MovieChat Forums > The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010) Discussion > The Tesla cage scene

The Tesla cage scene

posted 13 years ago by ranger001
9 replies | jump to latest

OK now I know I'm a geek for even asking this but its sorta bugging me. The scene where he asks Becky to join him in the cage and hold on to the bar seems wrong.
I have seen other Tesla cages used in other movies shows etc and the idea of the cage is not to touch any metal because the voltage would be conducted around the person and into the cage so wouldn't touching some part of the cage be a very bad thing?

Sept. 24 journal entry 1 I'm Liz Parker and 5 days ago I died, after that things got really weird

[–] 13 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ranger001 13 years ago

not exactly the answer i was looking for but thanks at least to someone finally answering it

Sept. 24 journal entry 1 I'm Liz Parker and 5 days ago I died, after that things got really weird

[–] Navin_R_Johnson 13 years ago

ranger, you are correct, they would not need to hold on to any iron bar. There is really no reason for a modern day physics student to construct a Tesla coil, unless they were making it for demonstration purposes. There was no reason for them to be in a cage.

ingke86 is wrong, he is referring to a Van Der Graaf generator.

[–] Malamute26 13 years ago

voltage can run through your body and you don't need alot of voltage to make a pretty light show, when you get to the 40,000 voltage area, your dead, half that, its probably not recommended crossing through your body, but to create a light show to the extent what they did, would need a lot of voltage especially since they were not in a vacuum, if this was done in real life, they would be dead in my opinion, you need to get an electrical engineer on here to rip this scene apart articulately

[–] Nojaa 13 years ago

Correct you are, Malamute. Even at extremely low currents, a very high voltage can be enough to kill you. Given the size of the room and the distance between conductors, even at a high frequency a significant amount of voltage would be required, possibly around 50-100 kilovolts; a Faraday cage would be required.

You also have to consider the fact that the occupants were standing inside a very large transformer, the lab likely being surrounded by a huge primary winding of perhaps 5 to 10 turns of 4- or 6-gauge wire. To get the extremely high voltages required, the secondary winding would probably consist of at least 50,000 turns of 20-gauge wire.

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[–] meteor_storm 12 years ago

I thought it was amperage that killed, not voltage. But what do I know

tinyurl.com/slurrrpy

[–] SpiltPersonality 11 years ago

more than a lot...

[–] jeffandsarah-1 9 years ago

Old saying.
It's the volts that thrill but the amps that kill.
Faraday cage, would not have mattered how many volts, 10 amps on the other hand!

[–] Nojaa 13 years ago

I suspect that was just a script device (prop). If the cage is properly grounded, which a Faraday cage (the actual term for the cage) would be, the high-frequency currents will be harmlessly directed around the cage. Assuming the floor of the cage and the bar are insulated from the cage itself and/or the occupants are wearing rubber- or cork-soled shoes, they should be properly protected. The most someone would experience, if any, is a slight static charge from the surrounding current field, such as what you might experience when touching a metal doorknob after dragging your feet across a carpet.

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