Do Volts or Amps Kill You? Voltage, Current and Resistance

[@tanveersingh998]

Neither volts nor amps, it’s the electricity bill that kills me.

[@anselmrafael3309]

Then watt kils you?

[@dragonslayerornstein387]

@@anselmrafael3309 nope it's the kilowatt-hour that kills him xD

[@cathitombaugh9852]

LOL it sure could.

[@cathitombaugh9852]

@@anselmrafael3309 Thedistance!

[@JMjayesim]

@@anselmrafael3309 I see watt you did there 👏

[@juanzingarello4005]

The way my electrical engineer of a father explained it to me is this. Current is what directly kills you. The flow of the electrons through your body causes internal burns and your heart to stop. Voltage, which in water models is thought of as “Electrical pressure” is the probability of that current killing you. The higher the voltage, the further it can arc to you through insulators such as air and kill you. This is why, you usually see “Danger High Voltage” signs instead of “Danger High Amperage” signs. Its because higher voltage, you don’t need to touch a hot wire to be electrocuted. If you are in the kilovolt range, just being close enough to a power line or live bus in a sub station and grounded will get you killed.

[@billyandrew]

Thanks for that. Never thought about it, having seen such signs, but you make perfect sense, especially with regards to arcing.

[@princenoah21]

Wow That actually does make sense. 😮

[@harms123]

Energy kills, which is E = P * t = V * I * t You can't have current without voltage. The reason why a static shock doesn't kill you even though it can deliver a few amps at thousands of volts is that the duration is so short that the energy is only a few millijoules.

[@inso80]

There are more factors at play too. like biological.

[@harms123]

@@inso80 No

[@RimstarOrg]

The saying goes "It's not the volts that kills you, it's the amps." My latest video explains how it's not quite so simple. The volts moves the amps while your skin's resistance plays a part too.

[@WouterTomme]

Tnx for the interesting visual presentation RimstarOrg . It really proves the saying because it *is* the Amps that kills. It's just so that their would never be any current if no Voltage is applied or the resistance is too high to let the Amps pass through.

[@jonsanford0]

Good

[@SlavaPetrov]

Great video. Thank you, RimstarOrg for sharing.

[@HeilmanHackatronics]

Nice video, I tried to make a video about this with a hotdog, a car battery, and a wall outlet.

[@MongrelShark]

Well done. Very well explained.

[@smokescreen2146]

- Amps kill but need high voltage to deliver them. - Anything below 30V is not enough to break human skin's resistance. - 450-600V skin will break down altogether easily allowing current through. - If wet skin, body's skin resistance drops from 100,000 ohms to 1,000 ohms. - How long the current flows also has effect. At 50 mA = 2 seconds to let go. 500 mA = 0.2 seconds. - Static electricity has a few thousand volts, but not enough charge to kill (and even if high current such as 12 Amps it is only for 1 millionth/micro of a second and far too brief to inflict serious harm).

[@MrUmpleby]

Cant have one without the other

[@dandearman2871]

Sometimes it's not the volts or the amps that kill you but the jolt you get from a shock that knocks you off of your ladder and sends you smashing into the pavement.

[@bhoot1702]

Looks like you had an experience

[@yolowolfyt]

That's called metatraumatic injury

[@richarddonegan4666]

Thats it! The ground fried me. That 220! Nuttin like it!

[@champamampa6295]

I like to tell voltage is the gun and current is the bullet.

[@generalgrievous6990]

Thats what im searching for. Thx man

[@tedlahm5740]

Advanced Ghost Try touching the neutral bar in your ckt. panel. unbalanced current (amps) only. do we get a shock?

[@allmodescrew5548]

True kzbin.info/www/bejne/jnXJY6Gem92JsMk

[@bitTorrenter]

I would say a bullet would be a mass of electrons instead. The current would be dictated by the size of the chamber and the metallurgy of the material being used, the voltage by the energy released of an explosive being ignited. Of course you would have to take into account losses of power through any vibration. Anything else to add?

[@JavaRivers]

Voltages don't kill people, circuits kill people

[@tifanibogue4589]

Out of all the many videos, this one made the most sense to me. I’m 28 years old. When I was 8 in the 2nd grade, my dad was electrocuted on his job. 7200 volts. Burned ALL of his skin completely off. My dad is a dark skinned man, when I saw him for the first time in the hospital, he was PINK from the neck down! I was so young and didn’t understand but as I got older I started asking more questions. 450-600 can break the skin?!? I can only imagine what my dad went through! I thank God he’s still here 20 years later and doesn’t look like what he’s been through! He has life long damage of course but if you didn’t know he was in an electric accident you wouldn’t be able to tell but just looking at his face. !

[@RomanKuechler]

The question ignores basic physics and Ohm's Law. You might as well ask, does the gun or the bullet kill? The answer is, the bullet (current) doesn't kill without the gun (voltage) - and vica-versa. And the thicker the body armor (resistance), the stronger the gun (voltage) has to be to make the bullet (current) strong enough. High voltages kill because they increase the current. High current is not possible without high voltage for the same resistance. Yes, theoretically it is possible to have a very high current at a very low voltage, but then it needs an extremely low resistance (which, by the way, living things do not have). But if you were to put a resistance of 0.001 ohms against a 1 volt source (and thus get 1000 amps of current), the voltage source would collapse almost *_instantly_* under the load. On the drawing board, it would certainly be possible to create voltage sources such as extremely step-down transformers (AC) or multi-parallel-connected batteries (DC) that could deliver 1000 or more amps at 1 volt for a long time. However, such voltage sources would not be harmful to the human body (since the resistance would be too high). If the current is to be high enough to kill, then the voltage _must_ also be high enough, for a given resistance (which a human body simply has). *You can NEVER judge the effect of any of these three components without considering the remaining two components. The effect is inextricably linked.*

[@amarzitouni-h4b]

Thanks for the good exemple

[@monsieurdidkekne3224]

Great explaination, to be more precise WE should also consider the max power of the source.

[@dashingmlg601]

you cant have one without the other sure. But you definitely can have high voltage with low current and low voltage with high current. Please stop spreading misinformation

[@RomanKuechler]

@@dashingmlg601 Be careful with accusations when you obviously don't understand Ohm's law - or you're not reading correctly. Where exactly did I contradict your statement? *_Nobody_* said that high currents at low voltages are not possible; the smaller the resistance, the higher the current at the same voltage. The greater the resistance, the smaller the current at the same voltage. (However, we are deliberately omitting the different effects of direct and alternating voltage on living organisms here). If you've never heard of Ohm's law: Voltage = Resistance * Current Your obvious aggressiveness only confirms your inconsistent thinking.

[@amareteka5592]

Wowow

[@andycopeland7051]

I'm an electrician and I hear know-it-alls argue about this question all the time. It's stupid. "When you fall from the top of a building is it hitting the ground that kills you or is it your body breaking that kills you?" Just two elements of the same damn thing

[@byteme9718]

I certainly hope you're not an electrician.

[@cryptfire3158]

How would you use your same example to represent a (low amp /high volt).. that hurts but doesn't kill.. compared to the opposite, which would be (higher amp /very low volt) that can hurt but not kill. So how would you fit that back into your example? Think your example needs some tweeking.

