I watched a veritasium video when he explained that the energy is flowing as a field around the wire- how can things get near the wire then without getting shocked?
In: Physics
The shock isn’t from the electric field, it’s from charge (current) entering your body. You need to be close enough to the wire that electrons can jump from the wire to your body, which pretty much means you have to be touching it, unless the voltage is incredibly high.
It’s the same reason the current travels through the wire in the first place. It can keep going through metal as long as all the metal is touching, but even a small gap in the wires will break the circuit.
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