Eli5: how come you dont get shocked when you hold youre fingers on two ends of a battery?
In: Physics
Your skin is an electrical insulator meaning that electricity does not go through it. With enough voltage the electricity can jump through your skin but a battery does not provide enough voltage to do that. But even if you hold it to a wound, wet skin or something a small battery is not able to provide enough electricity to shock you. The most you can get is some tingling, if you try it on your tung you may taste salt, but other then that it is not noticeable.
The voltage is too low and the electrical resistance of the skin too high to allow a significant current to flow.
You would need a significantly higher voltage to feel anything, because the normal electrical resistance of your body is too high for much current to pass through you, significantly less than a milliamp, which is around the lowest amount that you can notice.
If you want a shock of around a milliamp or two, grab a 9-volt battery, which has both of its terminals on the same side, and touch the terminals with your tongue. Your tongue, coated in saliva, has a much lower resistance than your normal skin, so you’ll feel a tiny shock – slightly unpleasant, but not harmful. DO NOT do this with a bigger battery. It’s a cheap way to test a 9-volt without pulling out a multimeter, if you’ve done it a few times and know the difference between a strong charge, weak charge, and no charge.
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