Does a dangling wire really electrocute me if I'm standing in water?





.everyoneloves__top-leaderboard:empty,.everyoneloves__mid-leaderboard:empty,.everyoneloves__bot-mid-leaderboard:empty{ margin-bottom:0;
}







26












$begingroup$


enter image description here



We've all seen this scenario in movies; somebody has to cross a room half filled with water and there is a dangling electric wire that shoots sparks everywhere. The poor person has to cross the room but cannot do so because if the wire hits the water he is obviously electrocuted since water is a conductor.



But is it so simple in real life? If I'm really standing in water in a room, and a high voltage wire hits the water, how does the electricity flow through me to electrocute me? Only my feet are touching the water, no other bodypart of mine is touching anywhere. And realistically there probably would be some piping etc. connected to ground somewhere that would conduct the current to ground. How would I be electrocuted if the current just flows past me?



I suspect this is similar to the well known situation of somebody dropping a hair dryer into a bathtub with a person in it. Why doesn't the current in this situation flow either from the live wire to the neutral wire or through the drain to the ground? Why does simply being in "high voltage water" electrocute me? (And yes, I know the scenario is not so likely with modern appliances but let's consider this in theory).










share|improve this question









$endgroup$








  • 31




    $begingroup$
    I seriously suggest that you don’t do any testing.
    $endgroup$
    – Solar Mike
    yesterday






  • 6




    $begingroup$
    The answer is: it depends, there are many variables involved like: distance between you and the wire, voltage on the wire, conductivity of the water, water level, material of the bath, if the bath is metal or conductive: how well is it grounded, is it painted. I could go on for a while. All this determines the amount of current passing through the person. Also thin persons can handle less current than "less thin" persons. There can be no clear answer.
    $endgroup$
    – Bimpelrekkie
    yesterday










  • $begingroup$
    Your ground symbol in the sketch implies that the power on the wire is referenced to ground. It may not be. The power on that line could be isolated from ground.
    $endgroup$
    – scorpdaddy
    yesterday






  • 3




    $begingroup$
    This question reminded me of the following video on Youtube made by Electroboom: youtube.com/watch?v=dcrY59nGxBg Where he actually does an experiment to confirm this
    $endgroup$
    – Ferrybig
    yesterday






  • 2




    $begingroup$
    "There's an exposed wire over the bathtub ... Oh yeah! Shock wire! I call it that 'cause if you take a shower and touch it.....YOU DIE!" - Ron Swanson / Andy Dwyer - Parks and Rec
    $endgroup$
    – NKCampbell
    yesterday


















26












$begingroup$


enter image description here



We've all seen this scenario in movies; somebody has to cross a room half filled with water and there is a dangling electric wire that shoots sparks everywhere. The poor person has to cross the room but cannot do so because if the wire hits the water he is obviously electrocuted since water is a conductor.



But is it so simple in real life? If I'm really standing in water in a room, and a high voltage wire hits the water, how does the electricity flow through me to electrocute me? Only my feet are touching the water, no other bodypart of mine is touching anywhere. And realistically there probably would be some piping etc. connected to ground somewhere that would conduct the current to ground. How would I be electrocuted if the current just flows past me?



I suspect this is similar to the well known situation of somebody dropping a hair dryer into a bathtub with a person in it. Why doesn't the current in this situation flow either from the live wire to the neutral wire or through the drain to the ground? Why does simply being in "high voltage water" electrocute me? (And yes, I know the scenario is not so likely with modern appliances but let's consider this in theory).










share|improve this question









$endgroup$








  • 31




    $begingroup$
    I seriously suggest that you don’t do any testing.
    $endgroup$
    – Solar Mike
    yesterday






  • 6




    $begingroup$
    The answer is: it depends, there are many variables involved like: distance between you and the wire, voltage on the wire, conductivity of the water, water level, material of the bath, if the bath is metal or conductive: how well is it grounded, is it painted. I could go on for a while. All this determines the amount of current passing through the person. Also thin persons can handle less current than "less thin" persons. There can be no clear answer.
    $endgroup$
    – Bimpelrekkie
    yesterday










  • $begingroup$
    Your ground symbol in the sketch implies that the power on the wire is referenced to ground. It may not be. The power on that line could be isolated from ground.
    $endgroup$
    – scorpdaddy
    yesterday






  • 3




    $begingroup$
    This question reminded me of the following video on Youtube made by Electroboom: youtube.com/watch?v=dcrY59nGxBg Where he actually does an experiment to confirm this
    $endgroup$
    – Ferrybig
    yesterday






  • 2




    $begingroup$
    "There's an exposed wire over the bathtub ... Oh yeah! Shock wire! I call it that 'cause if you take a shower and touch it.....YOU DIE!" - Ron Swanson / Andy Dwyer - Parks and Rec
    $endgroup$
    – NKCampbell
    yesterday














26












26








26


5



$begingroup$


enter image description here



We've all seen this scenario in movies; somebody has to cross a room half filled with water and there is a dangling electric wire that shoots sparks everywhere. The poor person has to cross the room but cannot do so because if the wire hits the water he is obviously electrocuted since water is a conductor.



But is it so simple in real life? If I'm really standing in water in a room, and a high voltage wire hits the water, how does the electricity flow through me to electrocute me? Only my feet are touching the water, no other bodypart of mine is touching anywhere. And realistically there probably would be some piping etc. connected to ground somewhere that would conduct the current to ground. How would I be electrocuted if the current just flows past me?



I suspect this is similar to the well known situation of somebody dropping a hair dryer into a bathtub with a person in it. Why doesn't the current in this situation flow either from the live wire to the neutral wire or through the drain to the ground? Why does simply being in "high voltage water" electrocute me? (And yes, I know the scenario is not so likely with modern appliances but let's consider this in theory).










share|improve this question









$endgroup$




enter image description here



We've all seen this scenario in movies; somebody has to cross a room half filled with water and there is a dangling electric wire that shoots sparks everywhere. The poor person has to cross the room but cannot do so because if the wire hits the water he is obviously electrocuted since water is a conductor.



But is it so simple in real life? If I'm really standing in water in a room, and a high voltage wire hits the water, how does the electricity flow through me to electrocute me? Only my feet are touching the water, no other bodypart of mine is touching anywhere. And realistically there probably would be some piping etc. connected to ground somewhere that would conduct the current to ground. How would I be electrocuted if the current just flows past me?



I suspect this is similar to the well known situation of somebody dropping a hair dryer into a bathtub with a person in it. Why doesn't the current in this situation flow either from the live wire to the neutral wire or through the drain to the ground? Why does simply being in "high voltage water" electrocute me? (And yes, I know the scenario is not so likely with modern appliances but let's consider this in theory).







safety






share|improve this question













share|improve this question











share|improve this question




share|improve this question










asked yesterday









S. RotosS. Rotos

7591814




7591814








  • 31




    $begingroup$
    I seriously suggest that you don’t do any testing.
    $endgroup$
    – Solar Mike
    yesterday






  • 6




    $begingroup$
    The answer is: it depends, there are many variables involved like: distance between you and the wire, voltage on the wire, conductivity of the water, water level, material of the bath, if the bath is metal or conductive: how well is it grounded, is it painted. I could go on for a while. All this determines the amount of current passing through the person. Also thin persons can handle less current than "less thin" persons. There can be no clear answer.
    $endgroup$
    – Bimpelrekkie
    yesterday










  • $begingroup$
    Your ground symbol in the sketch implies that the power on the wire is referenced to ground. It may not be. The power on that line could be isolated from ground.
    $endgroup$
    – scorpdaddy
    yesterday






  • 3




    $begingroup$
    This question reminded me of the following video on Youtube made by Electroboom: youtube.com/watch?v=dcrY59nGxBg Where he actually does an experiment to confirm this
    $endgroup$
    – Ferrybig
    yesterday






  • 2




    $begingroup$
    "There's an exposed wire over the bathtub ... Oh yeah! Shock wire! I call it that 'cause if you take a shower and touch it.....YOU DIE!" - Ron Swanson / Andy Dwyer - Parks and Rec
    $endgroup$
    – NKCampbell
    yesterday














  • 31




    $begingroup$
    I seriously suggest that you don’t do any testing.
    $endgroup$
    – Solar Mike
    yesterday






  • 6




    $begingroup$
    The answer is: it depends, there are many variables involved like: distance between you and the wire, voltage on the wire, conductivity of the water, water level, material of the bath, if the bath is metal or conductive: how well is it grounded, is it painted. I could go on for a while. All this determines the amount of current passing through the person. Also thin persons can handle less current than "less thin" persons. There can be no clear answer.
    $endgroup$
    – Bimpelrekkie
    yesterday










  • $begingroup$
    Your ground symbol in the sketch implies that the power on the wire is referenced to ground. It may not be. The power on that line could be isolated from ground.
    $endgroup$
    – scorpdaddy
    yesterday






  • 3




    $begingroup$
    This question reminded me of the following video on Youtube made by Electroboom: youtube.com/watch?v=dcrY59nGxBg Where he actually does an experiment to confirm this
    $endgroup$
    – Ferrybig
    yesterday






  • 2




    $begingroup$
    "There's an exposed wire over the bathtub ... Oh yeah! Shock wire! I call it that 'cause if you take a shower and touch it.....YOU DIE!" - Ron Swanson / Andy Dwyer - Parks and Rec
    $endgroup$
    – NKCampbell
    yesterday








31




31




$begingroup$
I seriously suggest that you don’t do any testing.
$endgroup$
– Solar Mike
yesterday




$begingroup$
I seriously suggest that you don’t do any testing.
$endgroup$
– Solar Mike
yesterday




6




6




$begingroup$
The answer is: it depends, there are many variables involved like: distance between you and the wire, voltage on the wire, conductivity of the water, water level, material of the bath, if the bath is metal or conductive: how well is it grounded, is it painted. I could go on for a while. All this determines the amount of current passing through the person. Also thin persons can handle less current than "less thin" persons. There can be no clear answer.
$endgroup$
– Bimpelrekkie
yesterday




$begingroup$
The answer is: it depends, there are many variables involved like: distance between you and the wire, voltage on the wire, conductivity of the water, water level, material of the bath, if the bath is metal or conductive: how well is it grounded, is it painted. I could go on for a while. All this determines the amount of current passing through the person. Also thin persons can handle less current than "less thin" persons. There can be no clear answer.
$endgroup$
– Bimpelrekkie
yesterday












$begingroup$
Your ground symbol in the sketch implies that the power on the wire is referenced to ground. It may not be. The power on that line could be isolated from ground.
$endgroup$
– scorpdaddy
yesterday




$begingroup$
Your ground symbol in the sketch implies that the power on the wire is referenced to ground. It may not be. The power on that line could be isolated from ground.
$endgroup$
– scorpdaddy
yesterday




3




3




$begingroup$
This question reminded me of the following video on Youtube made by Electroboom: youtube.com/watch?v=dcrY59nGxBg Where he actually does an experiment to confirm this
$endgroup$
– Ferrybig
yesterday




$begingroup$
This question reminded me of the following video on Youtube made by Electroboom: youtube.com/watch?v=dcrY59nGxBg Where he actually does an experiment to confirm this
$endgroup$
– Ferrybig
yesterday




2




2




$begingroup$
"There's an exposed wire over the bathtub ... Oh yeah! Shock wire! I call it that 'cause if you take a shower and touch it.....YOU DIE!" - Ron Swanson / Andy Dwyer - Parks and Rec
$endgroup$
– NKCampbell
yesterday




$begingroup$
"There's an exposed wire over the bathtub ... Oh yeah! Shock wire! I call it that 'cause if you take a shower and touch it.....YOU DIE!" - Ron Swanson / Andy Dwyer - Parks and Rec
$endgroup$
– NKCampbell
yesterday










6 Answers
6






active

oldest

votes


















24












$begingroup$

Oh yes. The phenomenon is called "Electrical Drowning".



