True enough, Matt, but if a car battery could kill, think of how many weekend mechanics we'd find dead next to their cars.
...burning baby fish swimming all round your head.
Drusilla ,'Conversations with Dead People'
Lost: OMGWTF POLAR BEAR
[NAFDA] This is where we talk about the show! Anything that's aired in the US (including promos) is fair game. No spoilers though -- if you post one by accident, an admin will delete it.
DXMachina - Nov 19, 2004 8:27:35 am PST #2918 of 10000
You always do this. We get tipsy, and you take advantage of my love of the scientific method.
Beverly - Nov 19, 2004 8:38:24 am PST #2919 of 10000
Days shrink and grow cold, sunlight through leaves is my song. Winter is long.
The weird part is how the car battery still has a charge after 16 years
It was the cable running into the ocean! She--or they, before they all went nuts and she ate them--rigged an underwater generator powered by the movement of the waves!
I remember reading something a few years ago about using the ocean's currents to create low levels of electricity. So, could the cable running from the ocean to Danielle's lair be generating electricty?
Or, what lunda said.
Or, there's always the submarine theory.
DXMachina - Nov 19, 2004 9:17:41 am PST #2920 of 10000
You always do this. We get tipsy, and you take advantage of my love of the scientific method.
It was the cable running into the ocean!
Except that when Sayid examined it it looked remarkably like a mooring cable or other rope-like mechanical cable. Also, even if it was once rigged to carry electricity, that hole in the sheathing right at the mean high tide mark will prevent it from working pretty effectively. Sea water is a wonderful electrolyte.
Beverly - Nov 19, 2004 9:19:48 am PST #2921 of 10000
Days shrink and grow cold, sunlight through leaves is my song. Winter is long.
that hole in the sheathing right at the mean high tide mark will prevent it from working
Right. Back to the submarine theory.
DCJensen - Nov 19, 2004 9:20:27 am PST #2922 of 10000
All is well that ends in pizza.
I had a whole thing written up, but I've been surpassed by others, so I'll piece in some of it with quotes from ya'll, as reinforcement.
A car battery is only 12 volts, so I think it's unlikely that electrocution is a worry. Go wild.
For the record, it's not the voltage but the amperage that you have to watch out for.
Exactly. Car batteries, despite being used to torture people in the movies or on TV have neither the amperage nor the voltage to shock the human body. Grab the two terminals some time. Oh you can cause a spark by shorting, even weld with two jumper cables and a cheap metal coat hanger, but shock as much as in the movies? not so much.
You would need some sort of capacitor to build up the amperage and discharge. Even then it would not be continious.
On the other hand, if it were being used with something to convert the stored power, you might have luck.
No, the easiest explaination is that she has some sort of power generating device somewhere. Something that can keep that signal going for 16 years.
It was the cable running into the ocean! She--or they, before they all went nuts and she ate them--rigged an underwater generator powered by the movement of the waves!
Yes, that cable is significant, or they wouln't have had it looking so intact. I noticed it had a steel cable wrapped around the insulated one, which is one of the ways of reinforcing the strength of important lines.
I don't know if it's nuclear, though. Someone mentioned that, above.
I remember reading something a few years ago about using the ocean's currents to create low levels of electricity. So, could the cable running from the ocean to Danielle's lair be generating electricty?
There are indeed devices, maybe only in theory, that generate energy harnessing the ocean wave motion, but as was mentioned above, it's unlikely. But then so are car (or boat) batteries.
DCJensen - Nov 19, 2004 9:23:21 am PST #2923 of 10000
All is well that ends in pizza.
Oh the reason I don't think it's nuclear is that 16 years is a long time for a nuclear power plant, even in a sub, to run unmanned.
DCJensen - Nov 19, 2004 9:27:19 am PST #2924 of 10000
All is well that ends in pizza.
Nearwave Oscillating Water Column Generator: [link]
The pneumatic power of the Oscillating Water Column (OWC) is converted to electricity by a Wells turbo generator and specially designed induction generators. Power is brought ashore by subsea cable.
alienprayer - Nov 19, 2004 9:39:58 am PST #2925 of 10000
Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. -Bierce
With the tear in the cable and exposed steel on the beach, I doubt the cable is powered, at least now. I'm sticking with my theory that the survivors of the shipwreck used the cable as an aid to get back to the ship.
Did they make it clear how many survived the shipwreck? I can't remember any numbers other than 16 years.
DXMachina - Nov 19, 2004 9:47:46 am PST #2926 of 10000
You always do this. We get tipsy, and you take advantage of my love of the scientific method.
You would need some sort of capacitor to build up the amperage and discharge. Even then it would not be continious.
I think the easiest thing to use would be an automobile ignition coil. Hook that up to your 12 V battery, and now you're talking potential. So to speak. (I once accidently brushed my hand up against the ignition coil of my old Plymouth during a rain storm. Not pleasant.)
TomW - Nov 19, 2004 10:00:53 am PST #2927 of 10000
"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
"So where did that polar bear come from, anyway?"
"Screw the polar bear, I want to know what that old Plymouth is doing on the island. Ow! Stop shocking me!"
"Non."