtube, science and engineering and call for censorship.

One of my friends in school electrocuted himself and that was long before anyone knew what internet was. Heck, none of the (personal/home) computers availablea at that time could even play video.

[retrolefty]

Sad

Even as a young teenager I knew that electricity is dangerous above a few tens of volts or at high currents.   I had a Neon sign transformer and I did experiment with it, but I always had it on an insulating surface, stepped back, plugged it in and switched it on at the wall outlet, and unplugged it before working on any part of the circuit.  I also used a shorting stick on any HV capacitors befire handling them. I'm still here because I didn't want to become a crispy critter so was careful and methodical, especially when working with stuff like my 1500V dry battery bank.

Banning electrical videos form Youtube will not help, as the information is out there in so many other places including books and university websites, (e.g. http://wonders.physics.wisc.edu/jacob-s-ladder.htm) often with no safety warnings.

At the end of the day, its the parents responsibility to teach their kids to assess risks and consequences, and forbid excessively dangerous activities for their individual experience level.  Excessive caution on the part of the parents is counterproductive as that produces a young adult who is at risk as soon as they are old enough to ignore their parents and 'cut loose'.   Safety lessons in school can help, but the bright kids that are most at risk are often several years ahead of their grade in subjects that interest them so are likely to be experimenting before they've had the safety lessons.

 It's sounds so easy to just blame the parents as they are ultimately the final authority and responsibility over their under 18 children. I just recall my youth and experiments. My parents just had not a clue about electronics but luckily they let me do my thing pretty much as I pleased. Most of my knowledge at the time came from electronic magazines and library books. Those 'information sources' at least had some level of editing and warnings you don't see on too many youtube videos. I blew open my share of AC circuit breakers and that too added to my 'learning curve'.

 The new 'information age' has brought both great advantage and great danger as it's completely unsupervised. I don't have any magic solution but can only observe that I continue to live in interesting times as the wise old Chinese proverb goes.   

[JPortici]

To some degree, it is their fault as they didn't manage to proprly educate their son about the dangers of electricity, or maybe that's what they are thinking right now.
to some degree it is the youtuber's fault if he didn't provide safety awareness in its videos
to some other degree it may be the kid's fault, who didn't care to follow
I am pretty sure it was just an accident, we surely don't know what really happened. it is nobody's fault.

[Ian.M]

Also its the WWW global village effect.  Tragedies like this Ohio kid may even have been more common but you typically didn't hear about them unless you were in the same town, or at least the same country for specialist hobbies.  I'd lay odds that most of us had heard of at least one local incident where a kid was killed or seriously injured doing something dangerous and stupid, before we left school.  A small percentage of bright kids have always been lost because they had more curiosity than common sense - this probably goes back to before the origins of Homo Sapiens  as a species.

[CJay]

Surely there must also be a high level of parental responsibility too.
I was interested in electronics from about the age of nine.
I was encouraged but was also banned from anything that involved the mains.
I'll confess that I disobeyed and got a shock.
I did however gain a very healthy respect for electricity after that day.

And therein lies the issue, teenagers will always take risks. I stripped down many things, some of them live, to 'see how it works' including the (rented) television in my late pre-teen and teenage years.

And when I got a shock, I also learned to respect electricity

Fortuantely, I didn't have the 'net to encourage me to find a neon sign transformer and all the books I had access to at the local library had dire warnings so I survived

[mikerj]

Also its the WWW global village effect.  Tragedies like this Ohio kid may even have been more common but you typically didn't hear about them unless you were in the same town, or at least the same country for specialist hobbies.  I'd lay odds that most of us had heard of at least one local incident where a kid was killed or seriously injured doing something dangerous and stupid, before we left school.  A small percentage of bright kids have always been lost because they had more curiosity than common sense - this probably goes back to before the origins of Homo Sapiens  as a species.

This is almost certainly the case.  I wonder how many lives have been saved by the information now so freely available rather than experimenting in almost total ignorance?

