Why bird sitting on electric line does not get shocked?
If you touch the electric wire with current flowing through it, then you would surely get electric shock from it. But you might have wondered that birds can sit on naked electric wires with current flowing through them, without any harm. How this could possible. Are birds bad conductor of electricity or their feet are non-conductor. |
| Why bird sitting on electric line does not get shocked? |
The answer to this question is simple but for that, you must first understand how current flows through wires. The current always flows from higher potential to lower potential like water that always flows from high altitude places to low altitude places. But current can only flow when its circuit is complete. For example, if you have a battery and connects its two terminals with a bulb, then the bulb starts to glow because current passes through it which goes from the high potential terminal of the battery too low potential terminal. Thus current requires the complete circuit to flow.
Why bird sitting on electric line does not get shocked?
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| Why bird sitting on electric line does not get shocked? |
Now when you touch single current carrying naked wire the circuit gets complete because current flows through you into the earth. Here earth behaves as the terminal at the low potential and current carrying wire as the terminal at high potential.
But in case of the bird sitting on the electric line, the circuit doesn't get completed. Both the feet of the bird remains at the same potential and thus there is no point of low potential. Thus bird doesn't get any shock. But if bird touches both the wires, which are at different potential then the bird would surely get shocked from it and you can imagine the fate of the bird after that.
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| Why bird sitting on electric line does not get shocked? |
Do you know that element Selenium only conducts electricity when light strikes on it. In the dark, this behaves as an insulator.
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