I have encountered several articles and posts saying that what electrocute you and cause death is actually not the voltage but the current instead but is not clear to me how this works.
In: Physics
Ohm’s law says that voltage is equal to current times resistance. Saying “it’s the current that kills” is very misleading because you cannot have lethal current through your body without lethal voltage driving it.
The reason this myth gets spread is because there are many high voltage sources that cannot supply enough current for long enough to kill you. Take a static shock for example. Let’s say a doorknob and your finger have 1000 volts between them. You go to touch the doorknob and get shocked. The shock happens and the voltage between the doorknob and your finger drops to zero almost instantly. If there were a power supply keeping the doorknob at 1000 volts you would be dead.
Wait, the doorknob was at 1000V and it didn’t kill you! But the doorknob was only at 1000V for a fraction of a millisecond and the average power was minuscule.
Current and voltage are related and both kill. However, some sources don’t have the required power to kill you.
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