electricity effect

[tarak]

What happens when electricity passes through human body in terms of biophysical and chemical paramenters?It is not uncommon that we sometimes come across some people performing acts like lighting an electric bulb by passing electricity through their bodies.Is this possible??
T.dhurjati

[GAHD]

Well, given enough of a shock all your body's stored energy gets depleted; that's why tazers leave people lethargic.

Basic rule of thumb for playing with electricity: high voltage doesn't kill you too easilly, just as long as you keep it low amperage.

[Fishteacher73]

Usually this is done with a flourescent bulb. You can do this with a piece of wool and rub the bulb or just scoot your feet across some carpet while holding the bulb.

It was actually estimated that all the voltage stored in the average human was comparable to the voltage in a moderate sized thuderhead cloud.

[Turtle]

___High voltage/low amperage current flows over the surface of the human skin & does not penetrate. This is why you can discharge arcs from your finger to say a Van De Graff generator. In general this is true of all conductors, ie the current flows along the conductor surface boundry.
___As far as detrimental effects, it varies depending on which internal organ you choose. A persons heart may stop from a house current electrical shock, killing them, & yet exhibit no skin burns. Contrarily, people have survived lightening strikes, & while suffering severe burns, no other ill effects may exhibit (especially not dying!).
___I have heard that if you connect a small battery to two wires & put one electrode on one side of a fish tank & the other electrode opposite, the fish will not swim randomly around, but swim back & forth in line with the current between the electrodes. I don't recall the name of the effect.

[Qfwfq]

Originally Posted by GAHD

high voltage doesn't kill you too easilly, just as long as you keep it low amperage.

True, but an AC current as low as 15 milliampère can be enough to kill. It causes ventricular fibrillation (the heart goes berzerk). Less than 15 can still have nasty effects. Current also causes electrolysis of the blood, this is what will be lethal in the case of DC.

What Fishteacher and Turtle say doesn't mean that lightning is always harmless. Static charges, such as when you get a shock by touching someone or when getting out of a car, are high voltages but small charges. The voltage drops as soon as the current starts flowing. The amount of charge in lightning can often be very large, besides killing people it can often cause great damage. In some cases it has even melted thick metal conductors in a fraction of a second.