US teen cuffed for disposable camera 'Taser'

Jeremiah Dunn is clearly an idiot.

You cannot be "demobilized" by an electric shock this weak.

My younger brother helpfully introduced me to the delights of opening up a disposable camera many years ago by shocking me in the exact same way, and unlike a police taser device, I did not collapse to ground, convulse, risk a heart failure and piss my pants.

But it's ok for the police to use tasers, that's just fine.

In other news..

"Bricklayer charged with posession of an offensive weapon after he was seen holding a brick. A local police officer explained 'you could quite easily hit someone over the head with a brick' "

demobilizing

demobilizing - isn't that what happens when you're discharged from the forces?

2nd ammendment

So, let's see if I understand this? Carrying a broken snappy-snaps camera is an imprisonable offence, but the right to carry around fully-automatic machine guns is protected by the constitution?

Stooopid Americans.

"an electronic demobilizing device" I think not...

Quote "an electronic demobilizing device"

FFS it's not an electronic demobilizing device, it is an unmodified disposable camera!

If there was a sticker on the back saying danger of electrocution do not open, I'd understand.

Are the police willing to ruin this kids life when all he was doing was showing an active scientific interest in a readily available camera... oh and being a normal teenage plonker like we all once were! (Or at least most of us)

Operation

I suppose you would be on dodgy ground bringing in 'Operation' on the last day of term as well...

merkins....

Oh FFS ! Anyone with a 6rd grade or higher science education should realize that that's how camera flashes work... Take a condensator, charge it, release stored electricity in a burst to achieve flash. But noooo... Cameras are now considered dangerous weapons ! How long before they're banned inflight ? (it may already be the case, it's been a while since I flew to the biggest prison in the world)

Next step : "a man who's been hit by lightning is suing the US meteorological office for not having been given sufficient advance warning, and also for the fact that 'dat lighting think hurt, dangit ! it should of been outlawed by the guvmint !'. US congress is considering banning low pressure areas and threatening-looking clouds in the interests of national security."

B. Franklin is probably rolling in his grave (quick, strap a generator to him and use it to shock some sense into the bloody US of A !)

Digital camera?

Remember, fingers can take your eyes out too!

The rewards for an inquisitive mind

In the land of the free.

The real crime is

that the boy adapted the camera himself. It wasn't produced by a commercial organisation which charges huge sums of money and pays taxes to Good Ole George.

If he'd been "United Shockers, Inc." under contract to the military or police it wouldn't have mattered how many people he'd rendered unable to be mobile !!

Mines the cynical jacket with the upturned collars

I wonder if they should arrest all A-Level Physics students..

because I (very painfully) remeber the lesson where we built our own capacitors. Two 1'x1' metal plates, and about 3000V across them. Now that COULD give a real shock.

It’s a good job law enforcement wasn’t so stupid when I was young

... because my friends and I would have been shipped off for a long holiday in Cuba for some of the stuff we made in our extra-circular science and technology studies!

Thumbs up for making a Taser from a disposable camera. Well done kid.

That's it...

.. penalise an inquisitive pupil for finding out for himself how things work..

Good job Sir Isaac Newton didn't go to that school...

Copper Dunn - you are a considerable cretin! Leave teaching to the professionals..

You must be joking...

What about all the commercially available toys and games that do just that...!?

http://www.gadgetshop.com/Gadgets/GadgetGames/ElectricShockingGames.jsp

Hey, 20 years ago when I was at school I even made one myself using a Maplin DIY electronics kit!

Here you go.....

All the instructions you need to build three different versions:-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/101-Spy-Gadgets-Evil-Genius/dp/0071468943/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207305375&sr=8-1

Projects 82-84.

warning

Actually most disposable cameras do have a little warning printed onto the plastic about electric shock risk. but it is far too low to damage anyone.

Our physics teacher actively encouraged it, taking apart a camera and let us feel the shock (volunteered of course). We also made a back emf cattleprod for my Alevel physics project, unfortunately the only voltmeter the school had was too slow to register so we didn't believe it was working. kzzrrrt it was.

Nowadays a teacher like this would probably be fired for making science too much fun.

He should be charged under DMCA

He should be charged under DMCA. He used a device in a way the manufacturer did not intended. He *openend* the disposable camera and he had a look inside. It is disposable, you are supposed to dispose of it, not to reuse. Make more garbage, the planet needs it.

Please remember

a) That this incident involves the school authorities and the police. Neither of these groups user common sense, they use the rules. And if the rule state that 'an electronic device, capable of giving a shock' is a weapon, then he's just broken the law. "Step inside the cell Kid, and say hello to Bubba"

b) This happened within the USA. Land of the constrained, and policed.

Paris, cos she knows all about flashes and flashing.

Let the blood run free.

I wonder what they would have done to my mate and I sitting in class; me holding a strip of paper by finger and thumb at each end, he hacking it in half with a stanley knife until, inevitably, the paper got so short that he hacked into a finger instead. We were far more worried about trying to hide the ensuing torrent of blood than the 'knifing'. Happy days.

