........... out on the town for the evening?

900,000 volts?

Dielectric strength of air = 3Kv/mm

hardly a pocket sized mobile phone with a 0.9 metre spark gap,

time to apply the same sanity factor as the claimed value of seized drugs, divide by 100.

Detective Sergeant Dave Bola, of Notts Police, told the BBC: "It's a shock that we found it."

Yeah - I think that's kind of the idea of the device

...such a great (cough) film as Tomorrow Never Dies!

And that was a Sony Ericcson too!

Mine's the one with all the gadetry sewn into the linings!

Hyson Green + BOFH and PFY?

No chance. The pubs are crap. Although there is one half decent curry house. They'd have no business there - unless they were on the lookout for some Columbian marching powder or a lady of negotiable affection.

They'll turn mobile phones into anything nowadays.

Let's just hope they don't press the big 'Zap' button when they answer the phone. That could be a (-wait for it-) shocking experience!

Mine's the one with the remains of my dignity in the pockets.

"This could potentially kill someone", but then so could a spoon.

At 900,000 volts across two studs, on a mobile phone, the current would jump across any gap that could be set up, unless it found a less resistive path. Such as being pressed hard against damp skin. Or the hand of the person holding the device.

Simple maths will show that to generate this voltage from any battery which could be held in a mobile phone body, the current would be reduced to the level of pico-amps. The voltage would hurt but the only way to kill someone with this device would be to beat them with it.

While the police saying it was a shock that they found this is amusing, it is also quiet true. They were shocked that they could find anything let alone something as small as a mobile phone.

Paris because her mobile caused a few shocks

A technical paper should get the technical bits right. Open-circuit voltage by itself gives no indication whatever of how lethal it is. For a shock, voltage, current and duration all matter.

Also I share doubts as to the practicality of such a high voltage in such a small device. And why make it so high when a lower voltage would work?

Anyway, glad the crooks are showing some restraint. At least it didn't have a button labelled "kill".

Potential lethality is a complex function of frequency and current and other factors; but not so much voltage. Otherwise door-knobs on a dry static-filled day would be deadly.

Compare and contrast the following:

- Taser manufacturuer claims that 'Excited Delirium' is true cause of all otherwise unexplained taser-related deaths.

- Flame-Thrower manufacturer claims that 'Spontaneous Human Combustion' is true cause of the burnt-to-a-crisp victims.

www.Excited-Delirium.com

Looks like this one:

http://www.stunster.com/catalog/cell-phone-stun-950000v-p-549.html

It is quite clearly an offensive weapon, regardless of the BS in the advert. A defensive weapon with 2 safety levels is an oxymoron. By the time you have flicked both safeties off (especially under stress) you would be beaten unconcious ten times. At least.

Isnt it more 'Watt' current do they output....coat being put on as we speak!

Interestingly when I was about 14 I made one of these from a disposable camera, just take some handy cable from either side of the capacitor and you've got a lovely stun-gun. If I remember right if the discharge wires were too close together they would also give a nice skin burn as well!

US Cops have been going "taser happy."

They've been tasering pregnant women, speeders, small drunk ladies, etc.

Just LOADS of fun.

I'm sure that the UK plods will be far more restrained.

I've been hit by those. it was the single most painful thing i've done. Just got hit by one spark, but it was an in-one-arm out-the-other through-the-chest Oh-Fuck-my-heart-is-racing zap. Lucky i'm not an old guy with heart problems.

The mains supply at home is built and fused to deliver from 5 to 32 AMPS.

The tidgy power transistor that's wheezing and puffing in your average flyback oscillator, pumping up some High Voltage, probably has a max collector current of 100 - 500 milliamps (thousandths of an amp).

And then it's got to through a coil as well (a la car ignition) to get to the tens or hundreds of KV, which steps down the final current in the same ratio as the step up of the voltage.

Final result? A good jolt, and an impressive spark, but that's it.

I'm guessing that the Tazer has something gutsy in the way of output driver and some form of clever output waveform shaping to be able to squirt the absolute-bloddy-max into those nasty flying dart wires.

It's the fact it's disguised as a phone.... Just imagine the scene outside a pub on saturday night

(Police) ....Drop the weapon

(Chav) ....What weapon?

(Police) ...In your hand ..

(Chav) I'm phoning me mum

(Police) NOW!!!

(Chav) Drop me bleedin' iphone ... youre 'avin a giraffe

....ZAP.

......ZZZZZAP

According to that URL, these things use 3 x CR2 batteries. According to http://www.ebattery.co.kr/pdf/lithium/camera/CR2.PDF those batteries can deliver 2.5A in a pulse at 3V. So 3 batteries x 3V x 2.5A is 22.5VA. Divide by 900000V and you get 25pA. Is this painful? Am I missing something?

Detective Sergeant Dave Bola, of Notts Police, told the BBC: "It's a shock".

:-S

Mine's the one with the taser in the pocket... or maybe I'm just pleased to see you.

So if it's 18 times more lethal than something that's "non-lethal" then it's "non-lethal" as well. Right?

But then again , er how many people die annually when in the so called protective police custody or innocently awaiting your tube train to depart to your destination when armed hoons in uniform arrive to shoot first then ask the questions later ?

You guys make me laugh.

Its only been a couple of weeks since all those pathetic histrionics and hissy-fits caused by the Police arresting that guy at gun-point - you remember, the chap who apparently 'pointed' his mobile at someone as if it were a gun and a passer-by actually thought it was one! On that occasion the Police were labelled 'utter morons' because they apparently lacked effective telepathic skills and, of course, 'how could a mobile possibly harm anyone?'

