How does electricity figure out if you’re standing on an insulator or not?

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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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Anonymous 0 Comments

Similar to how others have mentioned another way to look at it is like water (funny enough a lot of equations for fluids and electricity are similar and they actually behave very similar).

In your own example of standing on a chair and touching a live wire, the electricity is already completing a circuit through the wire and back to “ground”. You can think of the same example as a pipe with water coming to a T- junction. One of the 2 paths is closed off, which is the same as what the electricity encounters with you versus continuing down the wire. High resistance in a circuit is like hitting a brick wall.

That said, just like in a pipe with water, if you increase and increase and increase the flow rate (gallons/minute for example), the pressure will increase because the resistance (size of the pipe) remains the same. Eventually it will break through that wall of the blocked path at the T- junction and flow down the other path as well.

The flow rate, or current (amperes) in the case of electricity, works the same way. Increasing the current or potential difference (voltage e.g. pressure) high enough, itll flow through you and the chair.

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