how does a person get shocked
I've had this question a lot I've worked with some people in the past actually I still work with some
people that have been doing this for a really long time and they still don't understand how
a person gets shocked or an electrocution happens so let's break into it a little bit first there's
two terms that you should be familiar with the word shock So when you say you get shocked it
just means that you've introduced yourself into the circuit in some manner usually when you say
shock it's something like this is ow and then there's the term electrocution now electrocution
a lot of people think it only means death it actually means serious harm or injury or death
most of the time when somebody's talking about electrocution though they're talking about death
but some I know some electricians that like all of the skin on their arms has been burned off and
they're still electricians and they just got into an accident there was an arc flash large voltages
and large currents when things short out it can create an entire blast of incident energy with
such a high heat that it can actually vaporize copper right it can take a solid material and
instead of liquefying it literally turn it into vapor instantaneously you just skip over the
liquification phase so there's a lot of Hazards with working around electricity especially in
a live state but I think what really helped me when I was an apprentice finally start to
understand like oh this is actually not as big of a deal as as I'm thinking in my head because
I don't understand and I just think it's like wizard bolts shooting out you know like once
you start to understand how it works it can help not make you so fearful and you can actually start
to respect and understand it how you get shocked or electrocuted is you have to introduce yourself
into a circuit if you have one conductor and you cut that conductor and pull it apart you
have two points on that circuit now and say the rest of this circuit is still complete goes out
to a light bulb or something like that comes back on the neutral if you just cut that hot and you
grab one side of it you will not get shocked if that other side's not touching anything and you
are not touching anything that allows you to be introduced to the rest of the circuit if you're
say your hands in your back pocket and you just touch that incoming hot wire you will not get
shocked now don't go out there and start testing and being like well do I sincerely touch all these
hot Waters and not get shocked no I'm saying the theory of you touching a hot wire by itself making
sure that there's nothing else around you that you can get shocked there's no way for current
to continue traveling through the circuit so there's no current that's going to go through
your body when you get shocked that's all it is is it's sending current through your body so it you
have to be touching in two places to complete that circuit it's just like a switch right we
have a switch this that's disconnected when you reconnect that switch current goes through the
switch because now there's a complete path through the circuit it's from two different
points that are being connected so uh when you get shocked it's because you're touching one thing and
another thing that's huge rewind that when you get shocked it's because you're touching one
thing and another thing current travels between two points now you can get shocked in series
trees like that where I said you know you cut one conductor you pull it apart and you grab on each
side you're gonna get the [ __ ] knocked out if you don't do that you can kill yourself seriously
we don't offer enough resistance in our body to be safe from getting shocked or getting electrocuted
the shit's dangerous so don't go around touching live wires I'm talking in hypotheticals here now
that is in series right that's cutting a conductor putting your your your body in the series in that
one conductor there's also parallel so if you have a hot going out to a load you got a light bulb
and it's coming back to the source from The Source back to the source all just one big giant wire and
you were to cut the hot and cut the neutral and just touch the neutral in the hive that's going to
be a lot more severe of a shock or electrocution because now you're the only resistance in that
entire circuit and you're going from hot to neutral so you're essentially short-circuiting
that circuit and you are the load if in the earlier example with these uh the series shock we
have a load at one end and we are introducing our body into the circuit there's another load there's
more impedance there's more resistance in the circuit so there's less current that can flow if
there's a load and you're involved in that circuit but if you are the only load in that circuit and
you're going between hot and neutral or say like one hot another hot or hot and ground that's a lot
more severe of a thing you can get really really hurt now I'm not saying saying that you can't get
also really really hurt in the series circuit also if you're the only load and you just happen to be
on the series side you're still going to be the only load it's still going to be the same thing
as if you were on a parallel circuit and you were the only load it's just different kinds of shocks
if you're going between Hot and Hot again now you just have twice the amount of pressure going
through you twice the amount of voltage right 240 instead of 120 from hot to ground or hot to
neutral the pressure's a lot higher so the current that can flow is going to change because now you
have way more pressure behind the system it's like getting shot with a fire hose versus getting shot
with a squirt gun it's just the difference in voltage there's more pressure behind that system
so just understand that when you are working on something live a you should always be wearing
PPE don't do live electrical work and just start digging your fingers into live stuff always check
things if you're going to use one of those little tick tracers that I hate and I tell everybody not
to buy not to use I verify things turning on and off with a tick Tracer that's the only thing I use
for somebody's turning the breaker on turning it off turning a light on turning some kind of switch
on off on off when I can see that behavior of on off on off that's why I use a tick Tracer because
I know we're working with the right thing we're in we're we're on the right path when
we're troubleshooting but I always pull out my multimeter and I test to see what the voltages are
so I can actually see what kind of pressure we're working with on off on off just tells you like hey
you've got a switch that's connected to this thing but if you shut it off you don't know that there's
not still a voltage that's trickling through you could have stray voltage you could have
a lot of different things and those tickers are not testing voltage so as a good electrician to
be able to diagnose anything into trust and verify that power is not on and you are indeed safe to go
put your bare hands in something you need to be testing with a multimeter and I would never put
