Teaching Electrical Safety

DISCLAIMER





Geocaching Electricity Safety

I enjoy what I do. Throughout the school year I'll go from school to school in Edmonton, Alberta and teach indoor and outdoor electrical safety. Usually groups of kids consist of grades one to five. We'll usually present in a school gym in front of 100-300 kids.

I'll show them a cartoon on safety and stop it every 5 minutes to show them live examples of what's dangerous.
It seems to really connect for them and it's amazing on how much information they remember. This demo takes about 45 minutes.

Also, my work partner and I will demonstate at our shop or on the road an electrical safety demo for adults. We have a demonstration board with a live wire we energize to 4000 volts. Once we energize the wire we fry branches, kite-string and wieners. (It's amazing how many people don't know electicity will travel down kite-string, tree branches and wooden 2 by 4's when it's a high enough voltage) We'll show this demo to general contractors, crane and equipment operators, the fire department and other interested parties.

As we are going through this demo we talk about the fatalities and injuries we've investigated, the personal protective equipment and clothing we use, how much training and experience is required for our employees to be competant to work on our power lines, limits of approach to our lines and many other items.

In the last 8 minutes of the demo we show a "voluntary"slide show of pictures of people who have been injured by electricity. For some people these pictures are difficult to sit though as they are graphic. We give a lot of warning and explain that they may leave if they want to. As we show the pictures we explain what happened in that particular incident and also explain the lasting effects of the incident. These pictures hit our point across quite strongly. The whole demo takes about an hour.

Thanks for listening,

Johnnygeo