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 has a place that it starts from, and a place that it wants to get back to (the hot prong and the neutral prong of an outlet, for example).
Whenever it sees a conductive path that goes where it wants to go, it moves along that. The more conductive the path, the more electricity moves. If there are multiple paths, the electricity divides itself up proportionate to how easy/conductive the various paths are. You’re only in trouble if your body is a significant part of an easy path (or, by degrees, if there is a lot of electricity). In a massive lake, you’re relatively unimportant. There are plenty of better paths for the electricity to take.
EDIT: good chance the breaker has already tripped by the time a massive lake is involved anyway.
EDIT EDIT: this is the same principle that explains why a bird can sit on a bare high-voltage wire and not get electrocuted.
Last night we had 4 inches of water in our basement in Brooklyn. I unplugged a power strip that was completely submerged and still functioning. The reset light was still on.
I had a weird experience one day at the lake. There was a big crowd and people had their boats on the lake. Suddenly I began to feel the weirdest thing. I kept getting cramps on the feet and toes and sometimes other parts of my body. It turns out there was a boat I was near that had a short and a cable was in the water from the battery. I’ve been shocked by a car/boat battery before and this was way milder. So yeah, the more water the more things are are in direct contact with electricity, the less intense it is.
As others said it’s because the current is spread out in the water. Similar to how lighting can hit the ocean and you’re fine.
Electricity takes the path of least resistance. Human bodies have more resistance than water. So if somebody jumps in to an energized pool, they likely won’t be affected. If they step in to the pool, they may complete a circuit and become the path of least resistance.
In theory, so long as you’re not completing a circuit, you can hold bare-energized wire and not get a shock.
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