[@googane7755]

Fuck, I remember when I was 8 or 9 I was holding a lamp post and a metal fence trying to just mess around and then I felt the current passing through my body which I still have no idea how that managed to do so but this video is very accurate, I could not let go of my hands, my chest and the back of my head started to hurt and I couldn't breathe or speak at all. How I did manage to escape was that I slid down unintentionally as I was being electrocuted. I used my entire weight to fall vertically until my hand on the fence hit the floor which it released my hand. A large bump appeared on my left hand and I showed it to my parents, they said stuff like this happen to them all the time and that made me feel like shit... But you never really get to appreciate life until you come close to death.

[@95TurboSol]

Geez dude, glad you made it through that!

[@neutronstar6739]

That's a tip..fall vertically if you can't let go..thx

[@nomnom5218]

Bold Erdene I fell on the electric fence while riding my bicycle I think I was 10 years old. The current flows over my body.

[@YoDay]

Watched this video last year, understood little bit. Watching this year , understood a bit more. I'll come again next year and hope that I understand everything. Thanks

[@samvamsi3044]

I hope you'll stay alive till then

[@YoDay]

@@samvamsi3044 thanks for your hope.

[@HitmanHimself]

ElectroBOOM has entered the chat!

[@beanapprentice1687]

I think he would approve of this video

[@swan.avalon7902]

💀this is the best comment ever

[@walalang7744]

Where?

[@jorgegordillo7078]

That dude is really funny

[@Texas_bikes66]

DA RECTIFIYA

[@BC-wj8fx]

It's like asking "What kills you, the 100 metre fall or the sudden deceleration at the ground?". Well the ground would not have a deadly deceleration if it weren't for the great height of the fall. And the height of the fall wouldn't kill you if it weren't for the ground. Now how would you be best to warn other people as to what is deadly: do you warn them to not fall off high places, or do you warn them to not be suddenly decelerated by the ground? Obviously it's the high voltage that's dangerous because it's the only thing that can drive high enough current.

[@stevemerritt2721]

on that last sentence, the amount of current depends on voltage and RESISTANCE

[@jamesjesus1828]

Amperage can't get high with low voltage, but even 100,000 volts wouldn't hurt you at a low amperage. Amperage isn't when you hit the ground, it's the speed you reach while falling. Warn people not to fall from high places, unless they have a parachute.

[@Atticus500]

When I was a kid my dad had some car starter thing that was in our basement. It said it went up to 800 amps. And I played around with it stupidly and almost killed my self and almost burned down the house. Lucky my parents never found out but I learn a valuable lesson that day.

[@jedisenpei855]

It is neither the Amps or the Volts that kills you. It is the Watts. I*U=(Q/sec)(J/Q)=J/sec =W . Or the energy if you like E = W*t .

[@deang5622]

This is wrong. Because with your theory only the watts matter and that is false. You need a minimum voltage to kill too. And it is generally accepted that anything above 50 volts AC RMS is enough to kill.

[@jedisenpei855]

​@@deang5622 It is not wrong. Electrical engineer speaking. The 50V AC RMS is a general safety rule, that applies when your are working with electricity of the mains. It is because 50V AC RMS will make your muscles cramp and make you hold on to the source for too long if it is not interrupted. High voltage means high current. U = R*I .... Remember? But if it only last a few micro/milli seconds, then you might be okay after all. That is why people survives lightning strikes ( transient time measured in a few ms), which is very high voltages and very high currents. Same with static electricity. Very high voltage and current, but the charge is low, and therefore very short transient time. It hurts, but you will be okay. The energy is low. You can touch a 5000V electrical fence and be okay, because the voltage and current is given in short pulses of a few ms, but it hurts. It is the energy that matters. Watts are defined as energy pr. second. If the watts are high, the amount of time you can withstand the power without dying is lower.

[@unouno4211]

@@deang5622 also, watts are defined as difference of potential times current, so if either of the two is zero it makes sense you risk zero.

[@deang5622]

@@jedisenpei855 I am not wrong. You confirmed exactly what I said that a minimum of 50 volts is needed. And you said that 50 volts is a general rule of thumb. But here you are wrong. Which is surprising that given you are an electrical engineer. The 50 volts minimum is the voltage that is required in order to develop enough current to cause the heart to stop beating properly (heart goes into ventricular fibrillation). The body has resistance and therefore a minimum voltage is required to produce enough current to cause VF. So the idea it is a general rule of thumb and that say 5 volts and enough power integrated over time is sufficient to cause the heart to stop is, quite frankly complete rubbish. Think it through, you are the electrical engineer after all. According to research I have done a current of 75mA across the heart is required to cause VF. It is true however that the higher the current the less time is required to cause the heart to stop, but that minimum current is still required. So you don't cause the heart to stop by delivering 35mA for 5 minutes, which is what you are stating. So you are incorrect when you say it is simply the total energy, the integral of power with respect to time. Go do some research on this and you will discover that is not simply power. In all the papers and articles I have read on this, even medical papers, they talk in terms of current, not power. Why? It's obvious. It is the current that is important. Power includes voltage and the only purpose of the voltage is to deliver enough current to cause the heart to stop. So if people talk about power being what causes electrocution then they will start to believe that say 5kW causes electrocution, but firstly it might not because the voltage is not high enough, and second people will confuse the power in the load with the power rating the supply can deliver. Already seen that several times with KZbin users. I am disappointed in you as you are supposed to be the electrical engineer that has responded without doing the research.

[@deang5622]

Your formulae are wrong. Energy is this: E = ∫ w.dt And you are the electrical engineer? Are you sure you are?

[@ragingwarrior567]

This video is so good that I didn't realize it was 10y old untill I saw the description

[@wickedbird1538]

😮😮As a child, I grabbed a pole that had electrical going through it. It hurt, I screamed and could not let go. Fortunately my grandfather shut down the power and I survived. I don’t care which it was, I still remember the pain decades later.

[@lifeofmarlean]

same

[@cryptfire3158]

i can't hardly imagine hanging onto something while wanting to let go.

[@jamierapp8060]

I'm an industrial electrician at a steel mill. Once we had to run a temporary 480V feed after a big fire. Contractors, ignorant of the danger, moved the power cable & even drove over it with trailers & vac trucks. Danger tape somehow wasn't a meaningful enough warning. We had enough, & put up a sign stating "This 480-Volt cable will kill you, & it will hurt like hell the whole time you are dying." Didnt get moved again.

[@ezrabrooks7785]

Sounds like something Larry would do.

[@hanksnow5470]

the cleaning people used to step on electrical equipment in my lab at work, so I put up a sign saying "danger, 100,000 ohms"! the problem stopped.

[@Gizmos_and_stuff]

i touched a bug zapper, those are several hundred to a thousand ish volts. It gave me a little zap I touched parts of a vacuum tube circuit (couple hundred volts, IDK if it was AC or DC), much less voltage but still enough to have me shaken for a while. Also had sweaty hands overall i concluded that i should be more careful around live circuitry, very educational

[@akupehsluarketatAR]

when i was a kid i used to stick my finger into a lamp holder then turn on the supply and get a nasty shock with burn marks on my finger. Im now an electrician

[@glassofmilk7141]

I never got a shock, it was more like a weird wavy feeling

[@mikeduffey3082]

I was caught by 1600 volts @ 25 amps 3 phase, heart and breathing stopped, I was given less than 1% chance of survival. Spent time in burn intensive care, 4th degree burns, permanently disabled. This video makes it sound clinical, like a math problem, the pain is indescribable. Electrocution is the most painful injury, and means of execution there is!