How indeed?

I was tasered once and boy did that hurt; and I mean really hurt! - not to mention the fact that, as big as I am, I was rendered totally helpless for what seemed like an age. Which is precisely why such devices are used in street robberies and nightclub disturbances - and, to my certain knowledge, at least a couple of very unpleasnt sexual assaults around my way. These devices can and do enable little lowlife scumbags to take on people otherwise immune to intimidation.

What the hell does it matter what its maximum power output is just so long as it works and looks sufficiently inocuous for no-one to see it coming? There's already a healthy trade in weapons like these, they come in by the boxful with a significantly better mark-up than a whole transit van full of tax free fags.

Are you really surprised or just naive?

There's already more than enough violence and yobbery taking place in our towns and inner cities. And before someone starts bleating about politics & media hype the plain truth is that this is nothing new because its always been here. Britain has always been a yob nation. Yes, the chances of YOU getting attacked this week is highly improbable - but I can guarantee that plenty of other people will be - just pop into any urban A&E Dept. for a weekend reality check. This, I'm afraid, is our normal, its probably why we're so disproportionately good at wars and had such a big Empire.

Hoorah!

"GREAT BRITAIN: BESPOKE PURVEYOR OF DRUNKEN THUGERY SINCE THE RENAISSANCE"

You muppets!

> "But then again , er how many people die annually when in the so called protective police custody or innocently awaiting your tube train to depart to your destination when armed hoons in uniform arrive to shoot first then ask the questions later ?"

Precious few in POLICE custody, around 95% die in prisons. In an average year there are significantly more Police killed on duty than there are dead detainees.

But then why let reality get in the way of a mindless rant?

And with regard to your last 'point', to the best of my knowledge just one in the last 2000 years - or I could say 10, 20 or a 100,000 years if I wanted to sound equally purile!

@ac surely you jest or either miserably failed basic Google 101 in 3rd grade , for in the UK in 2006 as reported September 2007 in the grossly overcrowded and under staffed UK prison , police cell and youth detention system "There were around 600 deaths in custody last year, including in prisons, young offender institutions and police cells."(only 68 were in actual prisons or roughly 11% of the total ,another 400 were listed as natural causes but since 9 out of ten death certificates issued annually in the UK are fabricated works of fiction Dr Shipman style it boggles the imagination as to is it a cover up or deliberate murder ?)

Any nice troll in the land down under in Oz would politely say "You are full of it!" to your face, the Kiwi's would be less polite and more direct and use a cricket bat , the think tank God pretenders to the west across the Atlantic sea have their head in posterior problems and don't really care !

Say , since I currently have a car boot full of assorted sized feet from another troll looking for a good home , where you want them sent !

Sadly in an age of information where a million answers wash around in the tubes looking for the questions , tunnel vision is still alive and well in the 21st Century of propaganda !

With apologies to Nelson and PH "Ha! Ha!" !

Some days when you don a police uniform in many countries UK inclusive , you can literally get away with murder !

"A 'stun gun' and a Tazer are, to all intents and purposes, the same thing."

Um, no. They are not. Getting hit with a Tazer makes getting hit wilt a stungun seem fun.

Getting stuck with the prods while they make a connection is not a big deal, it makes you think, but "I" have been stunned, I stunned myself to know how well it works. "I needed to know if I could depend on it." Its over pretty quickly, and most home models don't pack enough juice to do much worse than make someone wet themselves and get a numb arm.

Having a heavy battery send the jolt down wires to needles imbedded in your skin, that knocks you down and keeps you there. Here the police carry Tazers with their pistols, and NOT stunguns for a very good reason. Tazers are a LOT more lethal and a LOT more dangerous. They also don't require you to be in grappling distance. I can buy a handgun, I can buy a stungun, but even we can't buy real tazers.

I've owned several stunguns, you aren't even allowed to touch one. So till you know what you are talking about at least slightly, you might want to study up. Or aren't you allowed to read about them either?

Sigh - Now lets try this again for the hard of thinking:

The official 2006 UK figures as reported by the IPCC in 2007 (the ones you’re so keen to quote) break down as follows:

There were indeed a grand total 586 deaths in custody, so yeah very close to the 600 you mentioned. However, of these only 28 relate to “Deaths in of following POLICE Custody”.

Now correct me if I’m wrong but I make that just 4.77% of the total - very close to the 5% figure that I was quoting because, yes, it was precisely these deaths in POLICE CUSTODY that I was referring to. I merely rounded the figures UP for brevity! Oops, and in case your still struggling, thats actually 95.23% NOT in Police Custody!

The total number of UK Police arrests during this same period was a whopping 1,429,800.

Ignoring the fact that significant numbers of those were detained under the effects of drink, drugs, mental illness, stress and recent violence prior to their arrest. You would still have to equate those 28 deaths in 1,429,800 arrests to the average number of deaths found in a random sample of 1,429,800 people – before you could start looking for any statistical trends in the incidence of suspicious deaths at Police hands.

In fact the Office For National Statistics report the UK mortality rate as follows: 7,576 per million for men and 5,279 per million women (this ignores infant deaths). I’m afraid I only have the 2004 figures to hand but even you must get the general drift.

All your other comments are so inanely vacuous they’re not even worthy of reply.

It rather looks like it is you who failed Google 101 – or should that perhaps be Maths 101?

Or as I originally intimated: purile!