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
Simply put, the voltage (electrical potential energy), is finding a more direct (easier) path to ground through you. If it continues through the wires, it’d end up also having to deal with whatever loads are on those wires, assuming there are any loads at all. So the voltage can take a path through, say, a heater or motor with lots of resistance, or you with less resistance. Doesn’t matter much that the wires leading there are low resistance.
There’s more details to it but I’ll leave that to someone more familiar with electrical circuits.
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