“Path of least resistance” thinking kills people. Electricity takes ALL paths available to it, inversely proportional to their resistance.
Under high voltage the current still follows the path of least resistance even when it looks like it does not. What people don’t think about is that resistance is not a constant and under strong enough electric field dielectric materials (isolators if you will) can loose their propeties. Strong enough field can rip electrons from elements causing ionisation. Other things such as temperature, mechanical stress, radiation also affect different materials.
So what high voltage changes is making it harder to resist, but charge will still follow least resistance and aim to go for the nearest lest resistance material if such is available.
PS: I have studied all of this in a different language so I may have mixed up some of the terminology in English
The problem is “path of least resistance” implies that there is only one path, which laymen tend to take literally. I go for bike rides along a canal which also has high voltage power lines running above it. If I hold my handlebars just right, with my hands just barely touching the metal of my brake levers, the (I assume) corona discharge gets rather painful. “Path of least resistance” seems like it should be confined to the wire, but in fact includes ~100 feet of air between wire and ground… And me.
… Wow. That’s… Wow. An extreme warning sign for me in my work.
RF: this wire is too bendy for me go get through
High voltage: “I am still taking the path of least resistance. If you wanted me to use a wire, then you should have given me an appropriate wire.”
(⚡🔌two seasons of sliding the same two pictures back and forth)
You cannot travel this path it is air, air is a resistor, Mwahaha!
I will make it conductive!
W, What are you doing?!
I am adding so much energy to the nitrogen in the air that electrons themselves are stripped from the atoms, ionizing the gas and creating PLASMA! a new fourth state of matter!
Ground yourself You Fool! you’re going to get us all killed!
I would rather explode than exist in your completed loop of isolation from the outside!
(🎶Heroic animé music playing🎶) (💥Epic over the top fight scene💥)
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Super
Khan, you are a banana.
Pretty much my day job. Really, really angry electrons.
Therapists deal with angry action potentials.
Any path will do. Even if its straight through you.
Oooooooh yeeeaaahh haaaa
Everything is a good conductor if the voltage is high enough
Neutron star?
Yes, but at that point it’s not really voltage anymore. It would be more like a rapidly expanding cloud of electrons ionizing anything it came across.
It could be more focused though a magnetar though, and a magnetar might conduct the ionised plasma nearby, or even through the galaxy in interactions with the local supermassive black hole.
“I AM the wire!”
“Yeah, well, I’m gonna go build my own wire! With ions! And plasma!”
Nebulae: “In fact, forget the wire!”
Spins and condenses into a star
🫵
“I cannot pass through anything unless it is a conductor”
Quantum tunneling: “Allow us to introduce ourselves”
Well, everything is a
dildoconductor if you arebravehigh voltage enough.But if they do, they’ll collapse and disappear, right?
Substation switchgear: Opens circuit
Electricity: “Nnnneeeeeooooooooowwwwwzzzzzzzzzttttttttt!!!”
All paths proportional to their conductivity! However air is very low conductivity until it’s heated to its ionizing point
Tell that to the high voltage power lines I go for bike rides under… There’s no visible ionization, but I can feel tingling in my hands and sometimes nuts…
Yeah it’s not enough to heat up the air enough to arc, likely because the vast majority of it is going through the conductive wire it’s supposed to be
You’re experiencing the other part of electromagnetism: the magnetic field. As you and your bike pass across the magnetic waves, a charge is induced on you and your bike. You’re feeling what it’s like to be the rotor of an electric motor, or the other side of a capacitor, or the secondary coil of a transformer!
On top of that it’s not like there isn’t any energy outside of a wire conducting electricity. It’s just that in the vast majority of applications it’s insignificant. Electricity isn’t really a thing, it’s all just fields.
̴̥̂i̵̜͌ ̵͖̈́ä̶̰ṃ̵̓ ̴͇͠m̷̜̔y̴̟̋ ̴̧̾o̸͚̐w̶̞̓n̵̡͆ ̵͔̏w̸̠̄i̴̠̒r̶̜̕e̶̻̅
Who’s defining low and high here?
Magnetar looking at every voltage that’s ever occurred on Earth: Aw, that’s cute.
One of the scienc-y YouTubers said, IIRC, around 400V.
Well, there aren’t any real scientific definitions but there sure are legal and regulatory definitions.
(I haven’t checked the local requirements but there’s micro voltage, low voltage and high voltage. Micro voltage is basically anything below 12v - for anything above that you need to be a certified electrician. Doubly so if you go above household voltages)
For AC the definitions are
- HV > 1500VAC
- LV < 1500VAC & > 50VAC
- ELV < 50VAC
For DC
- HV > 1000VDC
- LV < 1000VDC & > 120VDC
- ELV < 120VDC
Above are from the Blue Book
Neat, I didn’t realize they were defined like this but that totally makes sense for regulations and such. Thanks!
What’s ELV? There’s not a single mention of it in that pdf.
Edit: nevermind, I found it on wikipedia. Extra-low
Sorry ELV is in a blue book supplement not in the main book. Extra low voltage work in Australia doesn’t need a license, just have to be competent.
Not the one I was thinking of but it does define Extra low voltage
Ride the Lightning, bb
