This is not a joke thread. Really.

Does anyone know of a way that a hairdryer could give a person a shock if that person touched the plug a couple of seconds after it was unplugged from the wallsocket? This would have been in England.

As far as I know(which is nothing), hairdryers don't have capacitors in them.

Do they??

 

It may have been a static electricity discharge. Most of the hair dryers that I have seen have plastic cases, and the plug was metal, hence the discharge. Only a guess on my part.

 

Thanks people. Apparently it was a real jolt. I thought she imagined it, but she insists. I'm gonna shell out for a new hairdryer...

 

My dryer does that every time I touch it after I've unplugged it. There is probably nothing I hate more than getting an electrical shock, even if it is as minor as that, so I go to extreme lenght not to touch the plug after I'm done...

So yes, definetely possible! And not just seconds after, probably minutes after too...

I'd go with static discharge too as a reason, something in there must be functioning as some sort of capacitor... Maybe the leads in the motor build up the static... Electricity really isn't my thing, I just know enough to keep me fingers out of it!