Power Dressing?

Power-dressing man leaves trail of destruction

A guy in a fitted suit and red tie goes off in the office? No, not quite.

"An Australian man built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked, leaving a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic and forcing firefighters to evacuate a building."

I don't know if I believe this. He's walking along, minding his business, burning the floor as he goes and completely unaware of any of it?

"Frank Clewer, who was wearing a woolen shirt and a synthetic nylon jacket, was oblivious to the growing electrical current that was building up as his clothes rubbed together."

Yup. Oblivious.

"We tested his clothes with a static electricity field meter and measured a current of 40,000 volts, which is one step shy of spontaneous combustion, where his clothes would have self-ignited," Barton said.

They must have done this before. One more step and he's toast.

"Static electricity is a similar mechanism to lightning, where you have clouds rubbing together and then a spark generated by very dry air above them," said Gosden.

Really? Lightning is caused by clouds rubbing together? And thunder is caused by God bowling. Are you sure that's right?

Anyway, must have been cool to watch. It is pretty incredible.