In this tragic case, a girl decided to dance in a fountain, unawares that the underwater lights had a ground fault. Her muscles contracted and she fell down. One friend went in to try to grab her, and she too lost control of her leg muscles and fell down. Her two other friends tried to rescue the first two.



Firefighters showed up, one tiptoed in, lost it and his friends yanked him out. The firefighters spent 15 minutes trying to find the shutoff switch.



The problem with falling down in water is that you drown. All four girls did.



In fact, multiple victims is often the only clue to an electrical drowning.



This is why any beachside installations now require GFCI and shutoff switches, and why you should not swim near a boat on shore power.



Why electrical drownings happen



You've seen problems involving grids of resistors. That's what water is, a 3-D grid of resistors, and you also are some of the resistors.



Electrical current travels all available paths in proportion to their conductance (1/resistance). 1-10 mA is enough to start causing problems for a sensitive person; 100 mA is lethal in its own right.



Electricity wants to get back to source (the pole transformer's neutral), and the NEC standard for a grounding rod is 25 ohms. You can do the math here.



Well, I get 120 V through a 24 ohm resistor = 5 amperes. So only a tiny fraction of that current need go through you to nail you. If we rely on that article's 20 mA, then 1/250 of the current is enough to drown you.



Note also: this is not nearly enough to trip a typical 13, 15, 16 or 20 A branch circuit breaker.



However, a GFCI breaker will trip at 6-8 mA. That greatly improves the prognosis. This narrows it down to a highly improbable combination of events where the current is naturally limited to less than 6 mA, and almost all goes through you, and you're ultra-sensitive.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$









  • 1




    $begingroup$
    Many such cases, like this one, don't involve drowning. The current stops the heart (and other things).
    $endgroup$
    – Brock Adams
    22 hours ago






  • 1




    $begingroup$
    "That's what water is, a 3-D grid of resistors, and you also are some of the resistors." Best analogy I have ever seen to describe this issue. Bravo!
    $endgroup$
    – J. Raefield
    2 hours ago



















21












$begingroup$

In something like water electricity does not "flow to ground" in a neat straight line. There is a potential difference between sections of water radiating out from the HV contact point. That might also mean that your feet are at different potentials, and there will be current flow which could be fatal. This is one reason why cows in fields can be electrocuted by a nearby lightning strike. The voltage difference between their feet can be thousands of volts.






share|improve this answer









$endgroup$









  • 2




    $begingroup$
    It also might not flow to ground at all. If the dangling wire, for example, was connected to a UK shaver outlet (powered by an isolation transformer) then the only available path is back the other wire to the other side of the transformer.
    $endgroup$
    – J...
    yesterday










  • $begingroup$
    Yes, this. There is currently flowing out in all directions to different grounding points. If somehow floor was non-conducting and very well isolated except for a single very good ground very near the wire then most of the room might be safe, but I’m not gonna be the one to verify that.
    $endgroup$
    – John Hascall
    yesterday






  • 2




    $begingroup$
    Even humans can be electrocuted by a nearby lightning strike. Paradoxically, there are many aspects of a strike that are worse if it hits the ground near you than if it hits you directly (the former can stop your heart if the electrical potential is great enough, whereas the latter "just" causes burns and lung damage).
    $endgroup$
    – forest
    yesterday












  • $begingroup$
    Especially considering that most water you encounter day-to-day is fresh water. The human body is saltwater, which has a lower resistance, so electricity will preferentially flow through you.
    $endgroup$
    – skyler
    8 hours ago



















9












$begingroup$

I think that the answer is pretty simple - you are a better conductor than fresh water. I read this somewhere and it made me giggle then: "Humans are just big bags of salt water", which is true. A current of 1 mA through the heart is enough to cause a heart attack, so at 220 V, 220 kΩ resistance is not enough. You are less than 220 kΩ, especially when in water. Skin is the only insulator we have.



Just don't try it.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$













  • $begingroup$
    Yup, this is how you can get electrocuted--you have a considerably lower resistance than fresh water so if your body can be used to go to the ground it will--the current is happy to flow up one leg and down the other.
    $endgroup$
    – Loren Pechtel
    yesterday










  • $begingroup$
    Actually this is wrong: the worst shock will happen in a slightly salty water with the same conductance as a human body. Think about impedance matching: maximum power transfer happens when Zload=Zsource.
    $endgroup$
    – Dmitry Grigoryev
    14 hours ago










  • $begingroup$
    @DmitryGrigoryev You are right.
    $endgroup$
    – Atizs
    13 hours ago



















8












$begingroup$

Just being in "high voltage water" won't electrocute you, just as birds can happily perch on 10+kV power lines (and linemen can be dropped onto live lines for maintenance work), since there's no path, but as you say, there's always going to be a path to ground somewhere in that water, and so there'll be currents flowing through the water. Since that means that there's potential differences across the water at different points, you'd experience that between your feet, and since the human body is a good conductor, other than the skin, which reduces greatly in resistance when wet, that would allow possibly lethal current to flow through the torso. People can and do get electrocuted standing in salty bilge water on 24V systems on boats, it doesn't take a lot of voltage if the resistance is low enough.






share|improve this answer









$endgroup$









  • 2




    $begingroup$
    I'm pretty sure birds are safe because of their low capacitance (from their small size). It ensures very little AC current can flow through them.
    $endgroup$
    – forest
    yesterday





















7












$begingroup$


how does the electricity flow through me to electrocute me?




I already posted that picture once in a question about electric eels:



enter image description hereSource: phys.org Credit: Kenneth Catania



Electricity doesn't flow along a single preferred path, it flows in the entire water body with different intensities. If you happen to be in a path with high enough current, you'll get electrocuted.



An interesting corollary to this fact is that you'll get the worst shock when you and the water have comparable conductance. If the water is much more conductive than you, even high currents will only create a small voltage difference, which may not be harmful. If the water is much less conductive, the voltage difference may be huge, but the current will be limited.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$













  • $begingroup$
    That's a nice illustration of a tricky concept.
    $endgroup$
    – Wossname
    13 hours ago



















1












$begingroup$

Definitely don't try any of these things. This is definitely not intended to imply you should be complacent about any of the dangers of electricity, but there are numerous things that are often extremely wrong in movie handling of electricity, particularly in this type of scene. Often effects are used to simply make the electricity do what the story requires, so a few things:




  • Overcurrent and other fault protection: In most of the world, every circuit has over current protection and many circuits have ground fault or arc fault protection. As manufacturing capability increases, we've been able to add more ways to protect electrical installations and make them safe. In a futuristic scenario with improved technology, there is usually no reason this would have changed. Faults damage equipment, so even in a scenario where disregard for human life is written in, systems would have advanced precautions to limit property damage. At any rate, often the conductor you see creating the danger is actually a cable, with visible wires sticking out of the end, whatever the prop department thought would look cool. In many of these cases, the conductor, as presented, would have shorted between it's own conductors and tripped its overcurrent device or GFCI. In order for the conductor to stay live, something else must go wrong, like it miraculously not shorting out when being pulled loose from what it was connected to, falling, and or jiggling without shorting out on itself or touching something made of metal, or the breaker welding closed(which does occasionally happen).

  • Electricity flows more on paths of less resistance. You could place large copper wire, a wet log and a strip of asphalt side by side, and connect the same voltage at once to the ends of all three. Most of the current would flow through the copper wire, much less would flow through the wet log, and a negligible amount through the asphalt, though there would be current flow in all three. If the conductors on a broken cable have enough voltage to create CGI arcs to nearby fixtures/water/whatever things that are far away, they have enough voltage to arc to its own return conductor or ground, which is sometimes mistakenly portrayed as inches away. For its own return conductor or ground to not be the target of most arcs, a second thing has to go wrong. Those conductors have to be broken somewhere between the arcing cable and the source, somehow without damaging a single high voltage cable more than would allow it to function. Electricity will not tend to travel through a meter of air to establish an arc when a 20mm arc establishes a low impedance return path.

  • Electricity is often much more brutal and much less flashy than in the movies, and movies often portray a greater(or smaller) margin for survival than actually exists. As part of your training in electrical industries, especially in power distribution, there's a good likelihood you'll see a video of someone dying working with or around electricity. It's utterly terrible. Brutal, merciless, and not always quick. The actual speed that electricity can "change" and propagate at is fast enough to need quality examples to make it easy to comprehend. There are situations where high voltage is portrayed in movies as something that great dexterity, strength and skill can just deal with, and inevitably characters are sometimes shown doing something that would have killed or vaporized them. Sometimes with low voltage wires a character is shown killed by something that, as presented, would have a relatively low probability of being lethal. In the latter case I'm comfortable with that as laymen and professionals should treat something with a very good chance of killing them as something that will.

  • Electricity flows in loops. Each molecule, depending on bonding, nuclei, and electron shells, tends to keep roughly a certain amount of electron in each area around it. The electrons themselves are bouncing around, and when they are not held too tightly where they are, they fly freely between nearby molecules, and the limiting factor is that when/as an electron moves out of an area that "needs" an electron, forces will be exerted on other nearby electrons as well as the one flying away to pull them in and fill the gap. Depending on structure of molecule and nuclei, different materials either bind their electrons tightly(insulators) or allow them to flow more freely(conductors). When you cause electrons to flow along a wire, new ones must replace the ones that flow away. The area you are pumping the electrons to will have too many and the area you are pumping them from will not have enough. There is nowhere for the flow to go other than back to where there are too few, as all of the other molecules around have exactly enough. No loop, no current.

