eli5 Why is touching a live wire dangerous? Doesn’t electricity take the path of least resistance? Wouldn’t your hand be a much worse conductor than a copper wire?
In: Engineering
Two misconceptions here: Electricity takes all paths in proportion to how well they conduct electricity, and the hot wire doesn’t normally drop in voltage much when loads are added. It does drop a little because the wires aren’t superconductors, but anything drawing enough current to drop it a lot will trip the breaker from overcurrent.
The resistance of your body also isn’t a single fixed value, the resistance of your skin especially changes drastically with how wet it is, and high voltages will break the skin down and decrease the resistance further.
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