How about the electrolytic capacitor of a camera flash circuit?
Knowing that they could deliver a nasty shock, I discharged one once by shorting the terminals with a screw driver.
The sound of the spark, and the scorch mark left on the PCB and screw driver left me fearful of them.
Or was that caused by the knowledge that I had a friend who said he put one of those capacitors in a highlighter, thereby making a makeshift, single-use, "shelf-unstable" taser?
Many moons ago I worked at a computer service shop that also repaired CRTs. Once, as a practical joke, someone asked me to hold a lead... Which was live with around 4kV. Wasn't pleasant experience.
You probably saw the tool used. A long flat blade screwdriver with a wire wrapped around it and on the other end an alligator clip chassis ground wire. It's used to pry up and remove the high voltage lead and when doing so you'd hear a loud snap!
I opened quite a few, and I wonder if they have bleeder resistors around the tube..
it's also interesting to witness a bit glass thing acting like a capacitor
ps: for long I wanted to make a discharge rod but never finished it
Re:Teardown of a PC Power Supply
by userbinator on Sunday May 23, 2021 @05:15PM
(#27258662)
it's also interesting to witness a bit glass thing acting like a capacitor
The very first capacitors were glass jars:
Seriously thought electrolytic capacitors need to be respected but not feared.