6 ms·

Normal burns are usually localized to the surface of your skin. RF burns conduct all the way through your tissue, heating from the inside. It's a much deeper, m

• jacquesm 11y ago
  Unfortunately I wasn't able to avoid the experience, I hit the screw on a silver trimmer in an end stage while looking at another one. Nasty little burn with dead tissue in the center and living tissue all around it. 35 years later it is still there, I don't expect that it will ever properly heal, it's a dead bit in the middle of a living finger.
  • scruple 11y ago
    Yep, I have a RF burns on 2 of my finger tips that I sustained between 5 and 10 years ago... They are dead little bits of flesh. Discolored a deep yellow, there is no feeling left and they feel, I guess I'd describe it as, quasi-numb when touched. I was an embedded engineer at an RF company and it sort of comes with the territory. We had technicians who had lasted 4+ decades in RF (same company, actually) with scars to show for it. Same story, mostly on their fingers from accidentally hitting hot spots.
    • HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
      What was the power level? We do a lot of RF stuff here and it would be good to know that we're safe.
      • jacquesm 11y ago
        I got mine at about 100W from a Tronser trimmer.
      • scruple 11y ago
        It really depends on a lot of different factors. Single-digit Watt levels can burn you under the right conditions, though obviously it wouldn't be as severe as at higher power levels. I was burned by ~300W in the specific cases I mentioned. I think it probably classifies as second-degree burns and (because I was young and dumb) I never did anything to help prevent scarring or heal the tissue besides basic first-aid. Safety first, everything else is secondary.
• derefr 11y ago
  You mean they conduct from the entry-point to ground, similar to a lightning strike or electrical burn? Or is this more like a radiation burn? Actually, now that I think about it, it'd actually be most similar to how a microwave heats meat, wouldn't it? Microwaves being within the RF part of the EM spectrum and all. (Though not quite the same, given the lack of dipole interaction with water molecules outside of the particular part of the spectrum microwaves sit on.)
  • 50CNT 11y ago
    That reminds me of an urban legend regarding microwaves, which doesn't seem entirely infeasible. It involves a man working at a small fast food stand, who worked next to his microwave. Now his microwave was used often, and it had a small hole in the metal screen allowing microwave radiation to leak out. The man slowly starts to feel abdominal pains after a while, goes to his doctor, who diagnoses it as liver problems and recommends drinking less. A couple of months later, the man has died, and the autopsy reveals that parts of his liver were cooked. I was told this story by my grandmother to prevent me from watching food cook in the microwave. That and cataracts, which can also be caused by heating up things that shouldn't be heated.
    • runarb 11y ago
      There is also the story of Anatoli Bugorski. He was debugging the worlds most powerful particle accelerator when he managed to look into the beam: http://www.strangerdimensions.com/2014/01/13/anatoli-bugorski-man-survived-proton-beam/ http://www.strangerdimensions.com/2014/01/13/anatoli-bugorsk...
      • kuschku 11y ago
        And he’s become part of popular culture due to the annual satirical year in review panel at the C3 congress giving out the fictional "Anatoli Bugorski Award for applied nuclear safety".
    • StavrosK 11y ago
      That doesn't sound very feasible. Microwaves work by standing waves, the magnetron doesn't just cook things when outside the oven.