Charged

The following is a true account of events of the morning of the 7th of September, 2007:

It was raining. Not heavily, but enough to require the use of an umbrella. I had just dropped the car off for it's 10,000km service and was walking to the train station to catch the 8:20am train to the city for another busy day at work. I don't usually catch the train from this station, but the car was being serviced nearby, so it was convenient. I walked up the stairs to the platform and stood in between a couple people behind the yellow line, umbrella extended above my head.

I was standing there for a couple minutes when I felt something sharp on the top of my head. I assumed that the metal stretcher had some sort of sharp spur and I ignored it. A minute later, I felt another sharp pain on another part of my head. I looked up at the inside of the umbrella and ran my fingers along the stretcher and searched for the sharp piece of metal. There wasn't one. Instead, no matter what bit of metal I touched, I got a shock. It wasn't an ordinary static shock that surprises you quickly then dissipates. Instead, it was a continuous shock. Each time I touched the metal, or even came within a few millimetres of the metal, I would feel the electricity and hear a sizzling sound.

This completely baffled yet intrigued me. Here I was, standing on an asphalt train platform getting an electric shock through my umbrella! I'm no physicist, but the only thing I could think to explain it was that the moisture in the air provided the perfect conditions to conduct the electricity from the high voltage overhead lines that power the trains into my umbrella and myself - completing the circuit through my feet into the platform. Sort of a mini-lightning. After I was satisfied with my reasoning, and satisfied that I wasn't going to get injured by the shock, I put the stretcher from the umbrella back on my head. I tried to hold it there as long as I could. Sort of testing my tolerance to the pain. I must say, it didn't hurt badly. More of a kind of painful tickle.

I hope to try this experiment again. I don't know if I need to stand in the same spot, or even the same train station. Only time will tell. And if the current drought in Brisbane continues, I could be waiting a while.