There has been so much flooding recently, and Im just wondering about how if a house floods, or any other building floods, how are people even able to stand in that water and not be electrocuted?
Aren’t plugs and outlets and such covered in water and therefore making that a really big possibility?
In: 11434
Electricity really wants to go to the ground. In house wiring, one wire will be “hot” and the other will be connected to the ground. Electricity goes through whatever you plugged in, because that’s the easiest path to the ground.
When the whole thing is covered in dirty water, the easiest path to ground is usually right across the water to the other wire, so a bunch of current flows that way. That usually overloads the system and trips the breakers, shutting off the power. You can still be shocked, though, if you’re near a wire in the water, because you might be an easier path to ground, and the electricity will flow through you instead.
Technically, the electricity takes *all* of the available paths to ground, but that’s a little over ELI5, and *most* of it takes the easiest path anyway. Also, pure water isn’t a very good conductor, but flood water is pretty much the opposite of pure.
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