why can you touch both sides of a 9V battery, you can even do it with a wet tongue and hardly get shocked, but a taser with that same battery can knock you out?
In: Chemistry
A little complicated and I’ll try to manage, but basically shocks are felt based on the amount of current that can run through you body. Think of it like a river, the faster that water can move down the river the bigger the chance of you being swept away with it if you stand in it.
Now think of your body as a dam, skin and even the tongue has thousands to millions of Ohms of resistance which restricts or resists that flow of water. So putting two and two together with a 9 V battery causes a very tiny amount of current to flow therefore no shock felt.
A taser is fairly different from just a battery since it’s able to create audible sparks of electricity. In order to make that spark it needs to literally break through air and make it to the other tip of metal. The resistance of air is crazy high and it’s the reason why the area where it sparks is very small. So in order to cross the gap that taser needs more voltage, something better than just a 9 V battery so it amplifies it (using complicated circuits and things that took me a year just to understand). This essentially changes a 9V battery into a car battery for just a small amount of time meaning that for maybe a couple tiny milliseconds if you taser someone they’re getting massive amount of current compared to just a 9 V battery.
Tl:dr things inside of a taser boosts a 9 V battery and gives you bigger shocks
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