[@kumd]

What happened? Holy hell

[@dougmorris2134]

The UK 🇬🇧 version that I know to be correct is: “ it’s the Volts that jolts, but the Mills (mA) that KILLS”! Best wishes from Oxfordshire 🇬🇧

[@FLORIDIANMILLIONAIRE]

I was just in Oxfordshire isn't it the place where Midsomer murders is filmed ?

[@Dieselpower994]

Take it from someone who got electrocuted, it’s no fun. I’m an electrician and stupidly enough while at work I thought I turned off power and never checked to make sure. I got locked on while working on the circuit for about 20-30 seconds. Thankfully I was finally able to scream and someone saved me. Ended up with 3rd degree burns on my left hand, and almost lost my 2 middle fingers. Don’t be me, always double check

[@joeycarr1398]

A friend of mine was killed by a live power line on the road he did not see after a storm knocked the line down. He died while helping others in that emergency. RIP

[@XY_Dude]

This is quite easy to explain. It is the amount of joules (electron volume) that cross your heart. It takes voltage (electron push) to get the electron volume (measured in amperes) to get through the body to the heart. 12V from your car battery does not provide the push to overcome your body resistance so enough current passes your heart. Over 100V, now things get dicey (a path from one hand to the other). There are other factors, but this is the basic.

[@schwarzerritter5724]

In the army, we where told about a technician, who was so bored, he shoved the electrodes of a multimeter under his skin, because he wanted to know what the resistance of his blood was and died from the battery in the multimeter. The moral of the story was not to mess around with the equipment.

[@hazardousmaterial5492]

Remember, anyone who is able to get bored is just someone who hasn't experienced enough bad events in their life yet

[@captainvaughn5692]

there is absolutely no way a DMM would kill any person... you can shove the elecrodes in your mouth and not feel anything

[@VisboerAnton]

@@captainvaughn5692 and the technician would be smart enough to measure blood outside his body to not fuck up the results

[@fahey5719]

@@captainvaughn5692 you missed the UNDER his skin bit. Once you break the skin resistance barrier, Human flesh and blood are quite conductive. Pacemakers apply pulser¿s *under* 1.5V, go figure.

[@captainvaughn5692]

@@fahey5719 Yeah ok, but what about sticking the electrodes in your mouth? Spit is also very conductive, and nothing happens

[@jacko2131]

In summary: Do volts or amps kill you? Answer: Yes

[@superancient]

Finally someone who can use this joke template properly!

[@profH-z6k]

The question is like, if you fall from a high place, is the impact speed to the ground that kills you or the height of the place. The answer is of course the impact speed but it is the height that gives you the speed.

[@tamaica7770]

Truth lol. Voltage is the difference, that’s what I studied. More difference more change, so you know the answer!

[@nottsoserious]

Saying "the voltage doesn't kill you" is like saying that "my pump action shotgun doesnt kill you as long as the bullets hit you very slowly. Wanna try?" - Electroboom

[@GoogleUser_MCMLIX]

If the bullet's path offers high resistance, (say a strong magnetic tube & metal bullets) which reduces the speed and hits you very slowly...

[@PepsiMaxVanilla]

very softly*

[@Lanuzos]

@@GoogleUser_MCMLIXor if you were to run at hypersonic speed to the point of the relative velocity of the pellets hitting you is 5mp/h.

[@gabeshaw3721]

Stupid question. When you get in a car accident, is it the force or the acceleration that kills you? The answer is both, as the two are related and cannot exist without one another

[@MemeHut1000]

I know there's 1 km but there's 1000m you cannot go further without another

[@deadspeedv]

Force = mass x acceleration Voltage = Current x resistance Yep the maths check out

[@knockerz9769]

Thank you, very informative! I'm an engineering student and I've already heard some of these terms before but your video helped me understand better the roles of current and voltage in the flow of electricity

[@kaischreurs2488]

"it's not the volts that kill you it's the amps" "it's not the gun that kills you it's the bullet"

[@nasen2727]

Why is this video suddenly getting lots of views after 8 years on KZbin ?

[@RimstarOrg]

It's not sudden. This video surges in views every few months, though the last time it was this high was Feb 2017.

[@Anonymous82819]

​@@RimstarOrgnow in September 2024 😊

[@jag12549]

This is The most Concise and well stated video on how electricity works and how people are able to work with it. Thank you so much for just laying it out plain and simple

[@anotherelvis]

The voltage from a power supply is not constant over time. When you start drawing a current, then the voltage will typically fall. So the initial voltage doesn't kill you, but the ability to deliver a high current at a high voltage kills you.

[@noslohcinkin]

Many people are confused by these basic electrical concepts, probably because electricity can't be seen as it travels within a body or a cable. I think it helps to understand voltage by analogy with pressure in a fluid circuit and current with flow. A greater pressure difference will cause a greater flow. Resistance can be understood by analogy with greater or lesser diameter of tubing in the fluid circuit, less diameter= more restriction=more resistance. Voltage is cause, current is effect. To say volts don't kill, it's amps, is a bit like saying the drop from a skyscraper doesn't kill you, it's the sudden stop at the bottom, or maybe better, it's not the guy who pulls the trigger who kills you, it's the bullet. Also, many people think if a cable is rated (capable of handling without fusing or overheating) at 20 Amperes or Amps then that's the current that is flowing in your body when you touch it. It's not. The current that flows is the potential difference ie voltage across the two points of contact eg left hand and right hand divided by the resistance between those two points. I've had a 500 volt DC hit, and a 440 volt AC hit, but the one in the defective Brazilian shower, naked with wet body was nasty, and that was 110 volt AC. Burnt a hole in my finger. Obviously a huge difference in skin resistance. I don't like the use of the word "draw" or even "take" to describe the passage of circuit through a circuit. Remember the circuit is passive; it is obliged to allow the current to pass, as it is forced to do so by the voltage applied to it; it's not actively pulling the current through itself. Your videos are a model of clarity and conciseness. Thanks, RimstarOrg.

[@RimstarOrg]

noslohcinkin Thanks, and thanks for your input. I try to stay away from analogies in my videos because I have animation and can actually show moving electrons, but voltage is more difficult to draw. I tried the two arms with different voltages represented by different muscle strengths so that I could get in the energy-per-charge idea, but it was probably overkill here. I use the water and pressure analogy a lot when speaking to people and in my solar power classes. Regarding the volts versus amps that kill you, in hindsight it would have been good if I ended the video saying something like "so in conclusion, it's a trick question since it's both the volts and amps that kill you." Too bad people can't comment before I release videos, then I can address problems better that way! :)

[@Keimotorider]

+RimstarOrg you can still add annotations right?

[@RimstarOrg]

Amirul Saipulovich Syafiq Actually, I didn't think there was any good place to put it, but looking again just now I realized I can put it at the beginning.

[@randmayfield5695]

I am here to tell you that when I was 4 years old and stuck a paperclip into a wall socket that was my first lesson with electricity. I never did that again and at 68 years old still remember it vividly. Lol

[@Dieg0Restrep0]

At the end, it is energy what gets you killed: Power = Voltage . Current = Current² . Impedance = Voltage² / Impedance Energy = Power . Time If your body can't safely dissipate all the energy of the resulting electric shock, it will generate burns, muscle shaking / paralysis, ventricular fibrillation, damage in multiple organs and other awful injuries.

