Everything Is A Little Zappy - Part II

It has become common knowledge at the church that you do NOT touch anything electrical at the church unless you are wearing (insulating) sandals--especially the microphones. The problem stems from the fact that nothing is grounded. I originally thought that was OK because all the floors are ceramic tile, and ceramic is not conductive (it is in fact a very good insulator). But apparently the grout between the tiles and the finishing coating on the tiles IS conductive. Hence you get zapped when you touch the metal part of the microphone if you have bare feet.

So I was curious to know just how much electricity was buzzing through my system when I touched some of the equipment the other day (I was wearing sandals but they were wet so I got zapped). I took my multimeter, I attached one probe to the "grounded" part of the microphone, and I touched the other probe to the grout between the tiles: 150 VOLTS! That's a lot of volts. OK, putting things into perspective: Electrical outlets in Canada are only 120V. No wonder it hurt.

A technical side note: The voltage on the microphone seems to be enough to shock people but it is very low current (I measured it)--and it's the current that kills you. Even 12V can be lethal in the right conditions. So please don't feel at liberty to go out and stick your finger into empty light sockets just because over here we're getting zapped by microphones that carry a higher voltage.