Eli5- In electrical wiring, does some electricity dissipate into the surrounding material, like water/air/insulation?

Question

Eli5- In electrical wiring, does some electricity dissipate into the surrounding material, like water/air/insulation?

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Answer 1

Electricity is really a field induced by flux in conductive material. So it doesn’t “leak” like water, but it does “leak” like light, if you equate conduction with transparency/translucency. So any “black” insulator isn’t going to bleed off any of the force from the electrical field, but any material in the field with a low enough resistance will use some of the energy, usually to generate heat (moving atoms).