[@BogdanOfficalPage]

saying it’s the current that kills you, not the voltage is like saying “it’s not the gun that kills you, it’s the bullets” lol Volts are needed to overcome the resistance and carry the charge

[@alibabaintelligence8281]

great analogy

[@zackwalker1789]

So both are needed. A gun without bullets doesn't kill and neither does a bullet without a gun

[@smb1397]

the charge is _because_ of the volts. Ohm's law?? V = IR? charge is nothing but volts / resistance and the volts are nothing but charge * resistance. household circuits are in parallel, which means the voltage stays constant, and the current changes depending on the resistance, but if they were in series its the current that would stay const. and the voltage would vary and we'd be talking abt household power in amps instead

[@smb1397]

@@zackwalker1789 there is no gun without the bullets and vice versa cause V = IR

[@danryan4001]

Twenty thousand volts and no amperage off the picture tube of an older TV will throw you ten feet through the air and leave you ravenously hungry., but I was still alive.

[@boah9520]

Woah! So basically when you touched it you completed the cycle huh? Connect it to ground and voltage gave amperage the green to go and since it was a lot of voltage it was so strong it pushed you back 10ft. Correct me if I’m wrong

[@danryan4001]

@@boah9520 At those voltages, no circuit is required, capacitive discharge off the picture tube anode does what I described. Full body muscle contraction and I was airborne for ten feet. I touched the big red wire that you aren't supposed to touch. It was early in my career and as is usually the case, I was young and stupid. The sting as usual with humans, made the lesson stick for life.

[@oldmangranny5oldmangranny56]

Amps = bullet volts = gunpowder ohms = armor Got it!

[@MondoDook817]

oldmangranny5 oldmangranny5 very good description , thanks !

[@oldmangranny5oldmangranny56]

@@MondoDook817 :-)

[@michaelhenwood4046]

I might add"Watts=hole".

[@rocklee8929]

It’s like asking what kills you the bullet or the gun? They coincide so much that you need both

[@jamesjesus1828]

A bullet would kill you from 30 feet away. Now imagine it's underwater. With enough resistance, voltage doesn't do much.

[@jcudjoe36]

At age 12 i tried to recharge a battery by pluging up a 2 corded wire i cut from a broken fan and attaching one to the positive side and another to the negative side and i got a shock of a lifetime. I used my left hand and that shock dazed my left eye for a second. I haven't seen the world the same since.

[@windsofmarchjourneyperrytr2823]

John Kwaku you cpukd have saved some time by reading Steven King's story about this in "On Writing." They managed to wipe out a transformer and nobody died. Shocking. Haha

[@BeardyMacBeardFace]

This was refreshing. Working in electronics, I heard so many times that tired old saying, _"it's_ _not_ _the_ _volts_ _that_ _kills_ _you,_ _it's_ _the_ _amps",_ as if voltage plays no role! Maybe those people think that Ohms law is not obeyed within the human body!

[@trumanhw]

I'm an electricity ignoramus. (just familiar with the V, I, R, P formula // calculations.) I was always confused that watts played no role. 2 amps @ even 0.00001 volts (& thus watts) are lethal? I was also tired of the water-analogy ... largely bc I distrusted it. This video was MUCH more candid and knowledgeable...

[@112sandeepnaradasu9]

Which one kills you jumping from a high building or contact with the ground floor impact ? Ans: impact is more when jumped from high building and depends on floor nature so on both i.e energy acquired that disrupts the body

[@PaperBoat.]

Expert: Volts or Amps Kills You? Me: Electricity bill...

[@nirmalakumari6224]

😂😂

[@Earthneedsado-over177]

That Funny.

[@martinvaughan5953]

Its the power disappates in watts that kills you - Power=volts*current, current=V/r and power= volts*volts/resistance

[@WXUZT]

🎯👌🏼 Many Experts Just don't get it ! It's the Power of the applied Voltage translating into Current. The work done is Voltage multiplied by Current . How high this Product is what matters !

[@martinvaughan5953]

@WXUZT and finally, the duration of the applied voltage, a further factor

[@nicholashartmann4525]

I get what you mean but I think you can't really say it like that. High power (work, watts) is a result OF potential difference and current, which in turn are results of each other and resistance. If you have a certain resistance then increasing the voltage will allow more amperage. The result of both of these is death and power (or work or watts), but I find it difficult to say that power is the result of the death. Though thinking a bit deeper you could say voltage and amperage are in turn caused by work (or power, expressed in watts) being put into creating them so technically the electric company is at fault of your death :)

[@meusana3681]

Before watching. That's like asking: does speed kill you or the fact that you weigh something in a crash? If you were a feather then any crash would be soft, if you travel slowly same applies. It's momentum that gets you, the effect of both of those factors working proportionally. If you were to make a mechanical analog to an electrical system, voltage would be speed of a rotating part, amperage would be it's weight. Total power delivered is speed of rotation x weight = angular momentum, also measured in joules.

[@davynolan182]

It's kind of like asking what kills you, the bullet or the gun. The answer is neither or both. The gun and shell is voltage and the bullet is the amps, Resistance can be thought of as the air between you and your target, a high resistance is like shooting through syrup, it's going to take a lot of energy out of the bullet.

[@pickles3128]

This is an odd story but, having one too many beers and trying to rewire a lamp, I gave myself a bad shock. I temporarily lost my sense of smell for a few days. Happened years ago.

[@TObbh05]

Pickles you were supposed to say here hold my beer first...

[@ibimsbot6828]

Hi, soon to be paramedic and med student from Germany here (so excuse my English). As it happens I am also a physics and maths fan. I would like to add my view on this topic as well, cause I think the answer to this question, as it is the case for many questions, is not at all simple. To dive right in, firstly, it is neither any of the mentioned physical phenomena leading to death but rather medical conditions caused by these phenomena. As it turns out there are many possibilities and morbidities associated with electrical emergencies. The most important ones being: Something which loosely translates to “inhalation trauma”. This is something we usually find on patients with 20% or more burned skin (burned skin being caused by electricity) and it has something to do with your airway. In short you can actually suffocate because of an electrical emergency, cause your lungs simply cannot exchange anymore oxygen. Secondly, large areas of burned skin can lead to other serious complications with your circulation and body temperature management. Patients loose a lot of fluid which leads to hypovolemia (not enough blood volume) and death. Or patients simply dissipate heat a lot more quicker cause the skin is not able to act as a protection layer anymore. Hypothermia is a cause of death. It is also very important to consider organ damage on patients through which electricity has passed. Organs can be a very good conductor of electricity and therefore if the current passes through the body the right way, your internal organs can quite literally be fried. Depending on the fried organs, death can occur immediately or remain unnoticed for periods up to days after the actual incident. These complications all depend on how much energy has passed through the body and over which volume it has been spread. Energy, physically is the product of Power times time. So your exposure time is also of vital importance. Power is the product of voltage times current. And current itself is voltage divided by resistance. So Energy depends on the voltage squared times time divided by resistance. Resistance of course can change as mentioned in the video or might change depending on which way the current takes through the body. According to our formula more time and voltage and less resistance means more energy. However if the current chooses to pass through your chest, where organs like the heart or the muscles for breathing are located. Than it is current that kills you. Enough current paralyses the muscles and can interfere with the electrical signals of your heart, leading to death. The latter is also why frequency kills. There is a certain range of frequencies which are especially harmful to the heart cause they resemble the frequency at which the heart produces its own electrical signals. But is it really the current that kills. If we look at the physics, it is also rather the voltage that kills you. Cause current is voltage divided by resistance. I think a good analogy is thinking of voltage as the engine and current as the speed. If your car is heavier (resistance) you need more engine power to drive at the same speed. So really it is always the combination of voltage and resistance that leads to current. So in the end the answer to the question is much more difficult than just saying: Volts or Amps? I hope I have given you little insight into the pathological consequences of incidents with electricity. And also here, I could go on and on about more ways in which electricity might kill you but I think I came up with the most common ones. Cheers guys!

