Or will it nevertheless go through my body and wreak havoc like it normally would?
I’m not actually planning on conducting (pun intended) this experiment, just wondering whether the electricity could be “guided” through the body in any predictable way.
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Electricity takes the shortest path, or more correctly, the path of least resistance. Assuming you don’t have metal implants in your hands, that’s the same as the shortest distance. However, I doubt you have enough power in your electrical source to even travel inches through your hand.
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If you touch an electric fence this way, your hand will take the vast majority of it, but you’ll still feel it up to your shoulder.
Yes, assuming that there are no other paths (i.e. your feet to ground) the electricity will only travel through your hand. The rest of your body will become *energized* but if no current will flow if there’s nowhere for it to flow to.
This is the reasoning behind the rule about keeping one hand in your pocket when working around electricty, as a shock between your left hand and your right hand puts your heart directly into the pathway between them.
Also, while you specify touching a conductive material, it will only cause a shock if there is an electric pathway through that material. Let’s say you’re standing on dry wood in rubber boots and you touch a 240V wire and a copper pipe that’s sitting on a plastic bucket. Your risk of shock is very low, but both you and the copper pipe will be energized to 240V. If that copper pipe falls and touches the dirt, you’re in for a bad time (Please don’t actually attempt…)
If the very conductive material isn’t grounded then nothing will happen. It’s like if you had braces for your teeth and you only grabbed a hot wire, you won’t suddenly be electrocuted because your mouth is in contact with something highly conductive.
People keep saying “path of least resistance” and that’s just wrong. Current will travel through any path it can. If your feet are also grounded, electricity absolutely will travel through your body. The key here is that electricity will *favor* a path with less resistance, so more current will go through the shorter path, but by no means does electricity only take one path when there are multiple options
I can say from experience that it will just go through your hand. Back when I was in 9th grade science, our classroom was setup so we had three long rows of continuous tables where there was an outlet and a sink for each group of two students (who were lab partners). There was one two week period where the teacher was out, and we had a different sub each day. We started figuring out all kinds of crazy shit to do. I figured out that if you took a spiral notebook, and pulled the end out a bit to make it straight, you could put the spiral in the socket, and then touch the metal faucet on the sink, and if you did it with the same hand, yes, it would send a shock through your hand. If you did it with the other hand, it would send a shock across your arms and chest to the other hand. If you touched the spiral and held hands with someone who touched a sink, it would go through both of you. The longest we got was a chain of 15 people all holding hands while I touched the spiral and the 15th touched the faucet at his sink, and it went through all of us.
For those curious, it was a pretty weak shock, like definitely noticeable, but not something that hurt or jarred you.
It is a mix of both.
Depending on like what clothes and shoes you are wearing, it might be like 99% straight through your hand, and 1% through your body. (I made up those numbers, but I think they demonstrate the point.)
My hunch is that because your hand span is so much shorter, and you are probably wearing shoes, that the vast majortiy of the energy dissipates through your hand and you’ll probably not suffer ‘havoc’ to your internal organs. But I wouldn’t take that as a guarantee.
Especially since your heart is a bit vulnerable, so even a small current through the heart can be a big problem, so the difference between survival and death might be pretty delicate. (Like, perhaps, you might die if you are standing barefoot in a wet pudddle, and easily survive if you have rubber-soled shoes, and anything in between might be varying level of risk.)
Too many answers saying that the current will travel only through your hand, thus not wreaking any havoc. This is both wrong and dangerous.
Current will flow ANYWHERE in your body.
Any possible path connecting the two fingers will see current flowing through.
Supposing DC and our body to be perfectly homogeneous, then the longest the imaginary path, the lowest the current, but there will always be some. You’ll have most of the current flowing through your hand, but some through your heart and even your feet.
Speaking about damage, that depend on the source. But if the voltage is high enough (and the current is not limited) then sure you can have damage anywhere in your body
Having been present at a fatal electrocution and having worked in biomedical engineering can I say just don’t
The body is not made of copper, talking about circuits is a false analogy, the r/medizzy sub has spectacular examples of electricity and sodium interactions and the results a generally not recommended if you want to remain healthy
Yes I saw op was not intending to try this thought experiment but get rid of the wire analogy, please.
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