Crazy Static Electricity Incident!

[desolatordan]

You think it's real?

Frank Clewer, of the western Victorian city of Warrnambool, was wearing a synthetic nylon jacket and a woollen shirt when he went for a job interview.

As he walked into the building, the carpet ignited from the 40,000 volts of static electricity that had built up.

Mr Clewer said that after leaving the building, he scorched a piece of plastic in his car.

His clothes were measured by firemen as carrying an electrical charge of 40,000 volts, the Reuters news agency quoted Mr Barton as saying.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4252692.stm

[Kiriakos-GR]

40,000 volts

    measured by what ? 

News Papers , needs fancy titles , so to gain the public interest, and sell . 

[Ferroto]

Did he get the job?

[XynxNet]

Inventive methode to show the ignorants from human resources your sparkling personality. 

30-40kV static electricity is not unusal.
But the scorch marks, I don't know.
It is interesting, that the firemen had an kV-meter at hand. Even in my old physics departement, we had only a few of those.

[Simon]

sounds a bit far fetched to me, if he burnt the carpet it would have discharged him (before the coincidently well prepared fireman measured him) if he was making that much and close to the energy that makes things combust he should have burnt up himself ? really if this is true the guy has unlocked the secret of free power ! highly unlikely

[Zero999]

I'm not sure.

It's possible to ignite some highly flammable materials such as petrol and propane but not plastic so I doubt it's true.

[Simon]

having said that I do have a book on phenomenoms and one is "spontaneous human combustion" bit the incidents do not involve nylon clothing and are far weirder, some occuring many years ago