Floyd said:
That does seem to be a reasonable assumption though, right?
Do you know any women _*dumb*_ enough to do that?
I've read some of Dalziel's papers from the experiments he did at
Berkeley that pretty much established the "standard" values for things
like let-go current. This is the guy who invented the GFCI, among other
things. His experiments involved having students hold an energized wire,
then attempt to let go, and the range of values he published have been
used ever since in electrical safety work. He was able to get the male
subjects to make it a competition, so they really tried hard and would
put up with extreme pain to show that they could handle a stronger shock
than the next guy. This gave him good data on let-go currents for men,
at least for men of grad-student age. He complained that he couldn't get
as good data for women, because they weren't interested in outdoing each
other, and would do one or two tests, then decide enough was enough.
His photos of the expressions and body contortions the tests put his
subjects into make it clear that you don't ever want to experience a
shock anywhere close to let-go current.
The standard assumptions for electrical safety still show lower let-go
currents for women than men, and it's still not known whether women
really are more likely to freeze onto a live conductor, or whether
Dalziel just proved that women are smarter than men.
73,
JohnW
. Salt
