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 you’re sitting in traffic. There are three lanes in front of you, all full of cars. You don’t know what’s at the end of the road causing the traffic jam, and honestly you don’t really care. but from where you’re sitting you can see that the rightmost lane is moving the fastest. So you obviously get in that lane, because it will get you to where you want to go faster than the other paths.
Electricity is the same way. The flow of electricity isn’t one electron running the entire path at once, it’s a huge line of electrons that can’t move until the electrons in front of them move first. Each electron is “looking” only at it’s immediate vicinity, and making it’s “choice” of path based on how the electrons in front of them move. In this analogy, your body is a shortcut to the end of the road that flows much faster than just empty air. The electrons immediately next to your body flow through the shortcut, and the electrons immediately behind them just follow.
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