Can you help me understand how electricity travels?

The thing about electric shocks and lightning is that it is not always simple. The “hand to hand had little or no resistance ( shoes and socks are resistance ). So the electricity flowed down the line.

Electricity follows the path of least resistance. So, because the nerves of a human are already made for the transport of electricity, it simply finds that the path of least resistance. Rather than having to travel through resistive rubber soles.

There’s a video of kids in a line. All are standing on something with shoes on. They hold hands and touch an electric fence and nothing happens. Until another kid goes to the end of the line, standing on nothing with no shoes, only then is everyone shocked.

I don’t understand electricity either, but maybe that example helped.

Oooh! Interesting. Thanks everyone.

So different situation. If there was a grounded metal flag pole, and I touched it while also grounded, and it got struck by lightning, would I feel anything at all? My understanding is the most direct path is through the pole, so I wouldn’t get shocked.

Also! Does this mean electric fences have to be attached to the ground with an insulator? If they were grounded they wouldn’t work at all, no?

You would still get shocked, the voltage of lightning is so high that it wouldn’t differentiate between you and the flagpole. The shock you would recieve wouldn’t be as great as if the lightning struck you directly, but it would still kill you. The electric fence works the same way.

Lightning is so much higher voltage than a (typically) 12V DC fence for livestock that it’s going to force a path where a simple one might not exist. That is, it’s already arcing through the air to hit the flagpole. Traveling through your body and then arcing out at your feet to the ground is no trick for a lightning bolt. This is why, I think, many lightning strike victims are actually found “blown out of their shoes”.

@Mariah I have an electric fence and “yes” one end of the loop is attached to ground. There are different ways to do it. If it is a high power fence that is supposed to work for miles, there is a screw with a large wing nut. You pound a ground rod into the ground about 5 ft deep and connect a wire between the wing nut and the rod. You can also tie it to an existing structure if it has good ground. A metal well casing is best. Smaller, low power controllers use the return side (the larger slot) of the electric outlet but they do it inside the box so you don’t see. In all cases the “hot”, high voltage wire must be kept away from the ground for the fence to be effective.

I know you love math so look up the equation for adding resistors in parallel. You will see how it is possible for a high voltage strike to pass through a couple of parallel paths. A typical lightning strike is in the 10,000 amp range. It takes a few milliamps to kill a person. 99.9999% of the strike energy can go down the flagpole but if only one millionth of the current passes through a person standing near it they are finished.

It’s lots of free electrons desperately looking for an easy way to get to positively charged ions.