I can clearly remember exploring in my grandfathers workshop on his farm when I was maybe 9 years old and finding some live rounds buried in the back of a draw full of junk (small calibre, not shotgun).  I clamped one in a vice and had a hammer in my hand ready to hit the percussion cap when I started having strong doubts and decided it was a bad idea.  I shudder even thinking about it now, but I bet many young lads wouldn't have given it a second thought.

I also had more than my share of shocks as a youngster, though primarily from car ignition coils and often deliberately inflicted on myself, my brother and various friends.

[3db]

Risk and endeavour  have helped humanity progress.
Modern society seems to have forgotten this.
IMHO 

[Vgkid]

Surely there must also be a high level of parental responsibility too.
I was interested in electronics from about the age of nine.
I was encouraged but was also banned from anything that involved the mains.
I'll confess that I disobeyed and got a shock.
I did however gain a very healthy respect for electricity after that day.

My parents did the same, marking the experiments in my Mimms books(that I could not do.)
I switched from being interested in electronics, to guns, to cars, to golf. Now we are back to electronics.

[Marco]

I don't see a public service announcement with every table saw video on youtube either, yet I don't think there's a tool in existence which has claimed more digits. Should videos for HV experiments contain more warnings, yes. Should that be enforced by youtube rules, not unless we are going to be consistent about it in my opinion. Certainly not law.

At the end of the day electricity is likely to teach you respect at some point without killing you, if not ... oh well, that's life.

[helius]

Constructed a 20kV Cockroft-Walton multiplier at age 14, without any supervision or anything. You aren't a child at that age.
I wouldn't make a Jacobs Ladder even today, though. No arcs around me, please.

[JoeN]

The grounddad is asking for censorship because they did not monitor they child:
"Youtube was the culprit. It needs to be stopped. We need to monitor what's being put out to our kids," added the grandfather. "There's no going back. This can enlighten other parents too."

He backtraced it.  Pretty soon he will have the cyberpolice on it and the consequences will never be the same.   

[imidis]

I think sometimes we all did questionable stuff as a kid, it's amazing how most of us survive. I can remember silly things I tried when I was really young then in teenage years. Whether it's electricity, gun powder, gasoline, crocodiles, snakes. There is a lot of danger out there.

[karoru]

I just read about this yesterday.   The article talks about them finding a mircowave battery pack plugged into the outlet.  I assume the reporters just didn't know it was a transformer.  I am surprised it does not happen more often with how many people are trying to measure the output voltages of their MOTs with their DMMs.   

Good Lord, battery pack? I understand that not everyone knows what does transformer look like, but I really wonder if that reporter even saw a battery pack once in his life:D

It reminds me one reporter in Polish newspaper translating mercury (metal) to Merkury (which is a planet in Polish language, actual metal is "rt??"). Idea of planet being leaked from a manufacturing plant struck me as a bit bizarre.

[helius]

I can clearly remember exploring in my grandfathers workshop on his farm when I was maybe 9 years old and finding some live rounds buried in the back of a draw full of junk (small calibre, not shotgun).  I clamped one in a vice and had a hammer in my hand ready to hit the percussion cap when I started having strong doubts and decided it was a bad idea.  I shudder even thinking about it now, but I bet many young lads wouldn't have given it a second thought.

Firing a round outside of a chamber is pretty underwhelming. With no chamber pressure, the brass bulges out and the bullet just falls, without even igniting most of the powder. You could be injured by brass shards, but there is too little energy to create actual shrapnel.

[CJay]

I can clearly remember exploring in my grandfathers workshop on his farm when I was maybe 9 years old and finding some live rounds buried in the back of a draw full of junk (small calibre, not shotgun).  I clamped one in a vice and had a hammer in my hand ready to hit the percussion cap when I started having strong doubts and decided it was a bad idea.  I shudder even thinking about it now, but I bet many young lads wouldn't have given it a second thought.

Firing a round outside of a chamber is pretty underwhelming. With no chamber pressure, the brass bulges out and the bullet just falls, without even igniting most of the powder. You could be injured by brass shards, but there is too little energy to create actual shrapnel.

Oh I dunno, I was suspended from school for giving blank rounds to an idiot who thought it was a good idea to hit one with a brick, the shrapnel is, I believe, still lodged in the leg of a school friend over thirty years later.