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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Electricity is the flow from an area of many electrons to an area of few electrons.
Earth, compared to most anything on it, always has few electrons.
An “insulator” is a substance with either enough electrons, a slight abundance itself, or is merely non-interactive with electrons.
Electrons always follow the path of least resistance.
So it isn’t that the electrons “know” but more that an insulator is not a path electrons can follow. It is a cap versus being a hose.
Say you’re standing barefoot. The live wire is a high-potential or high-voltage or high-electron thing insulated by the air.
You are mostly water and water with electrolytes – your skin and salts in your body – is a very good conductor.
To electricity, you are another peice of hose running into the ground where the electrons can go and spread out and bot be so tightly packed together.
Put on rubber shoes and these cap you off from the earth.
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