I’ve always heard that electricity follows the shortest path – for instance, lightning will use your body for a conduit if you’re the tallest thing around. How exactly does that work?
In: Planetary Science
Imagine I’m pushing water into a straw, and I’ve blocked off one end. Water doesn’t go anywhere, because I’ve blocked it. Now imagine I unblock the end. Water squirts out! This is the easy case.
Now imagine I’ve put a fork in the straw so there are 2 ways out. I block both ways out and push water in. Where’s it go? Nowhere. The way out is blocked. Now imagine I unblock 1 of the 2 forks. We’d see that *some* water tries to go down the blocked fork, but it gets blocked and stops. *Most* of the water goes down the unblocked 2nd fork because it can’t fit in the blocked fork anymore.
That remains true even if we make 100 forks. Water will go down as many paths as we give it, but if the way out is blocked it will fill that space. New water will try to go that way, but the water that’s already there will block it so it’ll try somewhere else. If any path is unblocked, the water that takes that path will get to pass. If many paths are unblocked, some water will go down each path.
Electricity follows those rules. It doesn’t “know” or “think”. It just is, and if you think through the Physics involved this is the only way it *could* work.
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