Other factors that can determine the severity of an electric shock include the duration of the shock and where the shock enters the body. For example, a shock passing from one arm through the chest to the other arm is much more dangerous than a shock between two toes.
Skip to content We are hiring! In appliances it's the flow of electrons through wire. In our nerves it's the flow of ions charged sodium atoms in and out of our cells, which is what makes our brains tick and our muscles contract.
An electric shock from a car door won't do you any real harm because it's a one-hit wonder. The high voltage associated with static electricity just means there's a big build up of charge on one surface compared to another, but it only takes a tiny short-lived current to drain that charge away.
One ping and it's gone. An much more serious electric shock happens when we make the mistake of becoming part of an electric circuit. Once you're part of a circuit, current flows through you. And it doesn't take much current to do serious damage — from taking control of muscles to burning flesh and making hearts stop altogether.
Mary Shelley knew a lot about writing bestsellers, but not much about the effect of electricity on the human body. Our bodies can detect currents as small as 1 milliampere 1 mA. An electric socket can provide a current ten thousand times that size 10 A. The tiny 1 mA current stimulates our pain receptors, so we actually 'feel' it as a tingling sensation. We can handle currents up to 5 mA without any physical damage — the tingles just get stronger.
But at currents greater than that, things start getting out of control, causing anything from burns and muscle paralysis to respiratory and heart failure. Whenever electric currents flow through any material they produce heat, because the charges electrons or ions bump into atoms of the material they're flowing through. The heat from electric shocks can cause burns on the skin where the current enters and leaves the body, and in the tissues they pass through.
A current flowing through your body obeys the same rule that a current in a wire does: follow the path of least resistance. And the part of our body with least resistance to electric current ie that its easiest for current to flow through is nerves.
Long-term damage to the nerves and the brain will depend on the extent of the injuries and may develop up to several months after the shock. This type of damage can also cause psychiatric disorders.
What we can learn from this post is, we can be dead at as low as 42 volts but we can be just injured at volts. So in order to draw the exact line at which level on voltage that can cause death is quite impossible. This is due to the fact that current alone does not kill us. But there are a lot more of the other indicators that can cause death.
Hopefully, this post perhaps indirectly can teach us to be very careful with currents. Just like fire, it can be our friend, it is also can be our enemy.
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