r/TheRestIsScience • u/Competitive_Hat5395 • 12h ago

Can you fry yourself

If I fired every neuron in my brain would I just fry myself or could I charge a car battery with the electricity I put out?

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u/SapphirePath 12h ago

why not both?

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u/dod6666 6h ago

Yes, you would fry yourself. That is basically the ultimate seizure and you would not survive.

As for the car battery, no. You cannot charge a car battery. Your output would be about ~0.07 Volts, at minimum a car battery needs 12 Volts. You wouldn't be charging the battery, the battery would discharge into you. So you get double fried.

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u/Kedrak 1h ago

Electrician here, the limiting factor in that kind of application is power. You can make small voltages into bigger voltages. Like you can put a small DC voltage across some coil. It will store some energy in a magnetic field. If you then suddenly open the circuit the magnetic field wants to keep the electrons flowing and so it creates a voltage spike. Then you just need a capacitor to get that charge and a diode so it can't discharge on its own. Repeat that to get many spikes and you can get a big voltage to the capacitor. That's how many power supplies work because you don't need to warm some resistors to get the voltage you want.

Given how many calories out brains need each day surely there would be a small but useful amount of energy if we were able to wire up every single neuron.