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I had a friend in high school who found it funny to hand unsuspecting people a fully charged capacitor he pulled from a camera flash. This was 30 years ago, before "modern electronics", so the charge lasted longer than a few seconds. Why this never started a fight I don't know.

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> before "modern electronics", so the charge lasted longer than a few seconds.

If you take any capacitor and charge it, it'll take quite some time to discharge on its own.

The discharge is usually controlled by a resistor in parallel with the capacitor on the PCB. Removing the capacitor from the board disconnects it from the discharge resistor. So not much "modern electronics" going on here :-P

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