  • Water isn't really a good conductor. Dirty water, particularly salty water is. Pure water is not (tap water is not pure). Aside from that, if you put a generator on the shore of an ocean and strung a wire across the surface of the water to a point far out where the tip of the wire was bare, 1 meter underwater, and connected the generator to that wire and a ground rod, the generator would work to pass a current down that wire, into the water, along the earth, through the ground rod, and back to the generator, where the electrons you're pumping out need to be replaced. Because of the high(ish) conductivity of salt water, there wouldn't be high voltages/currents for too high a distance in most directions around the tip of that wire, as the flow of electrons is "attempting" to return on the shortest path possible to its source. voltage will spread out in other directions somewhat as the flowing electrons spread out to travel more freely. This is not to say that the water around the electrode is not dangerous, but to point that movies are often not specifically accurate with where current is flowing.

  • Flashy arcs and sparks - Electricity is invisible. All we can see are the effects on objects as electricity passes through them. Heat, light, motion, the occasional smell. In order to draw attention to them, arcs, sparks and flashes are often brighter than they might be in real life, or of the wrong type (explosive rather than plasma, for example). The resistivity of air is around 2100V/mm, meaning to start an arc through room temperature air, you need 2100V for every mm you want the arc to jump. Once the air starts conducting and becomes a plasma, it conducts quite well, but it takes quite a voltage to start an arc.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$









  • 8




    $begingroup$
    "•Electricity follows the path of least resistance" Not true. Give it two paths, 1000 and 1001 ohm. Does all current flow in the 1000 ohm path and no current in the 1001 ohm path?
    $endgroup$
    – winny
    18 hours ago






  • 1




    $begingroup$
    @Winny Good point. I spouted off a safety axiom in my effort to keep things simple =P. Corrected now. Please check the rephrase if you have the time =).
    $endgroup$
    – K H
    4 hours ago












Your Answer





StackExchange.ifUsing("editor", function () {
return StackExchange.using("mathjaxEditing", function () {
StackExchange.MarkdownEditor.creationCallbacks.add(function (editor, postfix) {
StackExchange.mathjaxEditing.prepareWmdForMathJax(editor, postfix, [["\$", "\$"]]);
});
});
}, "mathjax-editing");

StackExchange.ifUsing("editor", function () {
return StackExchange.using("schematics", function () {
StackExchange.schematics.init();
});
}, "cicuitlab");

StackExchange.ready(function() {
var channelOptions = {
tags: "".split(" "),
id: "135"
};
initTagRenderer("".split(" "), "".split(" "), channelOptions);

StackExchange.using("externalEditor", function() {
// Have to fire editor after snippets, if snippets enabled
if (StackExchange.settings.snippets.snippetsEnabled) {
StackExchange.using("snippets", function() {
createEditor();
});
}
else {
createEditor();
}
});

function createEditor() {
StackExchange.prepareEditor({
heartbeatType: 'answer',
autoActivateHeartbeat: false,
convertImagesToLinks: false,
noModals: true,
showLowRepImageUploadWarning: true,
reputationToPostImages: null,
bindNavPrevention: true,
postfix: "",
imageUploader: {
brandingHtml: "Powered by u003ca class="icon-imgur-white" href="https://imgur.com/"u003eu003c/au003e",
contentPolicyHtml: "User contributions licensed under u003ca href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"u003ecc by-sa 3.0 with attribution requiredu003c/au003e u003ca href="https://stackoverflow.com/legal/content-policy"u003e(content policy)u003c/au003e",
allowUrls: true
},
onDemand: true,
discardSelector: ".discard-answer"
,immediatelyShowMarkdownHelp:true
});


}
});














draft saved

draft discarded


















StackExchange.ready(
function () {
StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2felectronics.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f431388%2fdoes-a-dangling-wire-really-electrocute-me-if-im-standing-in-water%23new-answer', 'question_page');
}
);

Post as a guest















Required, but never shown

























6 Answers
6






active

oldest

votes








6 Answers
6






active

oldest

votes









active

oldest

votes






active

oldest

votes









24












$begingroup$

Oh yes. The phenomenon is called "Electrical Drowning".



In this tragic case, a girl decided to dance in a fountain, unawares that the underwater lights had a ground fault. Her muscles contracted and she fell down. One friend went in to try to grab her, and she too lost control of her leg muscles and fell down. Her two other friends tried to rescue the first two.



Firefighters showed up, one tiptoed in, lost it and his friends yanked him out. The firefighters spent 15 minutes trying to find the shutoff switch.



The problem with falling down in water is that you drown. All four girls did.



In fact, multiple victims is often the only clue to an electrical drowning.



This is why any beachside installations now require GFCI and shutoff switches, and why you should not swim near a boat on shore power.



Why electrical drownings happen



You've seen problems involving grids of resistors. That's what water is, a 3-D grid of resistors, and you also are some of the resistors.



Electrical current travels all available paths in proportion to their conductance (1/resistance). 1-10 mA is enough to start causing problems for a sensitive person; 100 mA is lethal in its own right.



Electricity wants to get back to source (the pole transformer's neutral), and the NEC standard for a grounding rod is 25 ohms. You can do the math here.



Well, I get 120 V through a 24 ohm resistor = 5 amperes. So only a tiny fraction of that current need go through you to nail you. If we rely on that article's 20 mA, then 1/250 of the current is enough to drown you.



Note also: this is not nearly enough to trip a typical 13, 15, 16 or 20 A branch circuit breaker.



However, a GFCI breaker will trip at 6-8 mA. That greatly improves the prognosis. This narrows it down to a highly improbable combination of events where the current is naturally limited to less than 6 mA, and almost all goes through you, and you're ultra-sensitive.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$









  • 1




    $begingroup$
    Many such cases, like this one, don't involve drowning. The current stops the heart (and other things).
    $endgroup$
    – Brock Adams
    22 hours ago






  • 1




    $begingroup$
    "That's what water is, a 3-D grid of resistors, and you also are some of the resistors." Best analogy I have ever seen to describe this issue. Bravo!
    $endgroup$
    – J. Raefield
    2 hours ago
















24












$begingroup$

Oh yes. The phenomenon is called "Electrical Drowning".



In this tragic case, a girl decided to dance in a fountain, unawares that the underwater lights had a ground fault. Her muscles contracted and she fell down. One friend went in to try to grab her, and she too lost control of her leg muscles and fell down. Her two other friends tried to rescue the first two.



Firefighters showed up, one tiptoed in, lost it and his friends yanked him out. The firefighters spent 15 minutes trying to find the shutoff switch.



The problem with falling down in water is that you drown. All four girls did.



In fact, multiple victims is often the only clue to an electrical drowning.



This is why any beachside installations now require GFCI and shutoff switches, and why you should not swim near a boat on shore power.



Why electrical drownings happen



You've seen problems involving grids of resistors. That's what water is, a 3-D grid of resistors, and you also are some of the resistors.



Electrical current travels all available paths in proportion to their conductance (1/resistance). 1-10 mA is enough to start causing problems for a sensitive person; 100 mA is lethal in its own right.



Electricity wants to get back to source (the pole transformer's neutral), and the NEC standard for a grounding rod is 25 ohms. You can do the math here.



Well, I get 120 V through a 24 ohm resistor = 5 amperes. So only a tiny fraction of that current need go through you to nail you. If we rely on that article's 20 mA, then 1/250 of the current is enough to drown you.



Note also: this is not nearly enough to trip a typical 13, 15, 16 or 20 A branch circuit breaker.



However, a GFCI breaker will trip at 6-8 mA. That greatly improves the prognosis. This narrows it down to a highly improbable combination of events where the current is naturally limited to less than 6 mA, and almost all goes through you, and you're ultra-sensitive.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$









  • 1




    $begingroup$
    Many such cases, like this one, don't involve drowning. The current stops the heart (and other things).
    $endgroup$
    – Brock Adams
    22 hours ago






  • 1




    $begingroup$
    "That's what water is, a 3-D grid of resistors, and you also are some of the resistors." Best analogy I have ever seen to describe this issue. Bravo!
    $endgroup$
    – J. Raefield
    2 hours ago














24












24








24





$begingroup$

Oh yes. The phenomenon is called "Electrical Drowning".



In this tragic case, a girl decided to dance in a fountain, unawares that the underwater lights had a ground fault. Her muscles contracted and she fell down. One friend went in to try to grab her, and she too lost control of her leg muscles and fell down. Her two other friends tried to rescue the first two.



Firefighters showed up, one tiptoed in, lost it and his friends yanked him out. The firefighters spent 15 minutes trying to find the shutoff switch.



The problem with falling down in water is that you drown. All four girls did.



In fact, multiple victims is often the only clue to an electrical drowning.



This is why any beachside installations now require GFCI and shutoff switches, and why you should not swim near a boat on shore power.



Why electrical drownings happen



You've seen problems involving grids of resistors. That's what water is, a 3-D grid of resistors, and you also are some of the resistors.



Electrical current travels all available paths in proportion to their conductance (1/resistance). 1-10 mA is enough to start causing problems for a sensitive person; 100 mA is lethal in its own right.



Electricity wants to get back to source (the pole transformer's neutral), and the NEC standard for a grounding rod is 25 ohms. You can do the math here.



Well, I get 120 V through a 24 ohm resistor = 5 amperes. So only a tiny fraction of that current need go through you to nail you. If we rely on that article's 20 mA, then 1/250 of the current is enough to drown you.



Note also: this is not nearly enough to trip a typical 13, 15, 16 or 20 A branch circuit breaker.



However, a GFCI breaker will trip at 6-8 mA. That greatly improves the prognosis. This narrows it down to a highly improbable combination of events where the current is naturally limited to less than 6 mA, and almost all goes through you, and you're ultra-sensitive.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$



Oh yes. The phenomenon is called "Electrical Drowning".



In this tragic case, a girl decided to dance in a fountain, unawares that the underwater lights had a ground fault. Her muscles contracted and she fell down. One friend went in to try to grab her, and she too lost control of her leg muscles and fell down. Her two other friends tried to rescue the first two.



Firefighters showed up, one tiptoed in, lost it and his friends yanked him out. The firefighters spent 15 minutes trying to find the shutoff switch.



The problem with falling down in water is that you drown. All four girls did.



In fact, multiple victims is often the only clue to an electrical drowning.



This is why any beachside installations now require GFCI and shutoff switches, and why you should not swim near a boat on shore power.



Why electrical drownings happen



You've seen problems involving grids of resistors. That's what water is, a 3-D grid of resistors, and you also are some of the resistors.



