networks.com.au> 64f88f7d   
   XPost: misc.survivalism, alt.conspiracy, alt.fan.jennifer-lopez   
   XPost: alt.fan.asia-argento   
   From: usenet1@etiqa.co.uk   
      
   Terry Collins wrote:   
   > Martin wrote:   
   >   
   >>> and is highly volatile, and will go off   
   >>> at the slightest bit of static charge from a person merely walking on a   
   >>> carpet and accumulating a positive voltage charge. With a tiny current   
   >>> and discharge less than what the Microsoft workers normally handle   
   >>> slicone chips and other "high tech" easily damagable stuff with, you   
   >>> can set the whole thing off,   
   >   
   >> bollocks!   
   >   
   > You might care to explain your "bollocks"   
   > Evaporative flammable spirit being exposed to a spark will not light!   
   > Is that what you are saying.   
   >   
   > Seriously, if i can light metho with a spark from a battery, why will   
   > Teq not light?   
      
   The 'bollocks' was the stated amount of energy required to ignite   
   alcohol vapour. It is not smaller than the energy that can destroy chips   
   in a fab. Apart from which I wasn't aware Microsoft ran fabs.   
      
   You can find out a lot more about these things from Measurement   
   Technology http://www.mtl-inst.com/ (where i was chief engineer)   
      
   In fact you can allow sparks to be present in an explosive atmosphere so   
   long as the sparks are energy limited by (for example) a barrier. It's   
   one experiment we do to show the effect of a barrier, create sparks   
   inside an explosive atmosphere without the barrier and you get a nice   
   explosion, then switch the barrier in and it looks like the sparks are   
   not much different, but becuase they are energy limited the atmosphere   
   doesn't explode.   
      
   Your sparks from a battery are not energy limited, put it through a   
   barrier and you can still make sparks without igniting anything.   
      
   To ignite a hydrocarbon vapour takes about 3mJ in a static discharge, to   
   damage a chip in a fab an unexpected alpha particle can destroy a gate,   
   these have energies above about 4MeV which is about 10^-12 J   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)