Re: Static electricity and keyboard freeze????

William C. Mead (wcm@roadrunner.com)
Mon, 4 Dec 1995 20:46:19 EST

Static electricity can be a real pain. If it is in your locale
or lab, you might consider putting a separately grounded aluminum
bar on the tabletop in front of the keyboard. If you or your
students touch the bar before touching the keyboard, you'll have
many fewer static-induced crashes. Further, if you want to really
engineer the thing, there might be a way of providing a discharge
surface that doesn't zap you when you touch it-- perhaps a resitor
of 10k- to 1 M-ohm in series between each discharge bar and the
common ground wire:

separate bars in front of each computer:
_____ _____ _____ _____
| | | |
\ \ \ \
/ / / / Separate resistors (optional)
\ \ \ \
____|________|________|________| Common ground bus

The resistors also offer a safety feature: with 10k or more, there
is negligible danger that someone might get shocked by getting
between the ground and a hot piece of wiring or equipment.
The larger the resistance used, the longer one must touch the
bar to get discharged.

If this all sounds too involved, maybe your problem with static isn't
so bad after all! People in an intermediate level of pain can discharge
using any metal desk, chair, or file cabinet.

William C. Mead <>
wcm@ansr.com /\
/ \
Visit Adaptive Network Solutions Research, Inc. /____\
on the web at http://www.ansr.com/ansr ! ||

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