[@Ridingthewaves305]

My friend once injured my fist with his face, Newtons laws would agree that he assaulted me

[@Remon_]

And accordingly you assaulted him.

[@TheMathias95]

According to his frame of reference, you in fact dove straight into his fist

[@viewererdos]

*Voltage is like height, which by itself cannot be the cause of death, and current is like a fall, in which height (voltage) will be a significant factor.*

[@jayawilder3835]

Best analogy in the comments.

[@sanjaybhatikar]

Imagine a 3 Volt differential. I add one LED across. It drains 20 mA. Total current in the circuit is 20 mA. I add another LED in parallel. It drains another 20 mA. Total current is now 20 mA + 20 mA = 40 mA. I add another LED and another and another. When I have added a very large number of LEDs in parallel, I have a very large current. Theoretically, an infinite number of LEDs means an infinitely large current. Now when I touch the 3V bar, will it kill me? No! I will draw a small current which is 3V divided by my body's resistance. Voltage is the murderer. Current is the knife.

[@meisterschiumpf9759]

You had some interesting ideas in the ends there, let's see what one can do with it.

[@30Xa]

The only person that can’t die from amps and volts is electroboon

[@frankjohannessen6383]

It's like asking if it's the velocity or the height that kills you in a fall.

[@MakkaPakka7999]

Example: your fist is amps and your arms are voltage, if you hit someone with little power it will hurt less, but if you hit them with full force, it will probably hurt a lot more.

[@princenoah21]

I've been told a sadistic way of remembering, is that how many times you punch someone in 1 second is Amps, and voltage is how hard you punch.

[@nicholashartmann4525]

Ok this is a nice video imho. It's on a fairly high level so more people will understand, while staying fairly accurate during the analogies. Edit: As I have been informed he is talking about dialectic breakdown. A really fascinating subject for anyone interested I also didn't know about. But I do have one issue. Resistance doesn't decrease by increasing voltage. Resistance is a fixed property of a material. Current and Voltage are the variable parts. But I'm sure you know that, so speaking to anyone confused by this: A higher voltage will over more pressure to overcome the fixed resistance value, therefore increasing the current through the body. The result is the same though of course.

[@khalidh5933]

He was talking about dielectric breakdown, where an insulator suddenly breaks down at high voltage and becomes a conductor. It's strange that he brought this up. It's not really relevant because you don't need 450-600 volts to experience the big die.

[@nicholashartmann4525]

@@khalidh5933 aaaaah I didn't think about that. That's something I need to inform myself about more then. Thank you for pointing that out, I always like being corrected in a constructive manor.

[@yolo3004]

as someone else mentioned, he's talking about dielectric breakdown. But resistors in general don't always have a constant resistance. for example, they are dependent by heat, some by voltage (varistors) etc.

[@nicholashartmann4525]

@@yolo3004 Yes I'm aware of that, thank you :)

[@TheRealbenjibits]

@@nicholashartmann4525You cannot definitively say voltage or current. Metrics for the lethality of current utilize time as a major component. Static shocks generate loads of voltage and current, but don’t kill due to the short duration. Frequency plays a large part considering higher frequencies are generally safer than lower frequencies. Our bodies are capacitors and higher frequencies result in a higher impedance of said capacitor.

[@PJSM94]

Styropyro did a great video on this just recently and used himself as a guinea pig. Every variable matters, especially frequency and time of exposure. People who say "amps kill" are grossly misguided/misunderstanding something.

[@iceman9678]

It's like asking is it gravity that kills you or falling and hitting the ground? You can't fall without gravity. You can't have current (amp) without a difference in electro-potential (volts). Power kills. That's watt i think.

[@Josephmartin0122]

I agree. Volts amps and watts are all measuring the electricity and are directly related to each other.

[@mr_hary]

Ohm take part on how much power need to go thru the resist And duration of contact

[@SNGiraffe]

To sum up: ENERGY kills you: voltage x current x time

[@Mabere-r4t]

Thanks for making this video. It's very educative.

[@LeoH3L1]

Strictly speaking volts, because ultimately that's all there really is, current is a RESULT of a voltage being present across something, without that no current will be driven, so which ever you want to say kills you it's still the voltage being applied that is responsible. You can have a voltage without a current flowing, that's called an open circuit, but you can't have a current flow in a circuit if there isn't a voltage there to begin with, and depending on the resistance in the circuit you could have a high current if you have a low resistance, and if you have a high resistance you get a low current. Example 1, if you have a voltage of 230v present across say a 1,000,000 ohm resistor you will get a 0.23mA flow, you'd survive that if you were part of that circuit, you'd not even feel it. Example 2, same voltage, across 100ohm, you get a 2.3A flow, you're now dead, but only if the circuit is a high energy circuit, in other words if the supply can maintain 230v at 2.3A, eg a mains supply, if it can't then that voltage will almost instantly drop to a much lower level, driving much less current, and you may survive. Example 3, HV, let's say 11kv, and you are part of a circuit and the circuit has a total resistance of 100,000 (typical human skin resistance value), this will very likely kill you, in several ways, firstly it works out to 0.11A, which is over 3 times more than needed to stop your heart, it is also enough to cause very bad electrical burns. Example 4, let's say you touch a capacitor, that cap has a voltage of 27kv (noticed it in a comment below) you touch it, and it discharges through you, the chances are you will be fine, it'll probably hurt, but because it is a LOW energy circuit, ie it can't maintain that 27kv when in a short circuit condition, that voltage is pretty much instantly gone, so the current flows only fast for a miniscule amount of time, not enough to do damage, enough to feel it, but that's about it. The main point I am getting at is that it is always a result of a voltage being applied to you, the current is a secondary effect of that determined by the resistance, and the energy of the supply, ie can it maintain that voltage long enough while driving the current it is trying to drive in order to harm or kill you. To prove the point that it is ultimately voltage that is what you should be concerned with, when you test a circuit to see if it is dead, during an isolation proceedure, you are looking for any present voltages, if you find none, then you know it is safe to work on, assuming you properly isolate it and lock it off.

[@Capt182]

Leon Hostad Well said. You should be a teacher.

[@LeoH3L1]

@@Capt182 Thanks, funnily enough I have considered going into education.

[@phucminhnguyenle250]

Yes, finally someone who realize that the voltage can drop. I've seen people who confidently they can stand very high voltage without realizing that the voltage they talked about was in open circuit condition. What was applied upon them depended much on the source internal resistance and also the power source capacity

[@LeoH3L1]

@@phucminhnguyenle250 Thank you :)

[@RyanEmeryLovesCars]

I have an electric bug zapper. Upon releasing a button it turns off. I touched the metal mesh after 2 seconds and it really hurt. For a moment my muscles tensed up and I couldn't let go. For the next minute my skin was tingling. I think it's powered by 2 or 3 D-type batteries. Electricity isn't to be played with. It can hurt you.

[@merlin5476]

Ryan emery.... after releasing the button you will still have an electrical charge stored in the Capacitors inside your zapper. It will take a while for the energy to deplete.... so watch out.