Electrical current travels all available paths in proportion to their conductance (1/resistance). 1-10 mA is enough to start causing problems for a sensitive person; 100 mA is lethal in its own right.



Electricity wants to get back to source (the pole transformer's neutral), and the NEC standard for a grounding rod is 25 ohms. You can do the math here.



Well, I get 120 V through a 24 ohm resistor = 5 amperes. So only a tiny fraction of that current need go through you to nail you. If we rely on that article's 20 mA, then 1/250 of the current is enough to drown you.



Note also: this is not nearly enough to trip a typical 13, 15, 16 or 20 A branch circuit breaker.



However, a GFCI breaker will trip at 6-8 mA. That greatly improves the prognosis. This narrows it down to a highly improbable combination of events where the current is naturally limited to less than 6 mA, and almost all goes through you, and you're ultra-sensitive.







share|improve this answer














share|improve this answer



share|improve this answer








edited 13 hours ago









Peter Mortensen

1,60031422




1,60031422










answered yesterday









HarperHarper

6,647827




6,647827








  • 1




    $begingroup$
    Many such cases, like this one, don't involve drowning. The current stops the heart (and other things).
    $endgroup$
    – Brock Adams
    22 hours ago






  • 1




    $begingroup$
    "That's what water is, a 3-D grid of resistors, and you also are some of the resistors." Best analogy I have ever seen to describe this issue. Bravo!
    $endgroup$
    – J. Raefield
    2 hours ago














  • 1




    $begingroup$
    Many such cases, like this one, don't involve drowning. The current stops the heart (and other things).
    $endgroup$
    – Brock Adams
    22 hours ago






  • 1




    $begingroup$
    "That's what water is, a 3-D grid of resistors, and you also are some of the resistors." Best analogy I have ever seen to describe this issue. Bravo!
    $endgroup$
    – J. Raefield
    2 hours ago








1




1




$begingroup$
Many such cases, like this one, don't involve drowning. The current stops the heart (and other things).
$endgroup$
– Brock Adams
22 hours ago




$begingroup$
Many such cases, like this one, don't involve drowning. The current stops the heart (and other things).
$endgroup$
– Brock Adams
22 hours ago




1




1




$begingroup$
"That's what water is, a 3-D grid of resistors, and you also are some of the resistors." Best analogy I have ever seen to describe this issue. Bravo!
$endgroup$
– J. Raefield
2 hours ago




$begingroup$
"That's what water is, a 3-D grid of resistors, and you also are some of the resistors." Best analogy I have ever seen to describe this issue. Bravo!
$endgroup$
– J. Raefield
2 hours ago













21












$begingroup$

In something like water electricity does not "flow to ground" in a neat straight line. There is a potential difference between sections of water radiating out from the HV contact point. That might also mean that your feet are at different potentials, and there will be current flow which could be fatal. This is one reason why cows in fields can be electrocuted by a nearby lightning strike. The voltage difference between their feet can be thousands of volts.






share|improve this answer









$endgroup$









  • 2




    $begingroup$
    It also might not flow to ground at all. If the dangling wire, for example, was connected to a UK shaver outlet (powered by an isolation transformer) then the only available path is back the other wire to the other side of the transformer.
    $endgroup$
    – J...
    yesterday










  • $begingroup$
    Yes, this. There is currently flowing out in all directions to different grounding points. If somehow floor was non-conducting and very well isolated except for a single very good ground very near the wire then most of the room might be safe, but I’m not gonna be the one to verify that.
    $endgroup$
    – John Hascall
    yesterday






  • 2




    $begingroup$
    Even humans can be electrocuted by a nearby lightning strike. Paradoxically, there are many aspects of a strike that are worse if it hits the ground near you than if it hits you directly (the former can stop your heart if the electrical potential is great enough, whereas the latter "just" causes burns and lung damage).
    $endgroup$
    – forest
    yesterday












  • $begingroup$
    Especially considering that most water you encounter day-to-day is fresh water. The human body is saltwater, which has a lower resistance, so electricity will preferentially flow through you.
    $endgroup$
    – skyler
    8 hours ago
















21












$begingroup$

In something like water electricity does not "flow to ground" in a neat straight line. There is a potential difference between sections of water radiating out from the HV contact point. That might also mean that your feet are at different potentials, and there will be current flow which could be fatal. This is one reason why cows in fields can be electrocuted by a nearby lightning strike. The voltage difference between their feet can be thousands of volts.






share|improve this answer









$endgroup$









  • 2




    $begingroup$
    It also might not flow to ground at all. If the dangling wire, for example, was connected to a UK shaver outlet (powered by an isolation transformer) then the only available path is back the other wire to the other side of the transformer.
    $endgroup$
    – J...
    yesterday










  • $begingroup$
    Yes, this. There is currently flowing out in all directions to different grounding points. If somehow floor was non-conducting and very well isolated except for a single very good ground very near the wire then most of the room might be safe, but I’m not gonna be the one to verify that.
    $endgroup$
    – John Hascall
    yesterday






  • 2




    $begingroup$
    Even humans can be electrocuted by a nearby lightning strike. Paradoxically, there are many aspects of a strike that are worse if it hits the ground near you than if it hits you directly (the former can stop your heart if the electrical potential is great enough, whereas the latter "just" causes burns and lung damage).
    $endgroup$
    – forest
    yesterday












  • $begingroup$
    Especially considering that most water you encounter day-to-day is fresh water. The human body is saltwater, which has a lower resistance, so electricity will preferentially flow through you.
    $endgroup$
    – skyler
    8 hours ago














21












21








21





$begingroup$

In something like water electricity does not "flow to ground" in a neat straight line. There is a potential difference between sections of water radiating out from the HV contact point. That might also mean that your feet are at different potentials, and there will be current flow which could be fatal. This is one reason why cows in fields can be electrocuted by a nearby lightning strike. The voltage difference between their feet can be thousands of volts.






share|improve this answer









$endgroup$



In something like water electricity does not "flow to ground" in a neat straight line. There is a potential difference between sections of water radiating out from the HV contact point. That might also mean that your feet are at different potentials, and there will be current flow which could be fatal. This is one reason why cows in fields can be electrocuted by a nearby lightning strike. The voltage difference between their feet can be thousands of volts.







share|improve this answer












share|improve this answer



share|improve this answer










answered yesterday









Dirk BruereDirk Bruere

5,77552963




5,77552963








  • 2




    $begingroup$
    It also might not flow to ground at all. If the dangling wire, for example, was connected to a UK shaver outlet (powered by an isolation transformer) then the only available path is back the other wire to the other side of the transformer.
    $endgroup$
    – J...
    yesterday










  • $begingroup$
    Yes, this. There is currently flowing out in all directions to different grounding points. If somehow floor was non-conducting and very well isolated except for a single very good ground very near the wire then most of the room might be safe, but I’m not gonna be the one to verify that.
    $endgroup$
    – John Hascall
    yesterday






  • 2




    $begingroup$
    Even humans can be electrocuted by a nearby lightning strike. Paradoxically, there are many aspects of a strike that are worse if it hits the ground near you than if it hits you directly (the former can stop your heart if the electrical potential is great enough, whereas the latter "just" causes burns and lung damage).
    $endgroup$
    – forest
    yesterday












  • $begingroup$
    Especially considering that most water you encounter day-to-day is fresh water. The human body is saltwater, which has a lower resistance, so electricity will preferentially flow through you.
    $endgroup$
    – skyler
    8 hours ago














  • 2




    $begingroup$
    It also might not flow to ground at all. If the dangling wire, for example, was connected to a UK shaver outlet (powered by an isolation transformer) then the only available path is back the other wire to the other side of the transformer.
    $endgroup$
    – J...
    yesterday










  • $begingroup$
    Yes, this. There is currently flowing out in all directions to different grounding points. If somehow floor was non-conducting and very well isolated except for a single very good ground very near the wire then most of the room might be safe, but I’m not gonna be the one to verify that.
    $endgroup$
    – John Hascall
    yesterday






  • 2




    $begingroup$
    Even humans can be electrocuted by a nearby lightning strike. Paradoxically, there are many aspects of a strike that are worse if it hits the ground near you than if it hits you directly (the former can stop your heart if the electrical potential is great enough, whereas the latter "just" causes burns and lung damage).
    $endgroup$
    – forest
    yesterday












  • $begingroup$
    Especially considering that most water you encounter day-to-day is fresh water. The human body is saltwater, which has a lower resistance, so electricity will preferentially flow through you.
    $endgroup$
    – skyler
    8 hours ago








2




2




$begingroup$
It also might not flow to ground at all. If the dangling wire, for example, was connected to a UK shaver outlet (powered by an isolation transformer) then the only available path is back the other wire to the other side of the transformer.
$endgroup$
– J...
yesterday




$begingroup$
It also might not flow to ground at all. If the dangling wire, for example, was connected to a UK shaver outlet (powered by an isolation transformer) then the only available path is back the other wire to the other side of the transformer.
$endgroup$
– J...
yesterday












$begingroup$
Yes, this. There is currently flowing out in all directions to different grounding points. If somehow floor was non-conducting and very well isolated except for a single very good ground very near the wire then most of the room might be safe, but I’m not gonna be the one to verify that.
$endgroup$
– John Hascall
yesterday




$begingroup$
Yes, this. There is currently flowing out in all directions to different grounding points. If somehow floor was non-conducting and very well isolated except for a single very good ground very near the wire then most of the room might be safe, but I’m not gonna be the one to verify that.
$endgroup$
– John Hascall
yesterday




2




2




$begingroup$
Even humans can be electrocuted by a nearby lightning strike. Paradoxically, there are many aspects of a strike that are worse if it hits the ground near you than if it hits you directly (the former can stop your heart if the electrical potential is great enough, whereas the latter "just" causes burns and lung damage).
$endgroup$
– forest
yesterday






$begingroup$
Even humans can be electrocuted by a nearby lightning strike. Paradoxically, there are many aspects of a strike that are worse if it hits the ground near you than if it hits you directly (the former can stop your heart if the electrical potential is great enough, whereas the latter "just" causes burns and lung damage).
$endgroup$
– forest
yesterday














$begingroup$
Especially considering that most water you encounter day-to-day is fresh water. The human body is saltwater, which has a lower resistance, so electricity will preferentially flow through you.
$endgroup$
– skyler
8 hours ago




$begingroup$
Especially considering that most water you encounter day-to-day is fresh water. The human body is saltwater, which has a lower resistance, so electricity will preferentially flow through you.
$endgroup$
– skyler
8 hours ago











9












$begingroup$

I think that the answer is pretty simple - you are a better conductor than fresh water. I read this somewhere and it made me giggle then: "Humans are just big bags of salt water", which is true. A current of 1 mA through the heart is enough to cause a heart attack, so at 220 V, 220 kΩ resistance is not enough. You are less than 220 kΩ, especially when in water. Skin is the only insulator we have.



