Chapter 28, Problem 28.81AP

In places such as hospital operating rooms or factories for electronic circuit boards, electric sparks must be avoided. A prison standing on a grounded floor and touching nothing else can typically have a body capacitance of 150 pF, in parallel with a foot capacitance of 80.0 pF produced by the dielectric soles of his or her shoes. The person acquires static electric charge from interactions with Ills or her surroundings. The static charge flows to ground through the equivalent resistance of the two shoe soles in parallel with each other. A pair of rubber-soled street shoes can present an equivalent resistance of 5.00 × 10³ MΩ. A pair of shoes with special static-dissipative soles can have an equivalent resistance of 1.00 MΩ. Consider the person’s body and shoes as forming an RC circuit with the ground. (a) How long does it take the rubber-soled shoes to reduce a person’s potential from 3.00 × 10³ V to 100? (b) How long does it take the static-dissipative shoes to do the same thing?