Carrying a Charge

“Flo don’t answer her phone.”

That’s what everybody says.

The funny thing is, nobody really believes me when I say sometimes my phone actually doesn’t ring.

People tell me they called. I never got the call. They texted. I never received the text. Messages I send never go through. Phones freezing. Laptops shutting down. Things glitching for no apparent reason.

I have two cell phones and sometimes I still can’t make a call. This has gone on for years. I’ve reset phones. Replaced phones. Changed numbers. Changed devices.

I’ve even found myself staying away sometimes, afraid it could damage friendships. Because after a while, “I didn’t get your call” or “I never got your text” starts sounding like an excuse. And that’s not me. I’d rather pull back than have someone think I’m making excuses.

Shoot, after all these years, I wouldn’t believe me either.

So I stopped explaining. But I never stopped wondering.

Back in July, I was away at training and this phone started acting up. Nothing was going out. It said SOS. For two weeks I couldn’t call anybody. The phone is fairly new.

Then, over the last couple of weeks, WhatsApp. One day it works, the next day it doesn’t. It freezes. It glitches.

Last night I did a complete reboot.

This morning I plugged it in and went to see who had called me. Glitching again.

And that’s when the question hit me differently.

We spend a lot of time asking what electronics can do to the human body. Phones, computers, Wi-Fi, electromagnetic fields.

But what about the other direction?

human → machine

Could the human body actually interfere with electronics?

It sounded a little out there, even to me. So I went looking.

Static electricity came up first.

Okay, that made sense. We’ve all had that little shock when we touch something. What I hadn’t really thought about was where that charge was coming from.

Us.

The human body can build up electrostatic charge through ordinary activity. Even walking across a floor can do it. And when that charge suddenly transfers from a person to an electronic component, it’s called electrostatic discharge, or ESD.

The EOS/ESD Association explains that direct transfer of electrostatic charge from the human body is one of the most common causes of ESD damage to sensitive electronic components.

And then I see three words:

Human Body Model.

Wait.

What is that?

Engineers have a standard test called the Human Body Model, or HBM. It simulates an electrically charged person discharging into an electronic component. There is even a formal standard for it: ANSI/ESDA/JEDEC JS-001.

And I’m sitting there thinking, hold on. They have an actual test for this?

They don’t just acknowledge that humans can affect electronics. They simulate it. They measure it. They test for it.

Then something else clicked.

The grounded wrist straps. The ESD mats. The special handling around motherboards and computer chips.

I’ve seen all of that. I just never thought about the direction of the protection.

Some of it is there to protect the machine from us.

And it goes beyond individual components. Complete electronic equipment is also tested for electrostatic discharge from human operators under the international standard IEC 61000-4-2.

Now, did I solve anything this morning?

No.

But I wasn’t really trying to. I had a question.

Could the human body actually interfere with electronics?

And it turned out the question wasn’t strange at all.

Engineers had already asked it.

They built a test for it.