Just don't try it.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$













  • $begingroup$
    Yup, this is how you can get electrocuted--you have a considerably lower resistance than fresh water so if your body can be used to go to the ground it will--the current is happy to flow up one leg and down the other.
    $endgroup$
    – Loren Pechtel
    yesterday










  • $begingroup$
    Actually this is wrong: the worst shock will happen in a slightly salty water with the same conductance as a human body. Think about impedance matching: maximum power transfer happens when Zload=Zsource.
    $endgroup$
    – Dmitry Grigoryev
    14 hours ago










  • $begingroup$
    @DmitryGrigoryev You are right.
    $endgroup$
    – Atizs
    13 hours ago
















9












$begingroup$

I think that the answer is pretty simple - you are a better conductor than fresh water. I read this somewhere and it made me giggle then: "Humans are just big bags of salt water", which is true. A current of 1 mA through the heart is enough to cause a heart attack, so at 220 V, 220 kΩ resistance is not enough. You are less than 220 kΩ, especially when in water. Skin is the only insulator we have.



Just don't try it.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$













  • $begingroup$
    Yup, this is how you can get electrocuted--you have a considerably lower resistance than fresh water so if your body can be used to go to the ground it will--the current is happy to flow up one leg and down the other.
    $endgroup$
    – Loren Pechtel
    yesterday










  • $begingroup$
    Actually this is wrong: the worst shock will happen in a slightly salty water with the same conductance as a human body. Think about impedance matching: maximum power transfer happens when Zload=Zsource.
    $endgroup$
    – Dmitry Grigoryev
    14 hours ago










  • $begingroup$
    @DmitryGrigoryev You are right.
    $endgroup$
    – Atizs
    13 hours ago














9












9








9





$begingroup$

I think that the answer is pretty simple - you are a better conductor than fresh water. I read this somewhere and it made me giggle then: "Humans are just big bags of salt water", which is true. A current of 1 mA through the heart is enough to cause a heart attack, so at 220 V, 220 kΩ resistance is not enough. You are less than 220 kΩ, especially when in water. Skin is the only insulator we have.



Just don't try it.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$



I think that the answer is pretty simple - you are a better conductor than fresh water. I read this somewhere and it made me giggle then: "Humans are just big bags of salt water", which is true. A current of 1 mA through the heart is enough to cause a heart attack, so at 220 V, 220 kΩ resistance is not enough. You are less than 220 kΩ, especially when in water. Skin is the only insulator we have.



Just don't try it.







share|improve this answer














share|improve this answer



share|improve this answer








edited 14 hours ago









Peter Mortensen

1,60031422




1,60031422










answered yesterday









AtizsAtizs

530311




530311












  • $begingroup$
    Yup, this is how you can get electrocuted--you have a considerably lower resistance than fresh water so if your body can be used to go to the ground it will--the current is happy to flow up one leg and down the other.
    $endgroup$
    – Loren Pechtel
    yesterday










  • $begingroup$
    Actually this is wrong: the worst shock will happen in a slightly salty water with the same conductance as a human body. Think about impedance matching: maximum power transfer happens when Zload=Zsource.
    $endgroup$
    – Dmitry Grigoryev
    14 hours ago










  • $begingroup$
    @DmitryGrigoryev You are right.
    $endgroup$
    – Atizs
    13 hours ago


















  • $begingroup$
    Yup, this is how you can get electrocuted--you have a considerably lower resistance than fresh water so if your body can be used to go to the ground it will--the current is happy to flow up one leg and down the other.
    $endgroup$
    – Loren Pechtel
    yesterday










  • $begingroup$
    Actually this is wrong: the worst shock will happen in a slightly salty water with the same conductance as a human body. Think about impedance matching: maximum power transfer happens when Zload=Zsource.
    $endgroup$
    – Dmitry Grigoryev
    14 hours ago










  • $begingroup$
    @DmitryGrigoryev You are right.
    $endgroup$
    – Atizs
    13 hours ago
















$begingroup$
Yup, this is how you can get electrocuted--you have a considerably lower resistance than fresh water so if your body can be used to go to the ground it will--the current is happy to flow up one leg and down the other.
$endgroup$
– Loren Pechtel
yesterday




$begingroup$
Yup, this is how you can get electrocuted--you have a considerably lower resistance than fresh water so if your body can be used to go to the ground it will--the current is happy to flow up one leg and down the other.
$endgroup$
– Loren Pechtel
yesterday












$begingroup$
Actually this is wrong: the worst shock will happen in a slightly salty water with the same conductance as a human body. Think about impedance matching: maximum power transfer happens when Zload=Zsource.
$endgroup$
– Dmitry Grigoryev
14 hours ago




$begingroup$
Actually this is wrong: the worst shock will happen in a slightly salty water with the same conductance as a human body. Think about impedance matching: maximum power transfer happens when Zload=Zsource.
$endgroup$
– Dmitry Grigoryev
14 hours ago












$begingroup$
@DmitryGrigoryev You are right.
$endgroup$
– Atizs
13 hours ago




$begingroup$
@DmitryGrigoryev You are right.
$endgroup$
– Atizs
13 hours ago











8












$begingroup$

Just being in "high voltage water" won't electrocute you, just as birds can happily perch on 10+kV power lines (and linemen can be dropped onto live lines for maintenance work), since there's no path, but as you say, there's always going to be a path to ground somewhere in that water, and so there'll be currents flowing through the water. Since that means that there's potential differences across the water at different points, you'd experience that between your feet, and since the human body is a good conductor, other than the skin, which reduces greatly in resistance when wet, that would allow possibly lethal current to flow through the torso. People can and do get electrocuted standing in salty bilge water on 24V systems on boats, it doesn't take a lot of voltage if the resistance is low enough.






share|improve this answer









$endgroup$









  • 2




    $begingroup$
    I'm pretty sure birds are safe because of their low capacitance (from their small size). It ensures very little AC current can flow through them.
    $endgroup$
    – forest
    yesterday


















8












$begingroup$

Just being in "high voltage water" won't electrocute you, just as birds can happily perch on 10+kV power lines (and linemen can be dropped onto live lines for maintenance work), since there's no path, but as you say, there's always going to be a path to ground somewhere in that water, and so there'll be currents flowing through the water. Since that means that there's potential differences across the water at different points, you'd experience that between your feet, and since the human body is a good conductor, other than the skin, which reduces greatly in resistance when wet, that would allow possibly lethal current to flow through the torso. People can and do get electrocuted standing in salty bilge water on 24V systems on boats, it doesn't take a lot of voltage if the resistance is low enough.






share|improve this answer









$endgroup$









  • 2




    $begingroup$
    I'm pretty sure birds are safe because of their low capacitance (from their small size). It ensures very little AC current can flow through them.
    $endgroup$
    – forest
    yesterday
















8












8








8





$begingroup$

Just being in "high voltage water" won't electrocute you, just as birds can happily perch on 10+kV power lines (and linemen can be dropped onto live lines for maintenance work), since there's no path, but as you say, there's always going to be a path to ground somewhere in that water, and so there'll be currents flowing through the water. Since that means that there's potential differences across the water at different points, you'd experience that between your feet, and since the human body is a good conductor, other than the skin, which reduces greatly in resistance when wet, that would allow possibly lethal current to flow through the torso. People can and do get electrocuted standing in salty bilge water on 24V systems on boats, it doesn't take a lot of voltage if the resistance is low enough.






share|improve this answer









$endgroup$



Just being in "high voltage water" won't electrocute you, just as birds can happily perch on 10+kV power lines (and linemen can be dropped onto live lines for maintenance work), since there's no path, but as you say, there's always going to be a path to ground somewhere in that water, and so there'll be currents flowing through the water. Since that means that there's potential differences across the water at different points, you'd experience that between your feet, and since the human body is a good conductor, other than the skin, which reduces greatly in resistance when wet, that would allow possibly lethal current to flow through the torso. People can and do get electrocuted standing in salty bilge water on 24V systems on boats, it doesn't take a lot of voltage if the resistance is low enough.







share|improve this answer












share|improve this answer



share|improve this answer










answered yesterday









Phil GPhil G

2,9551412




2,9551412








  • 2




    $begingroup$
    I'm pretty sure birds are safe because of their low capacitance (from their small size). It ensures very little AC current can flow through them.
    $endgroup$
    – forest
    yesterday
















  • 2




    $begingroup$
    I'm pretty sure birds are safe because of their low capacitance (from their small size). It ensures very little AC current can flow through them.
    $endgroup$
    – forest
    yesterday










2




2




$begingroup$
I'm pretty sure birds are safe because of their low capacitance (from their small size). It ensures very little AC current can flow through them.
$endgroup$
– forest
yesterday






$begingroup$
I'm pretty sure birds are safe because of their low capacitance (from their small size). It ensures very little AC current can flow through them.
$endgroup$
– forest
yesterday













7












$begingroup$


how does the electricity flow through me to electrocute me?




I already posted that picture once in a question about electric eels:



enter image description hereSource: phys.org Credit: Kenneth Catania



Electricity doesn't flow along a single preferred path, it flows in the entire water body with different intensities. If you happen to be in a path with high enough current, you'll get electrocuted.



An interesting corollary to this fact is that you'll get the worst shock when you and the water have comparable conductance. If the water is much more conductive than you, even high currents will only create a small voltage difference, which may not be harmful. If the water is much less conductive, the voltage difference may be huge, but the current will be limited.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$













  • $begingroup$
    That's a nice illustration of a tricky concept.
    $endgroup$
    – Wossname
    13 hours ago
















7












$begingroup$


how does the electricity flow through me to electrocute me?




I already posted that picture once in a question about electric eels:



enter image description hereSource: phys.org Credit: Kenneth Catania



Electricity doesn't flow along a single preferred path, it flows in the entire water body with different intensities. If you happen to be in a path with high enough current, you'll get electrocuted.



An interesting corollary to this fact is that you'll get the worst shock when you and the water have comparable conductance. If the water is much more conductive than you, even high currents will only create a small voltage difference, which may not be harmful. If the water is much less conductive, the voltage difference may be huge, but the current will be limited.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$













  • $begingroup$
    That's a nice illustration of a tricky concept.
    $endgroup$
    – Wossname
    13 hours ago














7












7








7





$begingroup$


how does the electricity flow through me to electrocute me?




I already posted that picture once in a question about electric eels:



enter image description hereSource: phys.org Credit: Kenneth Catania



Electricity doesn't flow along a single preferred path, it flows in the entire water body with different intensities. If you happen to be in a path with high enough current, you'll get electrocuted.



