Someone said "Volts jolt, amps kill". This is very confusing and can give out the wrong message that any voltage is safe if the amps are low. The fact is, it only takes a tiny amperage to kill you. The reason we don't all die when we touch a battery is because it takes a lot of volts to pass though your heart.
Unfortunately, what they teach in schools up to secondary level is wrong. They can't seem to explain the difference between volts and amps and this was one of the first things our lecturer at college put is straight on. Years later, I had an argument and lost a friend over this one evening. She was being paid to mark science exam papers, incorrectly! No wonder people get confused, hate Physics and that this country has so few people wanting to be engineers!
I'll explain why high voltage kills, not high amps: Put simply, you need high voltage to "jump" through you. The higher the voltage the easier this becomes. A deadly shock attacks the heart and the most effective way is to allow current to pass through your rib cage. To minimise this, people having to work on live high voltage equipment will often stand on rubber mats/wear rubber boots (to prevent a route to earth through their feet) and always have one hand only on the equipment.
Alternating current (AC) is used for transmission of power as it looses less energy than DC. In order to efficiently transmit power over distance, we use AC high voltage and low current. That's why power lines suspended across the countryside are at very high voltages. If we used DC and low voltages, the lines would need to be incredibly thick to handle the current, but we'd still loose a lot of power. e.g, double the voltage, halve the current. If you've ever installed a powerful car ausio system, you will have found that the power cable on offer is very thick. It needs to be to handle the current demand of a system powered by just 12-16v.
Back to living creatures... It only takes a few millamps to kill you (I believe the figure to be 1.6 Milliamps or 0.0016 amps ) - it will cause your heart rhythm to be interrupted and if you don't survive, it will be because you've had an heart attack.
Conversely, holding the terminals of a low voltage, high current source, such as a 50Ah car battery, will not even register the slightest tingle and is completely safe.
I can't remember exactly what a safe voltage is, but it's something like 50v, or maybe a bit less. 50v will give you a nip and it really does depend on moisture (a conductant). Sweat is a good conductor, perhaps due to the salt content. If your skin is bone dry, you are less likely to get a circuit through you.
Conductivity is a big factor in whether you get a shock or not and how bad the shock is. If you are soaking wet, expect a big one. If your dry, you might not even get a shock.
However, if you introduce high voltage and high current over a period of time, you will fry - nasty.
Just don't fxxk with high voltages. Turn the juice OFF, but if this is not posible, proceed with extreme caution (like when diagnosing electonic equipment faults). Better still, get a man who is qualified to deal with it.
I like the quote somebody else made
I think it effectively just rebooted my head lol.
