Thread: Feeling and Electric shock?

Back in college, I saw a couple of students holding hand next to a window, they said
"hey look at that, take his hand (last guy in the chain) and touch the side of the window"
I did it for fun, and was shocked as I touched the side of the window,
then someone else took my hand and he got shocked but I didnt, and so on,
the first guy had his hand out of the window and touching something like a cable or something
but only the last guy in line felt a big shock as he touched the metal frame the rest of the line felt almost nothing (or nothing I cant quite remember)

any idea as to why the last person touching the window was the one who felt the shock?

He has an electric personality!

Everybody connected in series will see the same current, but if the resistance is small, and the current is small, there won't be much voltage nor power dissipated. At the end of the line, at the gap between the last person's finger and the metal ground, there will be a higher voltage where the spark jumps the gap. This is where most of the energy will be dissipated. It would be sort of like an arc welder producing heat at the tip of the rod, but not anywhere else in the machine. That's my guess.

Good idea Harold.

One day in science class, I was part of a human "circuit", where the two people at the ends were connected to an army surplus hand-cranked generator, and everyone certainly felt the shock. Looking back on it, we're probably lucky no one suffered a heart attack or something like that.

Originally Posted by icewendigo

Back in college, I saw a couple of students holding hand next to a window, they said
"hey look at that, take his hand (last guy in the chain) and touch the side of the window"
I did it for fun, and was shocked as I touched the side of the window,
then someone else took my hand and he got shocked but I didnt, and so on,
the first guy had his hand out of the window and touching something like a cable or something
but only the last guy in line felt a big shock as he touched the metal frame the rest of the line felt almost nothing (or nothing I cant quite remember)

any idea as to why the last person touching the window was the one who felt the shock?

The one touching the window felt the pane.

*Gets coat*

It's all about surface, static voltage, and grounding. If you are all touching a source of power but are all sufficiently isolated from anything you will not feel a shock, because no plasma is formed in the air, nor can the electrons really flow because it is already saturated with them.

If the surfaces between the people are large enough, there is not enough potential voltage to create super-heated plasma, and thus no spark will fly. The guy who, in this electron saturated state, touches a grounding, a way to release the electrons, will create this plasma when all the electrons leave the system rapidly.

thanks