Okay, so what I would like explained is why does it not affect you when you’re not grounded? In my mind, the opposite would make more sense. Like say you touched an electric wire while standing on the ground, I would imagine the electricity would travel through you and into the ground causing little to no pain. While if you were not grounded and touched a wire, the electricity would have no where to go then it would shoot out of your body or something, but unless I’m mistaken, thats not how it works. Are there any exceptions for this, like say if theres enough volts could it kill you even if you weren’t grounded ? Like if I wasn’t grounded and got hit by lightning it would still probably kill me, right? Also how does grounding work? isn’t everything grounded other than planes or helicopters? I have 0 experience with anything electrical and no idea if its even considered physics so apologies if these are dumb questions- also ESL so sorry for any grammatical errors.
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The thing that causes the damage and pain is the passage of the electricity through your body. (Think of it like a carpet burn, it only hurts if you have both enough pressure (voltage) and movement (current)).
It’s always looking for a pathway to a lower voltage. If you are off the ground, then the flow won’t pass through you as there is nowhere for it to go. It doesn’t just pile up inside you, it flows somewhere else.
However If the voltage is high enough, and you are off the ground, you could still be electrocuted if your body offers a lower resistance path to a point closer to the ground than the air around you. It’s just that this is an unlikely situation to find yourself in.
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