[lostjamie]

Hi,

I have a MacBook Pro and my power adapter is getting more and more worn (its a known issue i know - it can frae etc..)

Well is it possible to get some sort of electric shock (a large shock) from touching the ends of the magsafe? I'm no electrician but if it passes electricity through it, if something was to get stuck on it like a bit of metal (its magnetic so it'll stick or jump to it) would that pass current through that too?

I randomly was thinking when the magsafe was sticking to the side of my aliminium bin and if (if anything) could pass current through it) and it being DC instead of Alternating Current it could actually do it?

Am i being stupid or could there be more to this? Or is this impossible to happen?

[peeb]

The voltage coming out of the end of the magsafe is low, and it is safe in normal use. Of course, you could damage it, and, probably yourself, if you really put your mind to it, but you'll be more likely to blow a fuse in it. It won't stick to an aluminum bin, but will to steel. In this case, no current will flow - it needs the correct fixture to 'mate'.

[Tomchu]

It won't stick to anything because the plug end of the MagSafe system isn't magnetic -- the magnetic portion is in your MB/MBP.

Technically you could create a short in the plug itself by letting something metal come in contact with the gold contacts. I've felt a bit of a shock from the plug on occasion when it's a particularly humid day and I touch the contacts with my fingers, but it's no big deal. As peeb said, the voltage is low.

[Dork.]

A needless and pedantic point: it's not the voltage that will kill you, it's the current and how the current flows through your body (i.e. where you are grounded). A high-voltage, low-current pulse that just goes through your hand will just sting. A high-current pulse that goes from one arm to the other (and passes your heart on the way) can be fatal. Tesla used to take high-voltage shocks every morning to wake up, kind of like how we use coffee.

Either way, you're not getting enough voltage or current out of a MagSafe power adaptor to do any harm.

[Frugle]

also, the way it adapts... at one point people were sending their magsafes back because the pins inside got stuck.. I don't remember how it works, but the pins have to move to a certain spot for it to send power.

[ghporter]

The Magsafe connector won't have any voltage on it when it's unplugged-it has to be plugged into a computer to turn on the output from the AC adapter box. It can get warm, but shouldn't get really hot-though it's obvious that some people will consider the same temperature to be comfortable or uncomfortably hot, so that's really a subjective statement.

[Tomchu]

It can get quite scorching if you're charging a MBP as well as doing something CPU + GPU intensive (game for instance) at the same time. In that situation, it consumes just over 85W from the outlet (measured with one of those power meter things).