your bare hands into anything unless you've gone and shut the circuit off so I've talked about this
at agnosium in our courses on electrician you and in other videos there is no reason that you need
to work live on circuits but there are certain times where you're going to have to so like 95
of your work as an electrician can be done power off turn the breaker off unplug the thing whatever
that last little five percent of the time they make PPE that you can wear they make all kinds
of things so that we can work on live circuits and that's the only time that I tell people you
need proper training for it as well don't just go be like Oh I'm gonna go buy some hot gloves
I've never used them before but I'm just gonna go buy them and then start working on stuff you
need to be properly trained in electrical you need to be a qualified person and understand
how electrical current flows and how you can get electrocuted what an arc flash is
and how all of this stuff works if you're going to be working on live circuits so I
never recommend that somebody works on the live circuit but there are those instances
where you just do not have a choice and in those cases always make sure that you're wearing PPE
um always keep your wits about you too you know like if you're working on something live
um make sure that you're not like climbing over a bunch of materials and you're like leaning up
against something and there's no light and you're like in there trying to mess with
something like be smart about this man like make sure you get tons of room around you
it's always good to have a buddy system so like somebody else is around and can see you and see
if something happens could be the difference in saving your life or not there's all kinds
of things but electrocution is severe harm or death getting shocked is just a little
it's uh it's introducing yourself into the circuit anyways just don't be stupid when
you're working out there and understand how you get shocked so uh a good example of being of two
things that you could get shocked between are like a hot conductor and a metal thing that all
of these wires are hooked up to because all of this metal for say like a furnace or something
like that is connect is connected to the equipment grounding conductor the green one or the bare one
that goes all the way back over to the source where Power is coming so now if you touch a hot
you have something that's connected back to source and it's a completed circuit so that
metal can allow you to get shocked because you're touching two things same thing with
neutral if you're touching a hot and you accidentally like graze a neutral or you're
working up in a light fixture and you're like ah this is hot but I'm just gonna like Bend
this hot conductor over and all of a sudden like the neutral Falls this has happened to me before
the neutral falls on your arm and like if you got 277 volts going through you and it hurts
it hurts super super bad or you could have two different Hots right you could have one
hot and another hot people try to like replace Services live all the time rather than pulling
a permit and getting power company out to like do it right I get it tape up the conductors all
that but you have the potential to get shocked with double the amount of electrical pressure
or voltage and the only thing that you have is the resistance of your body which is like
fluid meat one other thing that it's important to think about is people get shocked kneeling on the
ground or standing on the ground touching live conductors too so earlier when I was saying like
you can grab a wire not get shocked that's not it's always between two things so understand like
I have these electrically insulated rubber boots they're electrically rated static dissipative
meaning they dissipate static these are safe boots for me to stand on the ground and know
that if I were to grab a live conductor it's not going to allow a path through my boots into
the ground now if we're talking like 10 000 volts 3000 amp service something like that sure it will
probably go right through my boots because it's strong enough pressure to complete that sir that
that circuit through an air gap right or through a rubber Gap so they're rated up to a certain
amount but I've been shocked before working on a light pole you know and I've got my hand in
the hand hole and the Hand holes are usually down really low so I kneel down on the ground
well now ground's wet you know there's a there's a lot less resistance so I'm sitting in kind of
a moist environment on my knee there's no extra padding or anything here my pants get wet there's
a ground rod in that pole so I've had my hand in a hand in a pole and a wire nut comes off and the
thing was hot and it shocked me through my arm down my side through my knee and into the ground
and that's dangerous you don't ever want to allow current to travel through your heart you don't
want current to travel through you at all but uh I guess unless you're like hooked up to like an EEG
and electroencephalograph which is literally they're putting diodes but that's measuring
things right that's like measuring your electrical impulses so be really careful about metal things
when you're when you're working around live stuff be very very aware of all of
the metal things around you this is why we have clearances in front of live parts so in code we
have you know three foot four foot five foot kind of depending on the environment voltage
all of that but if you have a panel that's got live Parts in it making sure behind you there's
nothing that you can come in contact with while you're working on stuff that's live that's why
those things are there just be careful working on anything live around metal equipment that's pretty
much all I got just beef be safe don't be silly you only get one life you know like you're not
getting paid enough like no matter how much you're getting paid It's never enough to risk your life
and taking this stuff seriously and understanding that it can kill you you can kill other people
too even if you walk away and you didn't wire something right and you leave and somebody like
goes into a swimming pool and because you didn't properly Bond the pool somebody can
get shocked through the water and get killed I mean like this is serious stuff and I think a
lot of the jokery around getting shocked and like trying to get your apprentices to get shocked and
all of that that's pompous it is like it you really I think a responsible electrician who
is a teacher should always be teaching safety and making sure that people are working very
safe and respect electricity and understand how you get shocked and understand when it
is necessary when the very few instances of when it is necessary to work on live circuits but the
rest of the time I think we should be teaching all of these Young Bucks coming up behind us to
not do it and to Value their life and to Value safety and really appreciate working with this
dangerous stuff so anyways enough Fibonacci love you crazy people and I'll see you in the next one