So electricity always tries to find the fastest way to ground right? So say you get shocked and it goes through you. Where does electricity go when it goes into the ground. Thank you
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Electricity is a flow of electrons. Electrons are tiny things and they have a property called charge (a charge of -1). Stuff is also made up of protons, which also have a charge (of +1) – and neutrons, but they have no charge so we’re going to ignore them. Stuff with positive charge is pulled towards stuff with negative charge and vice versa, while being pushed away from other stuff with positive charge.
So you can think of it as having a room full of two kinds of people, where each person wants to be as close a possible to the other kind of people, while as far away as possible from their kind of person (but where one kind of person – the protons – generally can’t move much).
Generally what happens is they pair up (or cluster up), so that overall everything evens out, and everyone is as happy as possible. If there is an imbalance, things will move around to try to gain balance.
So what this means is that if you have an area with more electrons than protons (so negatively charged), electrons will try to escape – ideally to find somewhere with more protons than electrons (positively charged) or, at best, somewhere with a smaller number of extra electrons (i.e. less negatively charged).
Electricity works by creating areas where there are way too many extra electrons at one part of a circuit, and way too few at another part, and so the electrons will rush around the circuit, and we can take energy out from that (kind of like water flowing down the side of a mountain, and turning a water wheel on the way).
When we talk about something being “grounded” or “earthed”, what we mean is that it is connected to the Earth (directly or indirectly). The Earth is really big. Like, massively, hugely big. Which means it can afford to gain a few extra electrons, or lose a few extra electrons, without any part of it getting too charged (as the remaining electrons have a large space to spread out over).
However, electrons can’t just move through anything – well, they can, but it takes more of a push or pull to get them to move through some stuff than other things. Air, for example, is pretty hard for electrons to move through (but with enough of a push it can – which is what sparks and lightning are). Humans aren’t that great, but are more conductive to electrons than air. Most metals are really great for it, and electrons can zoom through them.
So when you get shocked you have touched something that had either too many or too few electrons, so that either more electrons want to rush to it, or electrons are desperate to get off it. Not desperate enough to jump through air, but desperate enough to go through a person. Depending on whether the thing is positively or negatively charged, either some electrons from the ground (where there are plenty of spare electrons) will rush up through you onto it (if it was positively charged), or some will rush away from the object through you into the ground (where there is plenty of space for extra electrons). And when they flow through the point of contact between you and the object they may burn a bit, because of the energy they have (like that water wheel).
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