An interesting corollary to this fact is that you'll get the worst shock when you and the water have comparable conductance. If the water is much more conductive than you, even high currents will only create a small voltage difference, which may not be harmful. If the water is much less conductive, the voltage difference may be huge, but the current will be limited.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$




how does the electricity flow through me to electrocute me?




I already posted that picture once in a question about electric eels:



enter image description hereSource: phys.org Credit: Kenneth Catania



Electricity doesn't flow along a single preferred path, it flows in the entire water body with different intensities. If you happen to be in a path with high enough current, you'll get electrocuted.



An interesting corollary to this fact is that you'll get the worst shock when you and the water have comparable conductance. If the water is much more conductive than you, even high currents will only create a small voltage difference, which may not be harmful. If the water is much less conductive, the voltage difference may be huge, but the current will be limited.







share|improve this answer














share|improve this answer



share|improve this answer








edited 15 hours ago

























answered 15 hours ago









Dmitry GrigoryevDmitry Grigoryev

18.4k22777




18.4k22777












  • $begingroup$
    That's a nice illustration of a tricky concept.
    $endgroup$
    – Wossname
    13 hours ago


















  • $begingroup$
    That's a nice illustration of a tricky concept.
    $endgroup$
    – Wossname
    13 hours ago
















$begingroup$
That's a nice illustration of a tricky concept.
$endgroup$
– Wossname
13 hours ago




$begingroup$
That's a nice illustration of a tricky concept.
$endgroup$
– Wossname
13 hours ago











1












$begingroup$

Definitely don't try any of these things. This is definitely not intended to imply you should be complacent about any of the dangers of electricity, but there are numerous things that are often extremely wrong in movie handling of electricity, particularly in this type of scene. Often effects are used to simply make the electricity do what the story requires, so a few things:




  • Overcurrent and other fault protection: In most of the world, every circuit has over current protection and many circuits have ground fault or arc fault protection. As manufacturing capability increases, we've been able to add more ways to protect electrical installations and make them safe. In a futuristic scenario with improved technology, there is usually no reason this would have changed. Faults damage equipment, so even in a scenario where disregard for human life is written in, systems would have advanced precautions to limit property damage. At any rate, often the conductor you see creating the danger is actually a cable, with visible wires sticking out of the end, whatever the prop department thought would look cool. In many of these cases, the conductor, as presented, would have shorted between it's own conductors and tripped its overcurrent device or GFCI. In order for the conductor to stay live, something else must go wrong, like it miraculously not shorting out when being pulled loose from what it was connected to, falling, and or jiggling without shorting out on itself or touching something made of metal, or the breaker welding closed(which does occasionally happen).

  • Electricity flows more on paths of less resistance. You could place large copper wire, a wet log and a strip of asphalt side by side, and connect the same voltage at once to the ends of all three. Most of the current would flow through the copper wire, much less would flow through the wet log, and a negligible amount through the asphalt, though there would be current flow in all three. If the conductors on a broken cable have enough voltage to create CGI arcs to nearby fixtures/water/whatever things that are far away, they have enough voltage to arc to its own return conductor or ground, which is sometimes mistakenly portrayed as inches away. For its own return conductor or ground to not be the target of most arcs, a second thing has to go wrong. Those conductors have to be broken somewhere between the arcing cable and the source, somehow without damaging a single high voltage cable more than would allow it to function. Electricity will not tend to travel through a meter of air to establish an arc when a 20mm arc establishes a low impedance return path.

  • Electricity is often much more brutal and much less flashy than in the movies, and movies often portray a greater(or smaller) margin for survival than actually exists. As part of your training in electrical industries, especially in power distribution, there's a good likelihood you'll see a video of someone dying working with or around electricity. It's utterly terrible. Brutal, merciless, and not always quick. The actual speed that electricity can "change" and propagate at is fast enough to need quality examples to make it easy to comprehend. There are situations where high voltage is portrayed in movies as something that great dexterity, strength and skill can just deal with, and inevitably characters are sometimes shown doing something that would have killed or vaporized them. Sometimes with low voltage wires a character is shown killed by something that, as presented, would have a relatively low probability of being lethal. In the latter case I'm comfortable with that as laymen and professionals should treat something with a very good chance of killing them as something that will.

  • Electricity flows in loops. Each molecule, depending on bonding, nuclei, and electron shells, tends to keep roughly a certain amount of electron in each area around it. The electrons themselves are bouncing around, and when they are not held too tightly where they are, they fly freely between nearby molecules, and the limiting factor is that when/as an electron moves out of an area that "needs" an electron, forces will be exerted on other nearby electrons as well as the one flying away to pull them in and fill the gap. Depending on structure of molecule and nuclei, different materials either bind their electrons tightly(insulators) or allow them to flow more freely(conductors). When you cause electrons to flow along a wire, new ones must replace the ones that flow away. The area you are pumping the electrons to will have too many and the area you are pumping them from will not have enough. There is nowhere for the flow to go other than back to where there are too few, as all of the other molecules around have exactly enough. No loop, no current.

  • Water isn't really a good conductor. Dirty water, particularly salty water is. Pure water is not (tap water is not pure). Aside from that, if you put a generator on the shore of an ocean and strung a wire across the surface of the water to a point far out where the tip of the wire was bare, 1 meter underwater, and connected the generator to that wire and a ground rod, the generator would work to pass a current down that wire, into the water, along the earth, through the ground rod, and back to the generator, where the electrons you're pumping out need to be replaced. Because of the high(ish) conductivity of salt water, there wouldn't be high voltages/currents for too high a distance in most directions around the tip of that wire, as the flow of electrons is "attempting" to return on the shortest path possible to its source. voltage will spread out in other directions somewhat as the flowing electrons spread out to travel more freely. This is not to say that the water around the electrode is not dangerous, but to point that movies are often not specifically accurate with where current is flowing.

  • Flashy arcs and sparks - Electricity is invisible. All we can see are the effects on objects as electricity passes through them. Heat, light, motion, the occasional smell. In order to draw attention to them, arcs, sparks and flashes are often brighter than they might be in real life, or of the wrong type (explosive rather than plasma, for example). The resistivity of air is around 2100V/mm, meaning to start an arc through room temperature air, you need 2100V for every mm you want the arc to jump. Once the air starts conducting and becomes a plasma, it conducts quite well, but it takes quite a voltage to start an arc.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$









  • 8




    $begingroup$
    "•Electricity follows the path of least resistance" Not true. Give it two paths, 1000 and 1001 ohm. Does all current flow in the 1000 ohm path and no current in the 1001 ohm path?
    $endgroup$
    – winny
    18 hours ago






  • 1




    $begingroup$
    @Winny Good point. I spouted off a safety axiom in my effort to keep things simple =P. Corrected now. Please check the rephrase if you have the time =).
    $endgroup$
    – K H
    4 hours ago
















1












$begingroup$

Definitely don't try any of these things. This is definitely not intended to imply you should be complacent about any of the dangers of electricity, but there are numerous things that are often extremely wrong in movie handling of electricity, particularly in this type of scene. Often effects are used to simply make the electricity do what the story requires, so a few things:




  • Overcurrent and other fault protection: In most of the world, every circuit has over current protection and many circuits have ground fault or arc fault protection. As manufacturing capability increases, we've been able to add more ways to protect electrical installations and make them safe. In a futuristic scenario with improved technology, there is usually no reason this would have changed. Faults damage equipment, so even in a scenario where disregard for human life is written in, systems would have advanced precautions to limit property damage. At any rate, often the conductor you see creating the danger is actually a cable, with visible wires sticking out of the end, whatever the prop department thought would look cool. In many of these cases, the conductor, as presented, would have shorted between it's own conductors and tripped its overcurrent device or GFCI. In order for the conductor to stay live, something else must go wrong, like it miraculously not shorting out when being pulled loose from what it was connected to, falling, and or jiggling without shorting out on itself or touching something made of metal, or the breaker welding closed(which does occasionally happen).

  • Electricity flows more on paths of less resistance. You could place large copper wire, a wet log and a strip of asphalt side by side, and connect the same voltage at once to the ends of all three. Most of the current would flow through the copper wire, much less would flow through the wet log, and a negligible amount through the asphalt, though there would be current flow in all three. If the conductors on a broken cable have enough voltage to create CGI arcs to nearby fixtures/water/whatever things that are far away, they have enough voltage to arc to its own return conductor or ground, which is sometimes mistakenly portrayed as inches away. For its own return conductor or ground to not be the target of most arcs, a second thing has to go wrong. Those conductors have to be broken somewhere between the arcing cable and the source, somehow without damaging a single high voltage cable more than would allow it to function. Electricity will not tend to travel through a meter of air to establish an arc when a 20mm arc establishes a low impedance return path.

  • Electricity is often much more brutal and much less flashy than in the movies, and movies often portray a greater(or smaller) margin for survival than actually exists. As part of your training in electrical industries, especially in power distribution, there's a good likelihood you'll see a video of someone dying working with or around electricity. It's utterly terrible. Brutal, merciless, and not always quick. The actual speed that electricity can "change" and propagate at is fast enough to need quality examples to make it easy to comprehend. There are situations where high voltage is portrayed in movies as something that great dexterity, strength and skill can just deal with, and inevitably characters are sometimes shown doing something that would have killed or vaporized them. Sometimes with low voltage wires a character is shown killed by something that, as presented, would have a relatively low probability of being lethal. In the latter case I'm comfortable with that as laymen and professionals should treat something with a very good chance of killing them as something that will.

  • Electricity flows in loops. Each molecule, depending on bonding, nuclei, and electron shells, tends to keep roughly a certain amount of electron in each area around it. The electrons themselves are bouncing around, and when they are not held too tightly where they are, they fly freely between nearby molecules, and the limiting factor is that when/as an electron moves out of an area that "needs" an electron, forces will be exerted on other nearby electrons as well as the one flying away to pull them in and fill the gap. Depending on structure of molecule and nuclei, different materials either bind their electrons tightly(insulators) or allow them to flow more freely(conductors). When you cause electrons to flow along a wire, new ones must replace the ones that flow away. The area you are pumping the electrons to will have too many and the area you are pumping them from will not have enough. There is nowhere for the flow to go other than back to where there are too few, as all of the other molecules around have exactly enough. No loop, no current.