[@MrMineHeads.]

Thank you. God it is annoying to explain to people that "current is the one that kills" isn't the full picture. They would see a video of a power supply at 1 V melting an iron bar and say that it was the current that did that. While true, holding the leads to that power supply yourself won't hurt you one bit.

[@RimstarOrg]

Yup, you got it too. The answer to the question of this video is that it depends on a number of factors.

[@techsinc]

It’s the power delivered to you which is voltage x current. Because of Ohm’s law, your body’s resistance means reasonably high voltage is needed to cause a reasonably high current, thus if a high current can flow, voltage is necessarily reasonably high, and the resulting power (delivered to body) is high.

[@mr_hary]

Reasonably high is? 50v and 50miliamps of constant supply will do?

[@techsinc]

@@mr_hary If the body resistance is taken to be 1MOhm, sustained current = 50V/1,000,000Ohm = 0.00005A = 0.05mA = 50 microA. If 100KOhm, then sustained current is 0.5mA. Is this enough to kill a person? The point is, due to the reasonably high resistance of a person's body, voltage has to be fairly high before enough lethal current can flow. Why water (with some charge carrying ions in it) can be lethal is that it can lower that body resistance value significantly. For example, if the body resistance was lowered to 1000Ohm, then sustained current is 50mA as you pointed out.

[@nostro1940]

An useful analogy would be a gun's bullet & it's powder cartridge Bullet: 🅰️mps Powder: ⚡ voltage ⚡

[@jaqueknight6625]

Bullet proof vest: 😎 Resistance 😎

[@paminowa]

At the end of the day it's actually the human that pulls the trigger or makes the 230v socket that is the actual reason why you got amps or a bullet flowing through your heart

[@Amazingyoutubechannnel]

Both. Volts to be able to cross the high resistance distance and amps to be able to make a large enough electrical change

[@CrowdContr0l]

Electrons are not moving down the wire carrying electricity. The electrons are the medium in which the electricity flows. It’s like saying shining a light through a pope filled with water means the water must be moving since the light comes out the other side. And in fact the electricity is not flowing through the wire but through a field around the wire.

[@nicholashartmann4525]

Yeah I like this. But, and correct me if I'm wrong, while electricity (eg. the energy itself) is not transported by the electrons, the electrons do still move back and forth in AC, or considering DC as in the video, are moved through the circuit. I mean, a battery is literally an excess electrons on one side and therefore a deficit electrons on the other side. If you have a tube filled with marbles and you push a new marble into it, the kinetic energy will reach the end immediately (or more accurately at whatever velocity the speed of sound is for that material) while the movement of the marbles themselves in the tube is quite small and slow. But they do still move. So in the example of the video what he says is still correct. Hes talking about current, not energy, "moving", although to be fair current is the movement, he should be saying electrons are moving, or rather being pushed. To sum up though, I find your statement somewhat misleading. You say electrons are not flowing down a wire carrying electricity when you should probably be saying electrons arent carrying electricity down a wire while moving through it.

[@neneautorepairs1602]

Excellent explanation and description, thank you.

[@1.4142]

Thanks, I will use this knowledge the next time I am struck by lightning.

[@beerbandit291]

Does this explain the current state of the ohmless on our streets?

[@niko1even]

im not sure whether to laugh or not xD

[@ralphmarlow3945]

potentially could

[@randomdude9135]

They need to reVOLT to get ohms

[@jaybee3165]

idle hands make trouble. arrest them for vagrancy... put them in a halfway house & make their sentence be to work with a state crew cleaning up under the bridges that they spread trash, poop & piss under. no more idle hands... give them lunch ticket vouchers to use at the 'feed the homeless' food servers... and just enough left over cash to buy cigarettes & booze so they can self medicate & forget that making all those bad life choices at a young age was a bad idea.

[@vikramraj9539]

It is the energy ( energy = current × volatage × time ) which kills . More is the energy dumped more will be chances of casualties . Because energy that is supplied has to be consumed so it will be used to vaporise your body cells , contract and expand your muscles repeatedly , interfere with nervous system and ultimately converting into heat.

[@livingood1049]

I got hit by 13500 V when a street line got clipped and discharged into the tree that I was near... Traveled right down the trunk to the root ball. Good thing I was about 20' away. The EMT thought they were going to have to call the coroner he said while on the way.

[@ztheletter5296]

You can't have amps without volts so both are a part of the equation but amps kill. The level is the determining factor and whether it is AC or DC is also a factor. As a rule, anything above 10 milliamps can kill. That is why hospitals and critical infrastructure sets earth leakage devices at 10 milliamps but in general use the level is set at 30 milliamps. Amperage above 1 amp tends to burn. Still, it is not a good scenario whatever the amps. I used to teach this stuff in my capacity for Electrical compliance for Rio Tinto at their induction processes.

[@fungames24]

Can a car battery kill?

[@ztheletter5296]

@@fungames24 Absolutely. A 9 volt battery test on the tongue can kill. It has happened.

[@AmanGupta-wu6ml]

I wanna know how do they know these values precisely. Who volunteered?

[@blueberry1c2]

ElectroBOOM

[@jean-pierreboies9749]

With high current, probably from cadavers and accidents.

[@taramaforhaikido7272]

@@EnchantedConsumerBeing As well as electric chair executions Think they fry them for nothing? I bet the cold blooded killers (and cops murdering the unarmed are murderers IMO) get data to use for such things. Leathal injection dara will be collected too. Morbid isn't it?

[@wenomechainsama6940]

@@EnchantedConsumerBeing 87

[@Mugen_dono]

It always annoyed me when people talked about that saying. Everytime I said the saying is missleading and they never believe me. Hopefully they watch this video.

[@diamondbreak]

One of the best explanations on KZbin.

[@shifty2755]

Agreed

[@Eugene-d8h]

Can anyone explain how I survived being electrocuted with 33,000 volts? I was 12 years old, more energy than sense, and decided to climb an electrical transformer near my housing estate. It was 1970, so long hair was fashionable for boys, and it was a windy day. I don't remember anything about the point of contact, but the blast threw me some 30 feet into a nearby field. It had blown a small hole in my skull, near the fontanelle, travelled through my body and exited by blowing a much larger hole out through the soft tissue in my left hip. Fifty four years later, many plastic surgeries thanks to the wonderful surgeons in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, I am alive and well, fully active, fully alive. How is that possible?

[@bossoholic]

My guess: The electricity didn't take a path through you that would disturb your heart, or fry your brain. I also believe that when you conducted the 33,000 volts, the path from hot to ground (with you in the middle) had a very high resistance, which limited the current (vs you conducting 100's or 1,000's of amps at that voltage, which would have literally fried you). There is a video online of a guy barefoot (no rubber soled shoes as resistance) standing on top of a metal train (low resistance path to ground/neutral), and he touches a 25,000v hot line above his head briefly. He is literally burned stiff and his whole body is on fire just from 2 loud jolts. He conducted a ton of current due to the low resistance path to ground/neutral.

[@rogeriopereira4191]

Miracle!

