Shocked by an AA battery??
Hi there - I was just trying to replace the batteries in my at-home blood pressure monitor, and somehow managed to give myself a small electric shock?
It only takes 4 AA batteries, the same kind I've been removing from devices all my life just by scrabbling around at the spring-end and prying them out, only this time when I dug my finger in near the spring, I felt a sharp pain - not badly, just like a sharp pinch, but now there's a small (1mm x 1mm) area on my fingertip where my skin seems to have been MELTED (it's just a perfectly smooth dot where my fingerprint's burnt off??) and there was a brief second where smoke rose from that end of the battery. (Particles of my skin being vaporized?!)
My question is, did I just manage to do something incredibly rare and stupid (e.g. maybe my finger made a brief short circuit between one end of the battery and the spring or something?), or is there some issue with the device? I only use the monitor once a month, and noticed that between last month and this one, it completely drained the old batteries that were in it. (Hency why, after putting 4 brand new AA batteries in it this time, I decided to remove them to prevent them being drained, and got shocked.)
EDIT: A couple of people have mentioned that it's physically impossible to be shocked/burned by 6V; I know it sounds implausible which is exactly why I came here and asked. The fact remains that I *was* burned by something, and saw a small amount of smoke rise from the battery/spring area... If it wasn't a shock, does anyone know what could have made that element hot enough to burn? And is that a normal part of operation or does that indicate a fault in the monitor?
Here's the monitor's specifications:
