# Question about electrical shock.

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Ok, me and my girlfriend were arguing about this question. If 3 people were holding hands and one person stuck his finger in a electrical socket, would all 3 people get shocked and get hurt. what she heard is that the middle person would not get hurt but the first and third person would. what is correct and could you explain. thanks alot.

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the three would get hurt almost equal depending of the resistence the oppose to the current but mmm perhaps the peoples in the extemes would feel it more cause the "caliber" or the figer is shorter than the one of the hands.

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Depends on the resistance of each person with respect to ground. The person with the least amount of resistance, say for example someone with wet bare feet , would feel the most current going through them. The person with the most rubber on their feet would fell the least. There are other factors, like humidity and how tight you hold each other hands. But lets just say all things equal, like all wearing same exact shoe and there is no resistance between all your hands, theoretically you would all feel the same amount of current.

Net

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I remember, in grade school science, we formed a line and held hands. The student on the end touched a vandigraph machine. You could feel the current travel through the chain, but the person on the end got the worst of it. Static is fun stuff!

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I was told that static electricity does damage to the body! Does it? Or is it an old wives' tale?

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Not unless you've got a huge Van de Graff (sp?) generator capable of generating some rather large potentials

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It's Van de Graaf.

I don't see the logic in saying that the middle person would be fine. It depends. If one is standing on an insulator, than the electricity would keep going on down the line. If you are standing on a conductor, then you will discharge the electricity into the ground and nobody else will feel it (path of least resistance).

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Current doesn't just take the path of least resistance, it takes all paths of resistance to its source, not to the ground.

If a person or in this case a series of persons come in contact with an energized component of an electrical system and are insulated from a conductive path to the source, no potential will exist, and in effect no current will flow and no shock will occur.

Most systems in the US have significant system grounding to Earth and in some cases to the buiding foundation and structural supports. There is a possibility that a very high resistance path could be created through one if not all the persons in contact with ground in the case of standing on a concrete floor or the Earth itself.

A scenior that would certainly cause for all persons to receive shock is by having the last person in line in contact with a object that is bonded to the electrical grounding system, like an appliance. This way a return path for current exists and current will use the persons as a conductor.

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so your saying that the first person would get a shock, but the others wouldn't? anyone else agree?

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Imagine a simple circuit consisting of resistors in a series/parallel configuration. Current will flow thorugh each resistor. The amount of current depends on the connected voltage and the value of resistance of the resistor.

Each person can be assumed to be a resistor that is in series with each other and possibly in parallel with the circuit. The typical resistace of a human person can range from 1,000 ohm to 100,000 ohm.

In all likely-hood, the last person would receive the least amount of shock potential from the series of voltage drops that would occur across each person. If the voltage reduces to under 40-volts, it would no longer be lethal.

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I was told that static electricity does damage to the body! Does it? Or is it an old wives' tale?

Static discharge or better described as charge separation can be very dangerous. Tall light poles that do not have effective bonding to the earth can build up a lethal amount of charge. Electrical installers prevenmt this occurance by addding equipment bonding conductors with the circuit conductors to assist in "bleeding" off this separaion charge. Ground rods bonded to the pole can also be effective.

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Wow! I never knew that

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I got a bit carried away, but check out the diagrams I made. I think you'll get a kick out of these.

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Excellent work!

and be blown if I can be bothered to retype my explaination again! nice one Dryan )

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and be blown if I can be bothered to retype my explaination again! nice one Dryan )

Has it been deleted?

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yes and no, the database on the server went down and lost 2 days worth of work, not just mine, everyones.

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so why yes and no? Its yes!

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yes it was lost, but it wasnt technicaly deleted per se, as that implies a deliberate action. and Im confident it was just an accident

ok!

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The problem with rolling back to an older verison of the database is that we won't remember making a good deal of the missing posts, so won't notice they are missing

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I posted the pictures a few days ago, and they were deleted, too. I wasn't sure what happened. (Maybe they were too large and were moderated/deleted?) It wasn't until I read one of YT's posts that keyed me in on what happened, and I decided to repost.

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