ac body voltage

[Freq Band]

Simple question....
multimeter is set on AC volts...
when grasping one lead (bare finger), often up to 3v is read.
What is the source for the voltage reading ?....what is the meter reading ?

 

[JohnRoberts]

There are electrostatic and magnetic fields anywhere mains power is in use. This is why we use shielded wire and grounded metal chassis for low noise products. Your body is like an antenna picking up noise. If you touch an audio input the same way, you will hear a loud noise.

JR

 

[thermionic]

It's either that or my body oscillates at 50Hz 

 

[zebra50]

Justin - if we knew your mass and your length we could calculate it.

Oh, and your tension too, so if you're wound tight you should oscillate faster.

 

[MagnetoSound]

Humans don't oscillate, they vacillate.

Sounds the same, though  ;D

 

[PRR]

There's 120V in your walls, falling-off to zero at infinity.

You appear to be standing 3/120th of the way from wall-wire to infinity. More-or-less.

Aside from inverse-square fall-off, and the fact that average wall-wire potential is the average of 120V and near-zero V, there's meter loading effects. You might really be at 4VAC before the meter touches you. You, in dry sneakers, are a few hundred pFd to the rest of the world, particularly the wall-wires. The meter is probably a 10Meg resistance. So the R-C coupling depends on frequency (if you had 400Hz 120V power you'd get a higher reading). You don't say where the other lead is... hard-ground or laying loose. So you haven't proved anything exactly. Except that you DO get AC voltages on objects in a room with AC in the walls. (Otherwise we'd do all our audio unshielded.)

 

[Freq Band]

Thank you everyone.....you confirmed my suspicions.
The opposite end of the lead was "not" connected to ground. (floating)
Though if connected to ground, the results were a slightly higher voltage.

I'll admit.....the reason I was asking was twofold....
1) to understand the readings.
2) to reply to certain people (elsewhere on the web) who believe "harmful" emf energy is flowing through their body. Many of these people believe that this is somehow harmful....and also that by"grounding" themselves in a lightly rich EFM environment, is somehow beneficial. 
Many responses said that by grounding themselves. they were actually inviting frequencies to "flow through their bodies", and is the opposite method to their goal.

 

[CJ]

George Carlin    Take a Chance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnmMNdiCz_s

 

[PRR]

> "harmful" emf energy is flowing through their body.

If you are not grounded (we rarely are), then no (hardly-any) energy flows through the body.

Grounding gives a lower voltage but more current.

Until we can define these "harmful" effects I don't see how we can know which is better.

My suspicion is that typical domestic power-frequency fields are utterly harmless; at least do less "harm" than barometric (air) pressure changes which go up and down all the time (and do trigger my headaches).