I swear this isn’t a troll question, it’s always been my understanding that electricity takes the path of least resistance, and silver is one of the best conducting metals, so if you did the sterotypical stick a fork in a power socket why does the power do anything to you when it can go through the much less resistive silver?
In: Physics
It depends on how the fork is stuck into the socket.
In most countries, an electrical socket has three contacts: Hot, Neutral and Ground.
I’ll stick to North American sockets, because those are the ones I know.
If everything’s really wired up correctly in a North American socket, the Neutral and Ground should be tied together at the breaker panel, so there should be no harm in connecting Neutral to Ground. And indeed if you connect either one of those to Hot, the electricity should preferentially flow through the fork, making a nasty arc and popping the circuit breaker.
It’s comparatively much more dangerous to touch only the Hot: Depending on things like the material the floor is built out of, the material your shoes are made of, or if another part of your body is touching something grounded like a faucet knob or the side of your oven… you may conduct enough electricity well enough that you’ll be able to feel it, or it might even injure or kill you.
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