Do Volts or Amps Kill You? Voltage, Current and Resistance
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- Опубликовано: 6 мар 2014
- There's a saying that "it's not the volts that kills you, it's the amps" and while that's true in a way, you can't have amps without volts and skin resistance plays a big part too. This video explores all this, introducing voltage, current and resistance for those new to these things.
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Worker deaths by electrocution - U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/98-131/...
Physical Hazards: Electricity - Safety Institute of Australia Ltd
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Neither volts nor amps, it’s the electricity bill that kills me.
Then watt kils you?
@@anselmrafael3309 nope it's the kilowatt-hour that kills him xD
LOL it sure could.
@@anselmrafael3309 Thedistance!
@@anselmrafael3309 I see watt you did there 👏
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.
Thanks for that.
Never thought about it, having seen such signs, but you make perfect sense, especially with regards to arcing.
Wow
That actually does make sense. 😮
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.
There are more factors at play too. like biological.
@@inso80 No
I like to tell voltage is the gun and current is the bullet.
Thats what im searching for. Thx man
Advanced Ghost Try touching the neutral bar in your ckt. panel. unbalanced
current (amps) only. do we get a shock?
True ruclips.net/video/XDf2nhfxVzg/видео.html
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?
Voltages don't kill people, circuits kill people
- 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).
Cant have one without the other
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.
Looks like you had an experience
That's called metatraumatic injury
Thats it! The ground fried me. That 220! Nuttin like it!
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.
Geez dude, glad you made it through that!
That's a tip..fall vertically if you can't let go..thx
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.
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.
on that last sentence, the amount of current depends on voltage and RESISTANCE
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.
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
I certainly hope you're not an electrician.
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.
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.
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.
Good
Great video. Thank you, RimstarOrg for sharing.
Nice video, I tried to make a video about this with a hotdog, a car battery, and a wall outlet.
Well done. Very well explained.
ElectroBOOM has entered the chat!
I think he would approve of this video
💀this is the best comment ever
Where?
That dude is really funny
DA RECTIFIYA
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 .
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.
@@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.
@@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.
@@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 RUclips users.
I am disappointed in you as you are supposed to be the electrical engineer that has responded without doing the research.
Your formulae are wrong.
Energy is this:
E = ∫ w.dt
And you are the electrical engineer? Are you sure you are?
Why is this video suddenly getting lots of views after 8 years on RUclips ?
It's not sudden. This video surges in views every few months, though the last time it was this high was Feb 2017.
😮😮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.
same
i can't hardly imagine hanging onto something while wanting to let go.
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
I never got a shock, it was more like a weird wavy feeling
Saying amps kill not volts is like saying bullets kill, not guns. Technically yes, but the bullet isn’t doing anything without the gun.
Yup, it's a trick question since there's no either/or answer.
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. !
The only person that can’t die from amps and volts is electroboon
In summary: Do volts or amps kill you?
Answer: Yes
Finally someone who can use this joke template properly!
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
great analogy
So both are needed. A gun without bullets doesn't kill and neither does a bullet without a gun
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
@@zackwalker1789 there is no gun without the bullets and vice versa cause V = IR
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
If the bullet's path offers high resistance, (say a strong magnetic tube & metal bullets) which reduces the speed and hits you very slowly...
very softly*
@@user-xh9ke9ry6uor if you were to run at hypersonic speed to the point of the relative velocity of the pellets hitting you is 5mp/h.
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
I hope you'll stay alive till then
@@samvamsi3044 thanks for your hope.
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.
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.
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.
Sounds like something Larry would do.
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.
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.
Truth lol. Voltage is the difference, that’s what I studied. More difference more change, so you know the answer!
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
"it's not the volts that kill you it's the amps"
"it's not the gun that kills you it's the bullet"
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.
5 minutes later I still don't know
For simple electric knowledge, I like the water analogy.
Voltage = the pressure
Amperes = the flow
Resistance = the size of the pipe, or restrictions in it.
You could have water in a huge, tall tank, with lots of pressure at the bottom. If you put a pin hole in it (high resistance) it would squirt out, but take ages to fill a bath.
You could punch a large hole in it (low resistance) and it would not only fill the bath, but blow it away.
@@richardhemingway6084 what the hell does this mean
@@undercoverboss543 People who do not understand electricity have real problems with the correlation between Volts, Amps, Watts and Resistance. Sometimes the only way to get your head around it, is to compare with something more familiar. Hence the water analogy. I take it you are still confused?
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
I know there's 1 km but there's 1000m you cannot go further without another
Force = mass x acceleration
Voltage = Current x resistance
Yep the maths check out
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
My friend once injured my fist with his face, Newtons laws would agree that he assaulted me
And accordingly you assaulted him.
According to his frame of reference, you in fact dove straight into his fist
Expert: Volts or Amps Kills You?
Me: Electricity bill...
😂😂
That Funny.
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
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!
What happened? Holy hell
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.
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! :)
+RimstarOrg you can still add annotations right?
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.
It is energy that kills you. Energy ＝ Voltage X Current X Time.
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.
