Why do electrocuted people get “glued” to the electrocuting object?

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I have seen lots of electrocution videos where the victims get “glued” to the very object that killed them, like electricity poles, to the point that they stay in the air and not fall on the ground. How/Why?

In: Physics

29 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Your brain uses electrical impulses to tell your muscles when to contract. Muscles only pull and relax, they don’t push, so we have opposing muscles for every joint. E.g. bicep and tricep oppose each other trying to bend your elbow.

Forcing a ton of electricity through your body tends to overpower those signals and causes all of your muscles to contract, preventing them from relaxing. Given that our biceps tend to be stronger than our triceps, we usually end up bending our elbows. Similarly, the tendons that tighten our grip tends to be stronger than the tendons that open our grip (who’s ever exercised the reverse grip motion?). This causes our hands to clamp down in a tight grip.

This is part of why electrocution is so damn dangerous. It causes horrible burns and damage, yet at the same time it causes our body to lock up instead of recoil from the pain.

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