  • Water isn't really a good conductor. Dirty water, particularly salty water is. Pure water is not (tap water is not pure). Aside from that, if you put a generator on the shore of an ocean and strung a wire across the surface of the water to a point far out where the tip of the wire was bare, 1 meter underwater, and connected the generator to that wire and a ground rod, the generator would work to pass a current down that wire, into the water, along the earth, through the ground rod, and back to the generator, where the electrons you're pumping out need to be replaced. Because of the high(ish) conductivity of salt water, there wouldn't be high voltages/currents for too high a distance in most directions around the tip of that wire, as the flow of electrons is "attempting" to return on the shortest path possible to its source. voltage will spread out in other directions somewhat as the flowing electrons spread out to travel more freely. This is not to say that the water around the electrode is not dangerous, but to point that movies are often not specifically accurate with where current is flowing.

  • Flashy arcs and sparks - Electricity is invisible. All we can see are the effects on objects as electricity passes through them. Heat, light, motion, the occasional smell. In order to draw attention to them, arcs, sparks and flashes are often brighter than they might be in real life, or of the wrong type (explosive rather than plasma, for example). The resistivity of air is around 2100V/mm, meaning to start an arc through room temperature air, you need 2100V for every mm you want the arc to jump. Once the air starts conducting and becomes a plasma, it conducts quite well, but it takes quite a voltage to start an arc.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$









  • 8




    $begingroup$
    "•Electricity follows the path of least resistance" Not true. Give it two paths, 1000 and 1001 ohm. Does all current flow in the 1000 ohm path and no current in the 1001 ohm path?
    $endgroup$
    – winny
    18 hours ago






  • 1




    $begingroup$
    @Winny Good point. I spouted off a safety axiom in my effort to keep things simple =P. Corrected now. Please check the rephrase if you have the time =).
    $endgroup$
    – K H
    4 hours ago














1












1








1





$begingroup$

Definitely don't try any of these things. This is definitely not intended to imply you should be complacent about any of the dangers of electricity, but there are numerous things that are often extremely wrong in movie handling of electricity, particularly in this type of scene. Often effects are used to simply make the electricity do what the story requires, so a few things:




  • Overcurrent and other fault protection: In most of the world, every circuit has over current protection and many circuits have ground fault or arc fault protection. As manufacturing capability increases, we've been able to add more ways to protect electrical installations and make them safe. In a futuristic scenario with improved technology, there is usually no reason this would have changed. Faults damage equipment, so even in a scenario where disregard for human life is written in, systems would have advanced precautions to limit property damage. At any rate, often the conductor you see creating the danger is actually a cable, with visible wires sticking out of the end, whatever the prop department thought would look cool. In many of these cases, the conductor, as presented, would have shorted between it's own conductors and tripped its overcurrent device or GFCI. In order for the conductor to stay live, something else must go wrong, like it miraculously not shorting out when being pulled loose from what it was connected to, falling, and or jiggling without shorting out on itself or touching something made of metal, or the breaker welding closed(which does occasionally happen).

  • Electricity flows more on paths of less resistance. You could place large copper wire, a wet log and a strip of asphalt side by side, and connect the same voltage at once to the ends of all three. Most of the current would flow through the copper wire, much less would flow through the wet log, and a negligible amount through the asphalt, though there would be current flow in all three. If the conductors on a broken cable have enough voltage to create CGI arcs to nearby fixtures/water/whatever things that are far away, they have enough voltage to arc to its own return conductor or ground, which is sometimes mistakenly portrayed as inches away. For its own return conductor or ground to not be the target of most arcs, a second thing has to go wrong. Those conductors have to be broken somewhere between the arcing cable and the source, somehow without damaging a single high voltage cable more than would allow it to function. Electricity will not tend to travel through a meter of air to establish an arc when a 20mm arc establishes a low impedance return path.

  • Electricity is often much more brutal and much less flashy than in the movies, and movies often portray a greater(or smaller) margin for survival than actually exists. As part of your training in electrical industries, especially in power distribution, there's a good likelihood you'll see a video of someone dying working with or around electricity. It's utterly terrible. Brutal, merciless, and not always quick. The actual speed that electricity can "change" and propagate at is fast enough to need quality examples to make it easy to comprehend. There are situations where high voltage is portrayed in movies as something that great dexterity, strength and skill can just deal with, and inevitably characters are sometimes shown doing something that would have killed or vaporized them. Sometimes with low voltage wires a character is shown killed by something that, as presented, would have a relatively low probability of being lethal. In the latter case I'm comfortable with that as laymen and professionals should treat something with a very good chance of killing them as something that will.

  • Electricity flows in loops. Each molecule, depending on bonding, nuclei, and electron shells, tends to keep roughly a certain amount of electron in each area around it. The electrons themselves are bouncing around, and when they are not held too tightly where they are, they fly freely between nearby molecules, and the limiting factor is that when/as an electron moves out of an area that "needs" an electron, forces will be exerted on other nearby electrons as well as the one flying away to pull them in and fill the gap. Depending on structure of molecule and nuclei, different materials either bind their electrons tightly(insulators) or allow them to flow more freely(conductors). When you cause electrons to flow along a wire, new ones must replace the ones that flow away. The area you are pumping the electrons to will have too many and the area you are pumping them from will not have enough. There is nowhere for the flow to go other than back to where there are too few, as all of the other molecules around have exactly enough. No loop, no current.

  • Water isn't really a good conductor. Dirty water, particularly salty water is. Pure water is not (tap water is not pure). Aside from that, if you put a generator on the shore of an ocean and strung a wire across the surface of the water to a point far out where the tip of the wire was bare, 1 meter underwater, and connected the generator to that wire and a ground rod, the generator would work to pass a current down that wire, into the water, along the earth, through the ground rod, and back to the generator, where the electrons you're pumping out need to be replaced. Because of the high(ish) conductivity of salt water, there wouldn't be high voltages/currents for too high a distance in most directions around the tip of that wire, as the flow of electrons is "attempting" to return on the shortest path possible to its source. voltage will spread out in other directions somewhat as the flowing electrons spread out to travel more freely. This is not to say that the water around the electrode is not dangerous, but to point that movies are often not specifically accurate with where current is flowing.

  • Flashy arcs and sparks - Electricity is invisible. All we can see are the effects on objects as electricity passes through them. Heat, light, motion, the occasional smell. In order to draw attention to them, arcs, sparks and flashes are often brighter than they might be in real life, or of the wrong type (explosive rather than plasma, for example). The resistivity of air is around 2100V/mm, meaning to start an arc through room temperature air, you need 2100V for every mm you want the arc to jump. Once the air starts conducting and becomes a plasma, it conducts quite well, but it takes quite a voltage to start an arc.






share|improve this answer











$endgroup$



Definitely don't try any of these things. This is definitely not intended to imply you should be complacent about any of the dangers of electricity, but there are numerous things that are often extremely wrong in movie handling of electricity, particularly in this type of scene. Often effects are used to simply make the electricity do what the story requires, so a few things:




  • Overcurrent and other fault protection: In most of the world, every circuit has over current protection and many circuits have ground fault or arc fault protection. As manufacturing capability increases, we've been able to add more ways to protect electrical installations and make them safe. In a futuristic scenario with improved technology, there is usually no reason this would have changed. Faults damage equipment, so even in a scenario where disregard for human life is written in, systems would have advanced precautions to limit property damage. At any rate, often the conductor you see creating the danger is actually a cable, with visible wires sticking out of the end, whatever the prop department thought would look cool. In many of these cases, the conductor, as presented, would have shorted between it's own conductors and tripped its overcurrent device or GFCI. In order for the conductor to stay live, something else must go wrong, like it miraculously not shorting out when being pulled loose from what it was connected to, falling, and or jiggling without shorting out on itself or touching something made of metal, or the breaker welding closed(which does occasionally happen).

  • Electricity flows more on paths of less resistance. You could place large copper wire, a wet log and a strip of asphalt side by side, and connect the same voltage at once to the ends of all three. Most of the current would flow through the copper wire, much less would flow through the wet log, and a negligible amount through the asphalt, though there would be current flow in all three. If the conductors on a broken cable have enough voltage to create CGI arcs to nearby fixtures/water/whatever things that are far away, they have enough voltage to arc to its own return conductor or ground, which is sometimes mistakenly portrayed as inches away. For its own return conductor or ground to not be the target of most arcs, a second thing has to go wrong. Those conductors have to be broken somewhere between the arcing cable and the source, somehow without damaging a single high voltage cable more than would allow it to function. Electricity will not tend to travel through a meter of air to establish an arc when a 20mm arc establishes a low impedance return path.

  • Electricity is often much more brutal and much less flashy than in the movies, and movies often portray a greater(or smaller) margin for survival than actually exists. As part of your training in electrical industries, especially in power distribution, there's a good likelihood you'll see a video of someone dying working with or around electricity. It's utterly terrible. Brutal, merciless, and not always quick. The actual speed that electricity can "change" and propagate at is fast enough to need quality examples to make it easy to comprehend. There are situations where high voltage is portrayed in movies as something that great dexterity, strength and skill can just deal with, and inevitably characters are sometimes shown doing something that would have killed or vaporized them. Sometimes with low voltage wires a character is shown killed by something that, as presented, would have a relatively low probability of being lethal. In the latter case I'm comfortable with that as laymen and professionals should treat something with a very good chance of killing them as something that will.

  • Electricity flows in loops. Each molecule, depending on bonding, nuclei, and electron shells, tends to keep roughly a certain amount of electron in each area around it. The electrons themselves are bouncing around, and when they are not held too tightly where they are, they fly freely between nearby molecules, and the limiting factor is that when/as an electron moves out of an area that "needs" an electron, forces will be exerted on other nearby electrons as well as the one flying away to pull them in and fill the gap. Depending on structure of molecule and nuclei, different materials either bind their electrons tightly(insulators) or allow them to flow more freely(conductors). When you cause electrons to flow along a wire, new ones must replace the ones that flow away. The area you are pumping the electrons to will have too many and the area you are pumping them from will not have enough. There is nowhere for the flow to go other than back to where there are too few, as all of the other molecules around have exactly enough. No loop, no current.

  • Water isn't really a good conductor. Dirty water, particularly salty water is. Pure water is not (tap water is not pure). Aside from that, if you put a generator on the shore of an ocean and strung a wire across the surface of the water to a point far out where the tip of the wire was bare, 1 meter underwater, and connected the generator to that wire and a ground rod, the generator would work to pass a current down that wire, into the water, along the earth, through the ground rod, and back to the generator, where the electrons you're pumping out need to be replaced. Because of the high(ish) conductivity of salt water, there wouldn't be high voltages/currents for too high a distance in most directions around the tip of that wire, as the flow of electrons is "attempting" to return on the shortest path possible to its source. voltage will spread out in other directions somewhat as the flowing electrons spread out to travel more freely. This is not to say that the water around the electrode is not dangerous, but to point that movies are often not specifically accurate with where current is flowing.