[@FDJT-sj7id]

About 40 years ago, I used to have a dune buggy that I drove around town. As an “anti-theft” device, I would pull the coil wire off the distributor so the car would crank over, but not fire up. To make it look like everything was in place (and to keep from having to drag a dirty coil wire around when I left the car) I’d just pull the wire out of the socket, but make it look like everything was hooked up. I remember once I hopped back in the car and started it without remembering to push the coil wire back in place. (Obviously I hadn’t pulled it out far enough) but I thought that driving the car might bounce it off and stop the car. I grabbed the wire with the intent of just pushing it down into the distributor a bit. The shock knocked me back pretty hard, but it didn’t knock me down. That car had a really hot coil because the motor had been extensively modded. I don’t remember the voltage, but it was probably around 40,000-50,000. I’m still here today, so that’s my scientific proof that it’s not the volts.

[@Gizmos_and_stuff]

yeah, those coils carry miniscule amounts of amperage i think, but enough voltage to give a nasty zap

[@jackqin9699]

It is energy that kills you. Energy ＝ Voltage X Current X Time.

[@jaccos622]

A difference in electric potential between two points is what we call voltage. You can have voltage between two points but no current. If you apply any sort of resistence to the circuit, you'll get a current according to Ohm's law for DC , U = RI. Basically, the voltage makes the current flow through a circuit. The current is the killing part but the current whould never exist without a voltage (and resistence).

[@tedlahm5740]

Can not dispute.

[@lukastanic4350]

The only right answer is that current that flows through your body kills you, the current which is the consequence of your body being exposed to high voltage. But there is one thing many people giving explanations skip, and it is the frequency of that voltage. The higher the frequency, your body can be exposed to higher voltage. That is the reason why you can touch several hundered THOUSAND volts of very high frequency and not feeling anything and on contrary touching dc voltage or low frequency voltage of severela hundered volts can easily kill you. At higher frequency your body resistance (or impedance to be more precise) is higher and the current that flows through your body is lower keeping the same voltage level that your body is exposed to. It is known as skin effect, that the high frequency current is going thorugh your skin, rather than through blood system which keeps increase the resistance of current path and lowers its intensity.

[@sanjaybhatikar]

Voltage is the murderer, Amps is the knife.

[@randomdude9135]

Smart

[@meninpapin]

Yes amps is useless without voltage

[@madhusudhanmsd1321]

It's power

[@mwolfod]

@@madhusudhanmsd1321 Yep, Wattage.

[@xpbatmanqx5535]

You deserve an award for that!!!

[@garethrowlands1305]

Simple answer.. you need high voltage to be able to pass enough current through you . Don’t think to hard about it . This is why warning signs always say “warning high voltage “ 10 amps with 1 volt wouldn’t even tickle you

[@Sinnbad21]

Gareth Rowlands I’m just learning this stuff so sorry if it’s a dumb question but can 1 volt even push 10A?

[@garethrowlands1305]

Anthony Anderson of course if it is is regulated by various transformers and inverters etc 👍

[@garethrowlands1305]

A car battery can create 70amp with 12 v for example

[@Pops180]

@@Sinnbad21 if the load resistance is low enough (100mOhm)

[@gvenagas]

In my opinion: In direct current what kills is the voltage in combination with the resistance, since voltage by itself does not exist and the power of the source (how many amperes can the source tolerate before the voltage sinks) In alternating current, all the above apply to direct current, but also the frequency that determines the impedance. It is also the exposure time of the person to the electricity

[@Exachad]

The current that flows through the body is entirely dependent on the voltage and resistance. Any internal resistance of power source is tiny compared to your body's resistance. The maximum amperage that can be supplied by even a tiny AA battery is enough to kill you, so neither of those two things limit the maximum current flow. Thus, the only factors that determine current flow are the voltage of the power source and your body's resistance.

[@burnstick1380]

instead of saying it depends on the voltage and resistance you can simplify it and say it depends on the amps. U = R * I

[@OhYeaMista]

Saying amps kill not volts is like saying bullets kill, not guns. Technically yes, but the bullet isn’t doing anything without the gun.

[@RimstarOrg]

Yup, it's a trick question since there's no either/or answer.

[@Lembo101]

It's the wattage that kills you i.e. how much power your body dissipates as a resistor. The formula for power dissipated by a resistor is voltage times current, so it takes both and you can't really have one without the other.

[@smb1397]

well yeah but V = IR (and thus I = V/R) so power (= VI) can also just as easily be written as (IR)I = I²R and also V(V/R) = V²/R. i think the main takeaway here is that voltage and current are often talked abt as if theyre diff. independent things, but theyre actually not. theyre totally dependent on each other. voltage can be thought of as a measure of current times resistance, and current as voltage divided by resistance (im assume resistance to be constant here, but as he said, it actually varies)

[@Vinxian1]

Power, not wattage

[@2010ngojo]

You need a minimum voltage (or lower resistance) to even have current flowing through your body. Resistance plays a key role here as it affects what voltage the current will flow at.

[@harms123]

It's the energy (E = Pt). A static shock can pass a few amps through you but because the time is so short the energy is only a few milijoules.

[@allenbrown1]

Good explanation. Nice graphics.

[@liveen]

Both. As for the "effects" of certain amerages within a wall socket, they're irrelevant and misleading. If you touch both live and neutral in a wall socket, the current is decided by the resistance between the two spots on your body touching the wall socket. As the body has an estimated resistance of 2330 from hand to hand, the current would be assumed to be in the range of 100mA if the voltage is 240V, as in ventricular fibrillation. However, that's not exactly what happens. The electricity burns a more efficient path through your body, meaning the resistance lowers, and the current increases, rapidly. Plus, you can't let go because your muscles are contracted, so this just keeps going. This is why if you ever went to liveleak back in the day and saw people dying from electricity-related accidents, they usually started smoking, and sometimes just straight up caught fire. Think is though, the entire question of amps vs voltage in general is extremely misleading, and dangerous. At a high enough voltage, there is NO way to limit the current, as in the maximum available current will be drawn, which means that amperage won't matter at all if you have an accident with your wall socket power. You'll just get the full dose regardless, and if you're unlucky enough, you WILL die. Keep in mind, the voltage in your house might sound low, but it's AC. That means that the voltage is how high in the positive it goes, AND how low in the negatives it goes. Basically, you might as well double the voltage if you want to be realistic about what the peak voltage would be for you. And in the human body it would also cause an inductive load from your body due to the AC nature of it, which would just increase the amount of ways you can die. Basically: Your wall socket's fuse isn't less than 20mA. it's not even measured in mA, it's measured in A, as in full Amps. 1000X higher than 1mA. THAT number is what goes through your body. The only way you end up with less is with custom circuits designed for an experiment like that, and your wall plugs don't have that. They just have the fuse. So you're dead

[@liveen]

Also, resistors don't actually "resist" the flow of electricity exactly. It's kind of a misleading name, but resistors don't resist anything at all. They just have a certain passthrough potential for electricity, but if they are the ONLY path, the electricity won't give a shit if we're talking wall socket voltage. It'll burn right through. which lowers resistance, which increases current, and by that time you're already dead anyways. Keep in mind, when you buy a resistor, it has a tolerance, and a maximum wattage rating. Wattage is the product of voltage times current. Our body's resistance, however, when paired with the voltage in the wall socket, makes for a wattage that is far, far above the wattage rating of our body. I.e, we die regardless. And again, for testing resistors, I would argue that you shouldn't use two resistors in series, also in series with a motor, which has coils, which has resistance. You're just creating a triple+ voltage divider, which will completely contaminate any results you get, and will not come close to the number you'd expect. And AGAIN, for testing resistors, I recommend not using the weakest resistors available like those quarter watt ones you used there. The current used to turn on 5 low-voltage LEDs would already be close to burning through those resistors

[@liveen]

