How far do electric currents travel in water? If I throw a toaster in the ocean, what would the impact be, if any?
In: Biology
Electricity flows in a loop. Your toaster has exposed wires inside of it that form a large loop, folded up into a small box. If you dropped that toaster into saltwater, the electricity would largely just continue to go through the toaster. Some might take a slightly more direct path through the water from one end of the toaster to the other, but almost none of it will reach out more than a dozen inches from the device. After all, that would be a very very indirect way to get from one end to the other.
In a home, there’s the added risk that your overall electrical system is indirectly hooked up to the home plumbing, so instead of running from one end of the toaster to the other, some electricity runs from one end of the toaster to your piping. That’s a much larger area, and way easier to unwittingly find yourself to be a part of.
This is to say that electricity create smallish, almost deliberate, zones of hazard. It’s very dangerous, for something we deal with every day, but it isn’t exactly consistent – you might will not even notice if a live wire touched your bathwater. Or you could die very painfully. It depends a lot on the path that the electricity ends up taking, and where in that path your body winds up.
If it was a magical almost infinite power toaster then it could kill a human in about 100 meters radius(as evident from recorded lighting strike effects). More realistically a toaster will blow a fuse at way lower current than lightning produces and would only reach a meter or two.
Electricity is the flow of electrons. Electrons flow through the path of least resistance. Electrons aren’t going to flow from California to China in a circuit when it’s easier for it to wait for the next ones to flow nearby. They’ll flow through nearby waters but only a few feet away from it. As you get further away there will be less and less electron flow until it becomes immeasurable.
Electric currents in water behave a bit like ripples in a pond; they spread out from the source but weaken as they get farther away. Water conducts electricity due to minerals and salts dissolved in it, which carry the electrical charge. However, the conductivity of water can vary significantly based on these minerals and salts.
When you throw a toaster into the ocean and it’s plugged in and turned on (hypothetically, because this is dangerous and shouldn’t be tried!), it introduces electricity into the water. Saltwater, like ocean water, is a good conductor because of its high salt content. This means the current can travel further in the ocean than in freshwater. However, even in saltwater, the current quickly dissipates over distance and depth, weakening significantly. The amount of electrical current the toaster can emit before its internal circuit breaker trips or it otherwise fails also matters. Household appliances don’t carry enough current to affect a large area of the ocean. The area immediately around the toaster (a few meters at most) would be dangerous to marine life and humans due to the potential for electric shock. Beyond this small zone, the electricity’s intensity quickly drops off to non-dangerous levels.
So, if you were to throw a toaster in the ocean, the impact would be localized and wouldn’t spread very far at all.
Let me say, in no uncertain terms,
DO NOT TRY THE FOLLOWING!
[https://youtu.be/dcrY59nGxBg?si=2dR91vi_dsHZeOtZ](https://youtu.be/dcrY59nGxBg?si=2dR91vi_dsHZeOtZ)
TL;DW: Electricity and water don’t mix well, but they also don’t mix the way you see in movies and TV.
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