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
It’s sort of like how water flows downhill – the water is pulled by gravity in all directions, but streams form where there isn’t stuff in the way. Electricity is caused by the movement of electrons. The electrons don’t know which path is the shortest, nor do they act collectively. Each one just tries to move away from negative charges and towards positive charges. More of them can flow through a conductor so they collectively end up taking the path of least resistance.
Lightning is kind of a special case though because air is a very poor conductor, until it is ionized, when it becomes a very good conductor.
So lightning is a kind of complex process that involves electrons moving into the air and then suddenly forming a conductive path when they find a connection to the ground
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