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.
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