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
People rarely get “glued” to an electricuting object. It depends on the type of electricity.
DC (direct current) will cause muscles to contract because it is a constant flow of electricity, which makes the muscles seize in one position.
Household electricity is AC (alternating current), and it makes muscles spasm 50 to 60 times a second because that is how many pulses and direction changes happen. Each time the direction changes, muscles that were closed then open, and ones that are open then close. It is nearly impossible to get the “glued” effect in the average home. If the electricity flows through the person heart, then that can kill someone. That only happens when 2 separate limbs are touching different sides of a circuit. This mostly only happens when standing in water, but will also happen if someone grabs a live wire with 2 hands.
Note: high voltage AC will act like DC
Edit: mobile typo
“I have seen lots of electrocution videos…”
By choice?
Your brain uses small amounts of electricity to make your muscles move. If you grab a live wire, a much larger amount of electricity flows through your body, so it hits your muscles like a much stronger version of the signals from your brain, causing them to contract as much as they possibly can — and they’ll stay contracted as long as the electricity is there. So the “glue” is that you’d be involuntarily gripping the wire as hard as you can, without being able to relax your hand, and as long as you’re touching it, the electricity keeps flowing.
We had a science teacher that had an aquarium with coins in the bottom full of salt water I think it was and some electrodes, you got to keep what ever coins you could grab, spoiler alert no one ever got any coins, even if you tried to squeeze your hands on each side of the glass as soon as it was in the water you would make a fist.
They don’t get glued, their muscles contract. If they’re holding something with their hand, it will close until the electricity stops running through it. If they stand on something, their leg muscles will contract and stiff up not allowing them to move.
In the field if I had to check for leaky voltage, I would touch the surface with the back of my hand. This made sure that if I felt the shock my hand wouldn’t close towards the surface.
As others have said, it’s down to muscle contraction. I’ll add that in my experience, the “hangover” from being electrocuted and from a seizure is almost identical. Feels like you were trampled by marathon runners.
If that didn’t happen, they would be ok, and you wouldn’t be seeing it in an electrocution video.
This is more likely with DC power than AC. DC scares me; it will make your muscles contract, causing you to grab on tight to the source of the danger, but not knock you out, so you actually feel your skin roasting.
In older telecom facilities, there was safety gear located every X number of feet. One of the items in each kit was an old-style wooden cane. In the event that a person came into contact with electricity or there was a conductor in a hazardous position, the cane could be used to move the person or conductor to a less-dangerous position.
AC power is more likely to cause either something akin to paralysis, or a muscle convulsion (aka me when I accidentally laid my hand on an exposed 240v circuit and ended up landing about six feet away)
>I have seen lots of electrocution videos
Did LiveLeak come back or something, what I miss?
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