So as we know for a person to get electrocuted a circuit needs to be completed. You cannot stand on a wooden chair and get electrocuted. So when you stand on a wooden chair and touch a live wire, how does the electricity figure out that you’re standing on an insulator? Does the electricity pass through you first before failing to complete the circuit because of the wood?
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It doesn’t.
A high voltage wire is in a higher “state”, than everything around it. Imagine the wire like an oxygen tank. The high voltage means the electrons, like the air, is under high pressure. It wants to go anywhere there’s low pressure/voltage. *
Air in the oxygen tank wants to get out everywhere. But the tanks walls don’t let the air out. If you open the valve, there’s only one way out, the valve. The air doesn’t “figure out” where the valve is, but it’s the only way out.
Same with insulators/conductors. Electricity will try to make any path to close the loop. The conductor is the easiest path, so most of the electricity will flow that way.
Note that I said most, not all. No insulator is perfect. Any insulator will leak small amounts of electricity. Furthermore, insulators can catastrophically break down. This is called dielectric breakdown, and when you see electric arcs or lightning bolts, this is what’s happening. The voltage is so high, and the electric fields are so strong, air will ionize and turn into a conductor. This would be the oxygen tank exploding.
*This isn’t a perfect analogy as in electrical systems the loop needs to close. If you touch the high voltage end of a battery, you’ll get energized to a high voltage state, but because there’s not electrical path back to the negative terminal, no current will flow. But in your high voltage state, it’s really easy to get an unforeseen leakage path, so don’t do this at home.
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