Epic!!!!

And - keep watching! It doesn't end at 2:21!

I don't know what I just watched, but this man deserves a promotion.

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, March 10th, 2014 12:13pm PDT - promote requested by notarobot.

I like his take on Global Warming.

it's the power that kills.
but it's the schadenfreude that gets the upvotes.

You can argue semantics all you want, what kills you is the flow of electricity through your heart, a.k.a. the current.

http://gizmodo.com/5262971/giz-explains-how-electrocution-really-kills-you

Pretty decent article on how electricity actually kills you, and the incredibly low amount of amperage that it would actually take to do so.

As my high school physics teacher always said, " . . . but it's the amps that cook the wiener!"

Guessing he did the 'ol electric pickle for the class as well??

I always liked the comparison with a hot water pipe : voltage is the water temperature, current is the water flow.

(wire is the pipe, ahem)

I think the saying is something like "volts jolt. mills that kills (as in milli amps)"

Erm, I'm pretty sure clinging to "current is the killer" is the semantics here...

http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_1/chpt_3/4.html

Neatly summed up:

Harm to the body is a function of the amount of shock current. Higher voltage allows for the production of higher, more dangerous currents. Resistance opposes current, making high resistance a good protective measure against shock.

The video is literally and 100% true, not semantics.

It's actually slightly more complicated still. With the power supply he's using, a DC power supply, he could turn it up to 100+ volts and hold both leads without issue (not touch them to his tongue, but hold them in his hands would be fine). I've done exactly that before; I could feel a slight amount of discomfort as current flowed through my fingers at both leads (the point of highest current density in the circuit that is my body), but it could otherwise be said that it 'tickled'. I've also had experiences once or twice in my life where I accidentally touched 120V AC, and it most certainly did NOT tickle, it HURT.

What people don't realize about humans (and even regular tap water) is that both are actually highly resistive to DC current, in the megaohms region. Once you get to 10's of Hz, for example 60Hz, 100V starts becoming quite deadly. The capacitance in our body (and in water with ion contaminants) allows current to flow much more readily when you get to alternating current of at least that minimum frequency. The net effect is that your body's resistance decreases as the input frequency increases.

Yes, it is 'current that kills', and even more accurately 'current density that kills', but it's the amount and frequency of voltage applied paired with the frequency specific resistance of the system that determines how much current will flow.

The flow of electricity kills you, as Shepppard rightly said, but you need something to entice those electrons to move and that is caused by the difference in potential - it's energetically favourable for them to move between the points of potential difference.

In that way, the analogy of the earthquake is really good; if you could magically summon up the water and throw it at the land in a tsunami shape (somehow magically make the electrons move as if a p.d. is applied), the same damage is done. But you can't - you need something to happen that forms a tsunami and that something is the earthquake (the p.d.)

It's semantics. But i guess if there were no electrons to move (..current to flow) you wouldn't feel the p.d.