Amps = bullet
volts = gunpowder
ohms = armor
Got it!
oldmangranny5 oldmangranny5 very good description , thanks !
@@MondoDook817 :-)
I might add"Watts=hole".
To sum up: ENERGY kills you: voltage x current x time
An useful analogy would be a gun's bullet & it's powder cartridge
Bullet: 🅰️mps
Powder: ⚡ voltage ⚡
Bullet proof vest: 😎 Resistance 😎
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
It’s like asking what kills you the bullet or the gun? They coincide so much that you need both
A bullet would kill you from 30 feet away. Now imagine it's underwater. With enough resistance, voltage doesn't do much.
Voltage dictates how many amps are ABLE to flow through your body, so Voltage DOES kill! End of discussion.
It is the amount of current over time which kills. So it is amperage that kills. But without voltage there is no current. So you need an initial condition which is the difference in potential. With short pulses of DC it is not even the current that kills. It is the charge only determining the stimulus strength.
So basically don't scratch off dead skin cells. Got it.
White people don't mind being ashy.
Guitarfollower22 let the calluses protect you!
THERE IS NO CURRENT WITHOUT VOLTAGE FOR FUCK SAKE.
unless its ground return path
@@WOJTACH27 there still has to be a voltage potential difference between ground and a node for current to flow between them
And no voltage without current. Coworker was using a power supply to energize a control panel for maintenance and he wondered why the panel wouldn’t light up. Turns out his current was set to zero despite being set 24vdc. I turned the current up and it magically lit up
@@WOJTACH27 nonon, this is phyisics, there is no current without voltage, its like saying there can be pressure in a hose/pipe while the hose/pipe is empty (no fluid / gas inside the pipe).
You cant have pressure in a water-pipe if the pipes dont carry / have any water, you cant have voltage witohut current, simple formula: (U = R*I), if U ( voltage) is 0, current must be zero too.
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.
Excellent explanation and description, thank you.
It's like asking if it's the velocity or the height that kills you in a fall.
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.
Leon Hostad
Well said.
You should be a teacher.
@@Capt182 Thanks, funnily enough I have considered going into education.
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
@@phucminhnguyenle250 Thank you :)
🙏 Thank You So Much for this informative tutorial on Voltage , Current & Resistance! 🕯
You had some interesting ideas in the ends there, let's see what one can do with it.
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
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.
Very informative, thank you this is the best video I've seen on this subject so far.
Voltage is the murderer, Amps is the knife.
Smart
Yes amps is useless without voltage
It's power
@@madhusudhanmsd1321 Yep, Wattage.
You deserve an award for that!!!
Does this explain the current state of the ohmless on our streets?
im not sure whether to laugh or not xD
potentially could
They need to reVOLT to get ohms
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.
Both. Volts to be able to cross the high resistance distance and amps to be able to make a large enough electrical change
Thanks for your help! I need to know each and everything about electricity
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pickles you were supposed to say here hold my beer first...
*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.*
Best analogy in the comments.
Good explanation. Nice graphics.
Nicely packaged and informative vid.
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.
Your heart stopping is what kills you.
Technically your brain/organs receiving not enough oxygen is what kills you
Abs fantastic. Subscribed looking for more of such quality
Thank you for an impressive video. This is a good video for all the young techs out there.
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.
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
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
Without watching - amps kill, but they don't happen without enough volts :P
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
It's good that you mentioned skin resistance is not linear. It is also not time invariant or symmetric. That's one reason it's not as simple as Ohms law. Years ago, I remember that I could feel a slight tingle from 24 volts DC. My fingers were probably wet at the time.
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.
Amps kill, volts make amps kill
Absolutely a great vid for teaching. Thank you
Great video, well presented !!
Note, to die at maximum efficiency ensure high voltage and amperage
it's a very painful death
not recommended
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.
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.
Nice explanation about dangerous electronic volt and Amps
Simple presentation and well explained. Oh, those middle school text books pay off..... If, you read them. well done👍
Thanks, I will use this knowledge the next time I am struck by lightning.
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.
What also matters is time exposed. You could be exposed to 10,000 volts but for .00000001 msec
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.
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!
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...
ohm's whill kill you to when you eat resistors :)
Best comment
It is the power that kills you- next question.
I'm an electricity ignoramus. (just familiar with the V, I, R, P formula // calculations.)
I was confused how watts played no role. 2 amps @ even 1mV (& thus 1mW) is lethal?
I'm also tired of water-analogies (largely bc I distrust them).
This video was MUCH more candid & knowledgeable... THANK YOU for actually explaining!
it's not the height that kills you, it's the fall
Watt? It's a combination of volts 'and' current that kills you?
Ohm y God! I just could not 'resist' that.
My friend....
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.
@@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. 🖐😣👍
*so basically dont fuck with electricity, got it*
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).
Can not dispute.
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.
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.
Yup, you got it too. The answer to the question of this video is that it depends on a number of factors.
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.
instead of saying it depends on the voltage and resistance you can simplify it and say it depends on the amps.
U = R * I
Nice video explanation. 🎉
Thankyou for precious knowledge ♥️😊