Re: In other news..

A large number of men have been charged with Indecent Exposure. As the policewoman explained: "They all have the equipment. Sooner or later they would have exposed them. We stopped them before this happened. It's really disgusting how men are allowed to go around and don't have to wear proper restraints."

I'm still wearing my flasher mac. Here, take a look.

not so silly

your average disposable camera containing a 330uf 330v photo flash capacitor packs just under 18 joules of energy, thats sufficient to cause temporary paralysis of the extremities (definatly an arm - speaking from experience here) and sufficient to trigger cardiac arrest or seizures in sensitive individuals (and possibily non sensitive individuals depending where on the body the shock is delivered)

for comparison the average BOFH cattle prod packs only 2-3 joules (though id guess THE BOFH's cattle prod packs a lot more...)

finally it is generally accepted that 50 joules is a lethal shock energy to humans so youd only have to bodge 2 more capacitors into the camera to have a lethal weapon

AC

well done lad, sign him up

Although there is a seriousness about this. I have myself made a tazer from a disposable camera with a flash after reading about it. I think that this lad has shown great intelligence and although misguided, it still a brilliant use of science to help his situation.

I accidentally zapped myself with my home made tazer and they are quite harmless, painful but harmless (actually 2 friends hurt themselves laughing when I stunned myself but this doesnt count)

Electrocution

Certainly gives a bit of a poke, but nothing I would consider dangerous (even when fully charged). That said, as a child I once put 240v mains through my arse.

I now work in IT...go figure.

Electrickery?

Haughwout? Electrickery? It's all a bit Harry Potter isn't it?

Stupid

I remember doing this at school all the time with my camera. It's just that the flash charges up in a buffer and if you touch a certain bit inside it discharges into your hand.

Doesn't "immobilize" in any way, and is probably much weaker than an electric fence that you are legally allowed to have around any property you own.

Another overreaction by the left wingers in the country.

@AC and @ Jon

Do you know anything about electricity and electronics?

Far from being "weak" ~300Vdc across a 200-400uF flash cap CAN be really nasty stuff - easily as bad as a 230Vac mains shock - it's more or less the same voltage. The effective resistance of the cap is easily low enough to hold its voltage when under 100mA load (10x safe limit); in fact they're good for many amps (that's how you get the powerful flash). Sure there's not enough energy to turn a victim into toast but an elderly person may well remain permanently 'demobilised'.

PS: I've designed many a switching power supply and have numerous patents in electronic design.

@all

This is about the stupidest thing I have ever heard, no wonder the science scores in the US are dropping faster than the housing market. I wonder how much Jail time I should get for the little boxes I used to make in school?? They were powered by 5 9V batteries that charged about 6 5000mf caps at about 3kv. I would switch them on leave them sitting (and humming) and just wait for someone to try to pick it up. Heck, we used to have contests to see who could hold on to them the longest. Fun stuff. Sure, we used to get into trouble for that kind of stuff, a stern lecture from the dean, but jail time for weapons, gimme a break.

Piezo Electric Lighters..

In my day's at school, we'd take these apart, come up close to the unsuspecting and give them a jolt.

Mines the one with the arrows on it. I'm expecting the boys in blue round any time!

Officer Barney Fife in search of a crime

I know the kid. Take a look at the video of the Dad "shocking" himself. He isn't mimicking "THE SHOCK", he is actually doing this. Every media outlet did not choose to show this demonstration. He opens the camera, pushes the button to activate the flash and shockingly touches the camera. He didn't fall or become immobilized. Sad thing that the offense (now being charged as a felony) races across the internet and news channels "in a flash", but his exoneration will not. Why don't you all here who know something about basic high school science email the High School that choose to bring in an officer to trouble shoot this issue instead of a science teacher. Presumably they had a science teacher in the building ... well considering what happened maybe not! Morgan High School, Clinton Connecticut USA. Help this Honor student regain his honor.

Fire in the hole!

If that officer was anywhere near my school back in the day he would be diving for cover and calling in special forces assistance and most of the school sent to Gitmo as we had an operational Scud missile years before Iraq ever did.

Ridiculous.

God I remember pulling apart an old crank-handle phone on my grandparents farm and taking the bell generator to school. I had a length of twisted pair wire and a trailing two-prong plug attached to the terminals with the specific intent of fun and mayhem zapping other students with a 50VAC jolt (I forget the actual current output, but it sure kicked like a horse!). It took a team of 2 to operate - one to sneak up unsuspecting victims and press the prongs of the plug on bare flesh - the other to hold the generator (which was small enough to hold in one hand) and crank the handle like mad at the right moment.

Harmless fun, but imagine doing that these days ...

Actually now I think about it - once we were done with that fun, the powerful magnets were put to amusing (at least to a schoolboy) use erasing 5 1/4 inch floppy disks, which were a quite new thing at the time :-)