Static electricity games
Posted by admin, Wed May 31 15:31:49 UTC 2006
Watching some TV tonight, I was reminded about a weird problem I used to have…
In my previous home, a nice townhouse in the inner city of Calgary, I had a weird static electricity problem. By weird, I mean that no one and I mean no one, would ever believe me when I told them about it. Thankfully, one day after my husband (then boyfriend) moved in, it happened to him as well, so at least one person believed me.
So, here’s the scoop. The living room/dining room floor was covered in carpet. Nothing strange, just builder grade pile carpet. The couch was placed under the front window, about as far away from the kitchen as you could get. In the winter (which is very dry in Calgary), I could get significant static build-up as I walked across the living room from the couch toward the kitchen. The fun part would happen as I crossed over from the carpet to the linoleum in the kitchen. Occasionally, my foot would land directly on the metal threshold strip. ZAP! There was a truely impressive spark/shock generated when this happened. But that’s not all that happened (or else it wouldn’t be weird, would it?). As I was exclaiming “Yikes!” from the shock, I noticed that the TV muted simultaneously. Kinda weird, but it gets weirder still. In addition to the TV muting, the motion sensor light on my back deck would light up.
To recap… static zap.. TV mute.. motion sensor light turns on. Weird, eh? If this happened once, or twice, I would have forgotten about it. But it was REPEATABLE. As long as I could generate static on that carpet, I could make the TV mute and the motion sensor light go on. And so could my husband.
There must have been some really interesting electrical wiring in that place.