And 100,000 ohms???? did you not google this???? The resistance from hand to hand is 2330, and half that for hand to foot. And keep in mind, hand to hand means the current also passes through your heart, stopping it. At 100k ohm you'd have 2.4mA maximum from a 240V wall socket, which would make for just 0.01W. not even a simple shunt resistor can be found on earth with that low of a rating

[@liveen]

And as for water, absolute pure water is suggested to be 18.2Mohm. That's 18.2 million ohms. Assuming constant voltage, constant current, if your skin was wet, you'd be extremely safe touching a wall outlet. However, that's not how it works. The wall socket passes through as much current as it needs to to make a good enough connection to ground. That's how electricity works. If your skin was SORTA wet, however, you'd be in MORE danger. And that's the realistic scenario, however you wouldn't be in MUCH more danger, and the current would increase far enough that most fuses would still save you. unless your heart was stopped at first. Fuses aren't instant after all. If you're in the bath, and you drop your toaster oven on yourself, maybe you'll suffer a concussion from the metal hitting your head, but more likely you'd just start wondering where your flashlight is since all the lights turned off (because fuse)

[@liveen]

And ALSO: you used TWO 100kOhm resistors. That's 200Kohm, not 100k. And TWO 1kohm resistors. Thats 2kohm. They're in series. Had they been in parallell, though, it would be 50k and 500ohm. dude, please, never, ever make videos about safety around electricity without THOROUGHLY doing your research. Everything you're stating here is just hearsay type shit, the kind of thing you learn in primary school and find out later that the teacher had no clue what they were talking about. Absolutely everything is a common misconception, the kind of thing people who DONT work with electronics or electricity at all would tell you. Which is why everyone in the comments seem to believe you, because you're just telling them shit they've already been told by their uncles, grandparents and friends. A single electroBOOM video however will easily demonstrate why this whole thing can't be true at all. Electricity doesnt give a shit about your resistor. It all wants to get from point a to point b, and if it has a lot of potential, it WILL do that. You also destroyed your resistors in this video btw, turning that motor takes far more than they're rated for

[@theonly5001]

That's why you have RCDs/GFCIs in all of Europe. That keeps the current to a limit.

[@mandarbamane4268]

People: Voltage or current? Me: power = voltage × current

[@THE-michaelmyers]

Power/Watts is the ONLY way to look at this. It is how electricity is sold and the measure of work done. In many ways equal to horsepower in an engine. It is the electricity moving through the body that does the damage. It takes voltage to force electricity through the body this is true. When voltage forces electricity through the body, current/amps is the measure of that electricity flowing.

[@nizardhahri493]

I would say voltage x current x time

[@TheRealbenjibits]

@@THE-michaelmyersCapitalizing ONLY as if you know the subject. This whole “voltage or current” is not a 1 OR the other. It is a combination such that the correct answer is, well, it depends. Voltage, current, frequency of signal, and time all play a part. All metrics for the lethality of current have time as a factor. Static shock produce high voltage AND high current, yet don’t kill due to the short time of the discharge. This is of course, neglecting source impedance and other aspects.

[@THE-michaelmyers]

@@TheRealbenjibits And everything you just mentioned results in Watts or power used. I will agree that everything you mentioned is 100% correct. After reflecting over coffee, I've decided to revise my comment. The voltage v current debate has persisted for at least the past 75 years that I'm aware of. Notably, two professors at Georgia Tech in the 1980s held diametrically opposed views and could spend hours lecturing on their respective stances. I found myself aligning with the Dean's perspective, which emphasized the "power" argument, as power quantifies the work performed. Regrettably, when it comes to lethal exposure, the work performed is quantified by the watts required to cause the fatality. Indeed, "combination" is the appropriate term. Engaging in the voltage versus current debate is comparable to pursuing rabbits into their burrows.

[@TheRealbenjibits]

@@THE-michaelmyers I do not agree with power resulting in an electric shock, nor as even a source for hurting someone. The whole conversation is what makes a signal dangerous, or lethal, to a human. Power is a very poor metric to use in this case considering it doesn’t measure electric potential, or current. Tell me what voltage 50kW is, or 50mW. Tell me the current. You can’t, because power doesn’t matter. The duration in which energy is used does not quantify nor should is quantify an electric shock.

[@Tismitch]

After a while of looking through a lot of contradicting information I realised there is a pattern: voltage from power source Vs. amps across your body. Almost like people are arguing from two different perspectives of the same situation, not realising that they are arguing two sides of the same coin. Many arguments that say that voltage is what kills are pretty much saying exactly what arguments for amps being the killer says. Enough voltage to overcome inherent resistance will kill if there is enough current from the power source. A static shock, even if it can be in the kV range, doesn't have the current to do real damage (all available amps are pushed through) while low voltage and high amps would also not have enough current to do much damage in most situations because there isn't enough voltage to push all those electrons through the resistance (a trickle of amps are pushed through). The main thing here is decreasing the resistance in any way makes the high amp/low voltage scenario far more dangerous while not really affecting the low amp/high voltage scenario. For safety, while it does matter how many volts you have to overcome resistance, amps is the determining factor in how much harm is done. Resistance can vary wildly from so many factors but if there aren't enough amps to matter then the end result doesn't change regardless.

[@throckmortonthebrave6634]

as an electronic engineer, I agree

[@harms123]

No. A static shock can peak in the amps. If you have high voltage and low resistance you will ALWAYS have high current. The reason a static shock doesn't kill you is because the energy is low.

[@harms123]

@@throckmortonthebrave6634 X

[@Tismitch]

@Harms yes, that is what I was saying. A static shock doesn't have much energy because the energy transfer is low because of the limited amount of electrons that can build up before the voltage is too high and there is a discharge. Static electricity can be high amps in very specific situations, like a thunderstorm where the amount of air provides huge amounts of resistance, but usually objects discharge well before enough electrons build up to have amps in a dangerous range.

[@throckmortonthebrave6634]

@@harms123 P = V x I V = I x R Yall both said the same thing

[@RabbitholeIsrael]

my friend leaned against an isolated transformer while drilling but did not notice a contractor earthing his welding machine on the primary side. He almost died. The electricity shot a hole in his back. He is lucky to be alive.

[@DoubleM55]

Saying that "Volts don't kill, amps do" is the same as saying that when you fall "Height doesn't kill, speed does". You can't have amps without hight enough volts.

[@maximumeffort5877]

What also matters is time exposed. You could be exposed to 10,000 volts but for .00000001 msec

[@gabecooper8408]

My cousin was in a band and his gear fell on top of him and I can definitely confirm it was the amp that killed him

[@farrier2708]

Watt? It's a combination of volts 'and' current that kills you? Ohm y God! I just could not 'resist' that.

[@TheFairytail4ever]

My friend....

[@prinssdgunofficial2400]

You're getting a load of *negatively charged* comments with those puns. *current*ly you aren't even going to survive the flow of puns. Truly *shocking*, isn't. Alright sorry i am in the *flow*. With these subjects you just get elec-*tons* of chances for puns.

[@farrier2708]

@@prinssdgunofficial2400 : We need help! We're both seeing through a Lenz darkly. Yes! I know it should be "Through a GLASS darkly" but I'm getting desperate now. 🖐😣👍

[@stargazeronesixseven]

🙏 Thank You So Much for this informative tutorial on Voltage , Current & Resistance! 🕯

[@davidsanders6957]

Shocking, isn't it ?!!