Wonder I am still alive as I was an Electrician for half of that and burned myself dozens of times with up to 600v.
I was in grade 11 electronics class in 1981 and as a joke, the teacher held asked up a 400 volt capacitor and asked "Who wants to tutts the capacitor?"
(The teacher was Dutch and spoke with an accent.
)
I eagerly volunteered and the teacher let me do it.
I held the capacitor in one hand an touched it with the other.
My whole body convulsed but mostly my arms.
I touched it two more times to get a good feel for it and show the class.
One day the teacher set up a Jacob's Ladder using a 20,000 volt oil burning furnace igniter.
Watching the spark rise up got a little boring after a while, so we talked the teacher into Zapping stuff to see if we could start a fire.
Paper, pencil, pen,.. we could stop the spark from rising by holding it down with the pencil.
Then a student wanted to sacrifice his dill pickle to the experiment so the teacher plugged the igniter into either end of the pickle and fired it up.
(We used coat hangers on the igniter. We plugged the pickle in like roasting a weiner when you're camping.)
It was pretty cool!!
The spark shot through the pickle and there was an green glow that filled the classroom.
The whole classromm stunk of burnt crap and fried pickles.
I've got a bug zapper now to satisfy my cravings for excitement.
I remember investigating the Bell phone line at home trying to figure out the voltage but I didn't have a volt meter, so I just stuck my finger across the wiress and didn't feel anything so I stuck the wires on my tongue and it was just a little more spicy that a 9 volt battery (I'm sure everyone has liked a 9 volt battery)
After doing my voltage test a few times, the phone rang and I nearly blowed up my tongue
. Lol
I didn't know it at the time, but the dial tone on a telephone wire is about 10 volts, but it takes around 60 volts to ring the bell.
This is all that was available in those days, before they invented touch tone, and ALL phones were owned by Bell.
There was a guy in class that had a stolen phone at home and the teacher said that he's going to get caught.
The teacher said that the Bell dudes (Narks) would ring a phone number and check the current flow to see how many bells are ringing.
The student said "I know, we disconnected the bells".
So his contraband phone worked fine and he could hear the other phone in the house ringing.