Human Body Frequency

[DavidUK]

To help improve my understading of electronics, I bought an oscilloscope on eBay. In playing around with it, I have found that, if I touch the probe onto my skin, a waveform is diplayed that is at 50 Hz (i.e. mains frequency). If I wrap my hand around the mains lead, the magnitude of the signal increases. My children produce similar waveforms but with much lower magnitudes.

 

It seems to me that the human body must act as an inductor responding to the fluctuating magnetic field produced by the house wiring.

 

Anyone out there know anything about this, please?

[robojoos]

i read around and this is probably due to the electrochemical impulses of ur nerves. place it on a muscle and move the muscle and see if the frequency changes. the same thing kind of works with a voltmeter.

[ezapf]

     You got it David. It is your body absorbing some of the surrounding electrical field.

     If you did the same experiment in the US, you would see a 60 Hz signal. Most countries use either a 50 Hz or 60 Hz as the mains frequency because they are in a range which is not harmful to the human body.

[DavidUK]

I don't think it's electrochemical impulses, robojoos, because the frequency is always 50 Hz. And, ezapf: I do wonder whether this does do some harm to us. We have minute electrical pulses in our nervous systems that I could imagine being disturbed by this fluctuating electric field.

 

Anyway, thanks to both for your replies.

[mynameispaul]

I don't have an answer for you but your theory makes sense.

I watched a documentry on Tesla. It stated that each person puts of a certain frequency which if you tuned electrical items (ie a light bulb) to that frequency they would work. You may want to look into his works.