Urban Legends...how bizarre can they get?

[Princess]

Urban legend

n.

An apocryphal story involving incidents of the recent past, often including elements of humor and horror, that spreads quickly and is popularly believed to be true.

Inspired by the debate between Bruce and Niranahm on whether or not you can get shocked from peeing on an electric fence.

Did a bit of googling and here's what I came up with -

For: (Source: snopes.com)

It's not likely to be true, because despite appearances urine is not a solid stream. A urine "stream" is actually lots of little droplets that are not connected to each other.

Because of this, despite the salt and liquid content, urine is a piss-poor conductor of electricity whilst being eliminated from the body.

Against:

(Source: Mythbusters.com. The case study involved peeing on te third rail of a subway but the basic concept is the same)

Myth: Peeing on the electrified third rail of a subway train will give enough of a shock to kill you.

Experts: Rob Lobenstein, NYC Transit, Heather Joseph-Witham

Adam and Jamie construct a ?person? using a skeleton (complete with body bag) and ballistics gel. They determine the electrical resistance of urine to be 10,000 ohms. This can carry a charge of 65 milliamps - enough to give you a heart attack! This part of the myth is true. They build a ?bladder? using a whoopee cushion for pressure.

Adam: ?I don?t let gravity do my trick!?

Jamie: ? Where?s the wee bottle? I have to go.?

At the rail yard, they hook up a short section of track to a 650-volt transformer. The first try is on dry ground, with rubber-soled shoes on the dummy. Nothing happens. On the second try, they wet the shoes, but still nothing. On the third try, no shoes and wet ground, no response. But wait! The ground becomes active with electricity! They have to wait until the ground is safe gain. On the fourth try, they use a larger stream of urine, and raise the rail closer to the body. This time, it works!

Adam: ?Do not grab the third rail from six inches away and *#%&! On it!

Conviced either way? I've always been curious about weird urban legends and their explanations... :roll:

[frankenburner2]

I shall repeat my previous dare....neah...double dare....to anyone who wishes to run their own experiment using their own "equipement"...go on...I dare ya!

[frits]

i still prefer toilet or tree

[frankenburner2]

Neighborhood dogs kept knocking over our trash cans. Remember that all trash cans were metal at this time. My dad always made me clean up the mess, and like all children, I was not at all happy when I had to work. This happened many times during the summer when I was twelve years old. I finally decided to put an end to the problem. I made my own electric fence charger out of a car spark coil, a car turn signal flasher, and a television transformer. I wired the filament winding that powered the TV's vacuum tubes to the flasher, which turned the cars spark coil on and off. I hooked the outside of the spark coil to a metal fence post and hooked the high voltage to the trash cans, which I set on glass jars. I then sat back and waited for the fun to begin. It wasn't long before a dog came to check out the trash cans.

Dogs love to mark their territory by peeing on things, and that is exactly what this dog did. He hiked his leg, and as soon as the pee hit the can he started howling. He then ran away as fast as he could. He and I both learned that pee has salt in it, and salt makes water a good conductor of electricity.

respect!

[Niranahm]

An electric fence has far lower voltage than a live rail so peeing on it is not so dangerous. I remember seeing some research on this subject a few years ago and the conculsion was that no-one had ever encountered serious problems peeing on an electric fence.

In practice the pee-er would be wearing rubber soled shoes and if not, he wouldn't standing close enough for a proper steady stream (unlike the dog, unlike the dummy in the mythbusters test where the stream was steady).

Mythbusters is fun but those guys don't have a very rigorous approach. And BTW I have peed on electic cattle fences in Ireland -- nothing happened.

Re the yellow snow myth, oh, yeah I forgot that the snow could of course be radioactive. Yup radioacitivity turns snow yellow. Guess there's no point in me arguing logically with someone that knowledgeable...

I suppose the main point about the snow tip is that it's useless because no-one would intentionally eat yellow snow, would they?

BTW, that was a joke about English teachers and tipping. Y'see English teachers don't/can't give robbie35 sized tips because they don;t earn that much and here we had an English teacher giving bad tips of another type. Geddit? Oh why bother explaining on TF...

Ex-English Teacher

[Princess]

Weeeeeelllll....seeing as I would never pee on an electric fence, even if my plumbing allowed me to experiment...I was hoping that one of you guys would be brave enuff. I hate unanswered questions and none of the cases here...for or against has convinced me to take a side.

[condotown]

It happened to my dad when I was a kid and we were out deer hunting. He peed on an electrified fence keeping cows in a field. He shouted and cursed himself for being so stupid and never did it again. Needless to say, I took his word for it that he wasn't joking.