  • Flashy arcs and sparks - Electricity is invisible. All we can see are the effects on objects as electricity passes through them. Heat, light, motion, the occasional smell. In order to draw attention to them, arcs, sparks and flashes are often brighter than they might be in real life, or of the wrong type (explosive rather than plasma, for example). The resistivity of air is around 2100V/mm, meaning to start an arc through room temperature air, you need 2100V for every mm you want the arc to jump. Once the air starts conducting and becomes a plasma, it conducts quite well, but it takes quite a voltage to start an arc.







share|improve this answer














share|improve this answer



share|improve this answer








edited 4 hours ago

























answered 22 hours ago









K HK H

2,400215




2,400215








  • 8




    $begingroup$
    "•Electricity follows the path of least resistance" Not true. Give it two paths, 1000 and 1001 ohm. Does all current flow in the 1000 ohm path and no current in the 1001 ohm path?
    $endgroup$
    – winny
    18 hours ago






  • 1




    $begingroup$
    @Winny Good point. I spouted off a safety axiom in my effort to keep things simple =P. Corrected now. Please check the rephrase if you have the time =).
    $endgroup$
    – K H
    4 hours ago














  • 8




    $begingroup$
    "•Electricity follows the path of least resistance" Not true. Give it two paths, 1000 and 1001 ohm. Does all current flow in the 1000 ohm path and no current in the 1001 ohm path?
    $endgroup$
    – winny
    18 hours ago






  • 1




    $begingroup$
    @Winny Good point. I spouted off a safety axiom in my effort to keep things simple =P. Corrected now. Please check the rephrase if you have the time =).
    $endgroup$
    – K H
    4 hours ago








8




8




$begingroup$
"•Electricity follows the path of least resistance" Not true. Give it two paths, 1000 and 1001 ohm. Does all current flow in the 1000 ohm path and no current in the 1001 ohm path?
$endgroup$
– winny
18 hours ago




$begingroup$
"•Electricity follows the path of least resistance" Not true. Give it two paths, 1000 and 1001 ohm. Does all current flow in the 1000 ohm path and no current in the 1001 ohm path?
$endgroup$
– winny
18 hours ago




1




1




$begingroup$
@Winny Good point. I spouted off a safety axiom in my effort to keep things simple =P. Corrected now. Please check the rephrase if you have the time =).
$endgroup$
– K H
4 hours ago




$begingroup$
@Winny Good point. I spouted off a safety axiom in my effort to keep things simple =P. Corrected now. Please check the rephrase if you have the time =).
$endgroup$
– K H
4 hours ago


















draft saved

draft discarded




















































Thanks for contributing an answer to Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange!


  • Please be sure to answer the question. Provide details and share your research!

But avoid



  • Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers.

  • Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience.


Use MathJax to format equations. MathJax reference.


To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers.




draft saved


draft discarded














StackExchange.ready(
function () {
StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2felectronics.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f431388%2fdoes-a-dangling-wire-really-electrocute-me-if-im-standing-in-water%23new-answer', 'question_page');
}
);

Post as a guest















Required, but never shown





















































Required, but never shown














Required, but never shown












Required, but never shown







Required, but never shown

































Required, but never shown














Required, but never shown












Required, but never shown







Required, but never shown







Popular posts from this blog

Færeyskur hestur Heimild | Tengill | Tilvísanir | LeiðsagnarvalRossið - síða um færeyska hrossið á færeyskuGott ár hjá færeyska hestinum

He _____ here since 1970 . Answer needed [closed]What does “since he was so high” mean?Meaning of “catch birds for”?How do I ensure “since” takes the meaning I want?“Who cares here” meaningWhat does “right round toward” mean?the time tense (had now been detected)What does the phrase “ring around the roses” mean here?Correct usage of “visited upon”Meaning of “foiled rail sabotage bid”It was the third time I had gone to Rome or It is the third time I had been to Rome

Slayer Innehåll Historia | Stil, komposition och lyrik | Bandets betydelse och framgångar | Sidoprojekt och samarbeten | Kontroverser | Medlemmar | Utmärkelser och nomineringar | Turnéer och festivaler | Diskografi | Referenser | Externa länkar | Navigeringsmenywww.slayer.net”Metal Massacre vol. 1””Metal Massacre vol. 3””Metal Massacre Volume III””Show No Mercy””Haunting the Chapel””Live Undead””Hell Awaits””Reign in Blood””Reign in Blood””Gold & Platinum – Reign in Blood””Golden Gods Awards Winners”originalet”Kerrang! Hall Of Fame””Slayer Looks Back On 37-Year Career In New Video Series: Part Two””South of Heaven””Gold & Platinum – South of Heaven””Seasons in the Abyss””Gold & Platinum - Seasons in the Abyss””Divine Intervention””Divine Intervention - Release group by Slayer””Gold & Platinum - Divine Intervention””Live Intrusion””Undisputed Attitude””Abolish Government/Superficial Love””Release “Slatanic Slaughter: A Tribute to Slayer” by Various Artists””Diabolus in Musica””Soundtrack to the Apocalypse””God Hates Us All””Systematic - Relationships””War at the Warfield””Gold & Platinum - War at the Warfield””Soundtrack to the Apocalypse””Gold & Platinum - Still Reigning””Metallica, Slayer, Iron Mauden Among Winners At Metal Hammer Awards””Eternal Pyre””Eternal Pyre - Slayer release group””Eternal Pyre””Metal Storm Awards 2006””Kerrang! Hall Of Fame””Slayer Wins 'Best Metal' Grammy Award””Slayer Guitarist Jeff Hanneman Dies””Bullet-For My Valentine booed at Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards””Unholy Aliance””The End Of Slayer?””Slayer: We Could Thrash Out Two More Albums If We're Fast Enough...””'The Unholy Alliance: Chapter III' UK Dates Added”originalet”Megadeth And Slayer To Co-Headline 'Canadian Carnage' Trek”originalet”World Painted Blood””Release “World Painted Blood” by Slayer””Metallica Heading To Cinemas””Slayer, Megadeth To Join Forces For 'European Carnage' Tour - Dec. 18, 2010”originalet”Slayer's Hanneman Contracts Acute Infection; Band To Bring In Guest Guitarist””Cannibal Corpse's Pat O'Brien Will Step In As Slayer's Guest Guitarist”originalet”Slayer’s Jeff Hanneman Dead at 49””Dave Lombardo Says He Made Only $67,000 In 2011 While Touring With Slayer””Slayer: We Do Not Agree With Dave Lombardo's Substance Or Timeline Of Events””Slayer Welcomes Drummer Paul Bostaph Back To The Fold””Slayer Hope to Unveil Never-Before-Heard Jeff Hanneman Material on Next Album””Slayer Debut New Song 'Implode' During Surprise Golden Gods Appearance””Release group Repentless by Slayer””Repentless - Slayer - Credits””Slayer””Metal Storm Awards 2015””Slayer - to release comic book "Repentless #1"””Slayer To Release 'Repentless' 6.66" Vinyl Box Set””BREAKING NEWS: Slayer Announce Farewell Tour””Slayer Recruit Lamb of God, Anthrax, Behemoth + Testament for Final Tour””Slayer lägger ner efter 37 år””Slayer Announces Second North American Leg Of 'Final' Tour””Final World Tour””Slayer Announces Final European Tour With Lamb of God, Anthrax And Obituary””Slayer To Tour Europe With Lamb of God, Anthrax And Obituary””Slayer To Play 'Last French Show Ever' At Next Year's Hellfst””Slayer's Final World Tour Will Extend Into 2019””Death Angel's Rob Cavestany On Slayer's 'Farewell' Tour: 'Some Of Us Could See This Coming'””Testament Has No Plans To Retire Anytime Soon, Says Chuck Billy””Anthrax's Scott Ian On Slayer's 'Farewell' Tour Plans: 'I Was Surprised And I Wasn't Surprised'””Slayer””Slayer's Morbid Schlock””Review/Rock; For Slayer, the Mania Is the Message””Slayer - Biography””Slayer - Reign In Blood”originalet”Dave Lombardo””An exclusive oral history of Slayer”originalet”Exclusive! Interview With Slayer Guitarist Jeff Hanneman”originalet”Thinking Out Loud: Slayer's Kerry King on hair metal, Satan and being polite””Slayer Lyrics””Slayer - Biography””Most influential artists for extreme metal music””Slayer - Reign in Blood””Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman dies aged 49””Slatanic Slaughter: A Tribute to Slayer””Gateway to Hell: A Tribute to Slayer””Covered In Blood””Slayer: The Origins of Thrash in San Francisco, CA.””Why They Rule - #6 Slayer”originalet”Guitar World's 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Guitarists Of All Time”originalet”The fans have spoken: Slayer comes out on top in readers' polls”originalet”Tribute to Jeff Hanneman (1964-2013)””Lamb Of God Frontman: We Sound Like A Slayer Rip-Off””BEHEMOTH Frontman Pays Tribute To SLAYER's JEFF HANNEMAN””Slayer, Hatebreed Doing Double Duty On This Year's Ozzfest””System of a Down””Lacuna Coil’s Andrea Ferro Talks Influences, Skateboarding, Band Origins + More””Slayer - Reign in Blood””Into The Lungs of Hell””Slayer rules - en utställning om fans””Slayer and Their Fans Slashed Through a No-Holds-Barred Night at Gas Monkey””Home””Slayer””Gold & Platinum - The Big 4 Live from Sofia, Bulgaria””Exclusive! Interview With Slayer Guitarist Kerry King””2008-02-23: Wiltern, Los Angeles, CA, USA””Slayer's Kerry King To Perform With Megadeth Tonight! - Oct. 21, 2010”originalet”Dave Lombardo - Biography”Slayer Case DismissedArkiveradUltimate Classic Rock: Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman dead at 49.”Slayer: "We could never do any thing like Some Kind Of Monster..."””Cannibal Corpse'S Pat O'Brien Will Step In As Slayer'S Guest Guitarist | The Official Slayer Site”originalet”Slayer Wins 'Best Metal' Grammy Award””Slayer Guitarist Jeff Hanneman Dies””Kerrang! Awards 2006 Blog: Kerrang! Hall Of Fame””Kerrang! Awards 2013: Kerrang! Legend”originalet”Metallica, Slayer, Iron Maien Among Winners At Metal Hammer Awards””Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards””Bullet For My Valentine Booed At Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards””Metal Storm Awards 2006””Metal Storm Awards 2015””Slayer's Concert History””Slayer - Relationships””Slayer - Releases”Slayers officiella webbplatsSlayer på MusicBrainzOfficiell webbplatsSlayerSlayerr1373445760000 0001 1540 47353068615-5086262726cb13906545x(data)6033143kn20030215029