• rotopenguin@infosec.pub
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    1 year ago

    An AAAA cell has 200-350 mohms internal resistance. A 9v battery has 6 of them in series (many of them are literally that, others have their cells as a stack of plastic buckets). The nose ring is a short run of wire, it’s idunno a 0.2 ohm heater?

    I think the septum is going to get pretty toasty.

    https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/e96.pdf

    • enkers@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I just tested this (for science!) with a 9V battery and an iron nail of roughly nose-ring diameter. Both the nail and the battery get unpleasantly hot after several seconds. I don’t think they’d get hot enough to burn you, though. (Don’t take my word, though, please!) I believe the internal resistance of the battery does also increase with the temperature, so it effectively somewhat self regulates itself.

      Common nose ring materials like Titanium and Stainless Steel are 4× and 7× more resistant than iron, which means they should dissipate more power than the nail, and thus get hotter. I was calculating something around 3 milliohms for a titanium 16 gauge 10mm wire, and 0.7 milliohms for an iron wire.

      Regardless of material, at 1000 milliohms internal resistance, i think the battery itself is doing most of the heat dissipation. (But also over a much bigger surface area!)

        • enkers@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          About 10-20s, I left it on until it didn’t seem to be getting much hotter. I also didn’t want the battery to overheat and fail catastrophically. I think because the “wire” is such a large gauge, there’s not enough current for it to get seriously hot. In a foam cutter, you’re passing all that current through a much smaller cross-sectional area.

          Edit: just to confirm, I did a little math. A 10cm steel wire with a tenth of the diameter would have a resistance of 5 ohms. That means that instead of 1% of the total heat dissipating in the thick wire, 80% of the heat is dissipating in the wire in foam cutter’s case, and there’s more total resistance, so more heat dissipation as well.

          This is because:

          A = π r²

          R = ρ × L / A

          So resistance is proportional to the material resistivity (ρ), the length (L), and the inverse square of the radius (r⁻²). That is to say, decreasing the radius by a factor of 10 increases resistance by a factor of 100.

    • lone_faerie
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      1 year ago

      Well now I want to try this with my septum piercing and find out

  • Dave@lemmy.nz
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    1 year ago

    Would the person feel anything? Presumably the electricity would flow through the metal as path of least resistance?

      • 0ops@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I used to burn paper with a 9 volt and a paperclip. Good times

        • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Why would you spread incorrect information so confidently? You’re absolutely wrong. A 9 volt will get hot in a few seconds when shorted.

          • Agent641@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I used to put small coins on the terminals til they got super hot, then drop the coin on the desk in front of them. When they go to pick it up, it burns them. Peak comedy.

        • Melkath@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I mean, someone with a septum piercing could confirm this pretty fast.

          Pretty sure it would be nice and toasty inside 30 seconds.

    • SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      They prob wouldn’t get shocked but the ring and battery will get very hot very quick as there i pretty much no resistance wich means there is a lot of current flowing.

      Someone else in the comments claimed to have calculated a resistance of 0.2 ohms.

      I=U÷R

      9V ÷ 0.2Ω = 45A

      45 amps is a lot of current to flow through a nose ring. I don’t know how much that is in heat but i’d expect you to get burned from it

      • XTL@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        You won’t get more than a few mA out of an alkaline, but heat does build up. (Internal resistance)

        A NiMH on the other and can give over 10 amps. They’re a seriously risky thing to leave around loose metal bits. Or attached to thin wires.

    • mingistech@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No, 9v batteries have almost no shock to them. Put one on your tongue or lick your finger and touch the terminals. You’ll feel nothing.

      • rotopenguin@infosec.pub
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        1 year ago

        Dry skin is hundreds of thousands of ohms. Even wet skin has pretty good resistance. When you touch a 9v to your tongue, you’re starting to mess around with lower resistance flesh, it is definitely not a comfortable thing to do.

        The metal ring doesn’t do anything to move more electricity into your body, but it soaks every electron the battery can push and turns it into heat. Best I can figure it would amount to a few watts, which would be toasty if you were holding it between your fingers. The septum is a thin piece of flesh, I think it would sauté pretty quickly.

        • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Thank you, I appreciate the explanation. Being fairly physics ignorant I was wondering about that.

      • gandarf @startrek.website
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        1 year ago

        I mean, if you lick a 9v you definitely feel something. It’s not painful, but it’s not natural or pleasant either.

        • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          If those are separate pieces of metal embedded in the skin, they will feel something. If it’s just an incomplete ring, it will draw so much current that the battery voltage drops too low to feel anything but the heat.