Published on 12, July, 2020
This happened tonight and having done some limited experiments I've realised that I can do this but my wife can't.
Since I was a teenager I've known that if I run my finger lightly along an insulated electrical cable(*), I can feel the "brrrrr" of the electricity if it's plugged in to the mains. I can't feel it if my finger is held motionless on the cable.
Tonight, I touched my wife's foot when she was holding her iPad that was plugged into her charger and I felt the same effect.
We did a blind test where I closed my eyes, and from running my finger along her foot I could tell if she was holding her iPad or not,
We then swapped places, and she couldn't repeat what I did.
This got me thinking - is my sense of touch really *that* sensitive?
Anyone else experience this? I've read nothing about anyone else being able to sense this, but it never really occurred to me to look into it.
This isn't a vague "woo woo" "I can feel electricity" thing - it's verifiably an effect and a definite conscious experience - and give or take I could probably tell the frequency of the AC electricity if I touched cables with sufficiently different frequencies of AC (let's say 30, 50, 70 Hz).
(*) the bog-standard flex that is used on common household appliances - especially (going back a few decades) rubber-insulated ones - but PVC works almost equally well.
very impressive. My explanation would be that you are able to feel the electromagnetic field around a power line.
Have you done any experiments to see if you correctly can tell whether power is on or off, when you hold a cable?
Well it won't be dangerous an is a skill, which probably has very little place in the world other than amusement and interest
I can't tell if the power is on or off just by holding a cable, but can if I'm stroking it! :-).
I don't think it's the E-M field, because I have to be touching it (even a millimeter away and the affect disappears) whilst the E-M field will be of reasonable strength in the near vicinity of the cable & decreases gradually away from it. I also know that the effect disappears if I'm not adequately "earthed" - so it's something to do with voltage.
I must admit, I find this rather fascinating - though it's not something I've experienced myself (my super-sense seems to be that I'm a "living barometer" for air pressure. I don't count my super-hearing, as that more often just has me crawling up the walls!)
Your description makes me wonder whether it's something to do with earth loops - that there's maybe a static charge around the conductor, for which you complete the circuit, and in doing so, become a kind of aerial, picking up the local mains hum. I've never heard of this happening when a human is part of the circuit, but it's a well known problem for audio engineers, who go to great lengths to avoid multiple paths to earth in order to avoid this kind of electromagnetic "loop aerial" pickup.