In most household shocks, you touch a conductor, and you are the resistor to ground. Your resistance is independent of the drive voltage, so if you touch a 110V wire, the current will be half of what you get with a 220V wire. So the voltage determines the current, and thus the lethality.
There’s lots of other factors that go into the effective resistance like the amount of moisture on your skin, what shoes you’re wearing, and what the floor is made of, etc, but in all cases twice as much voltage will cause twice as much current. You are by far the highest resistance element in the circuit, so your resistance will completely determine the current - most household circuits are capable of supplying 10-15A continuously, so your resistance is the current limiter.
It’s a bad idea either to go touching live wires either way, but the rule of thumb I heard was was that a 110V shock usually won’t kill you and 220V shock usually will.
It’s a bad idea either to go touching live wires either way, but the rule of thumb I heard was was that a 110V shock usually won’t kill you and 220V shock usually will.
That’s completely incorrect though. I’ve been shocked by 230VAC at least a dozen times, if not more. And the fuse for the circuit absolutely should not be the limiter, the RCCB should trip WAY before the main fuse.
And the fuse for the circuit absolutely should not be the limiter, the RCCB should trip WAY before the main fuse.
While that certainly SHOULD be the case, in the US at least while RCCBs (we call them GFCIs) are generally required in wet areas and perhaps for new construction, in most older houses the majority of circuits don’t have any sort of ground fault protection other than the fuse/breaker. In my current house we have them on only two outlets - one in a bathroom and one in the kitchen.
Wild…we don’t have them on outlet-basis, it’s the entire house that’s protected by them, they’re installed at the power-inlet to the house so everything is protected by it. And they’re mandatory even on old houses.
In most household shocks, you touch a conductor, and you are the resistor to ground. Your resistance is independent of the drive voltage, so if you touch a 110V wire, the current will be half of what you get with a 220V wire. So the voltage determines the current, and thus the lethality.
There’s lots of other factors that go into the effective resistance like the amount of moisture on your skin, what shoes you’re wearing, and what the floor is made of, etc, but in all cases twice as much voltage will cause twice as much current. You are by far the highest resistance element in the circuit, so your resistance will completely determine the current - most household circuits are capable of supplying 10-15A continuously, so your resistance is the current limiter.
It’s a bad idea either to go touching live wires either way, but the rule of thumb I heard was was that a 110V shock usually won’t kill you and 220V shock usually will.
That’s completely incorrect though. I’ve been shocked by 230VAC at least a dozen times, if not more. And the fuse for the circuit absolutely should not be the limiter, the RCCB should trip WAY before the main fuse.
While that certainly SHOULD be the case, in the US at least while RCCBs (we call them GFCIs) are generally required in wet areas and perhaps for new construction, in most older houses the majority of circuits don’t have any sort of ground fault protection other than the fuse/breaker. In my current house we have them on only two outlets - one in a bathroom and one in the kitchen.
Wild…we don’t have them on outlet-basis, it’s the entire house that’s protected by them, they’re installed at the power-inlet to the house so everything is protected by it. And they’re mandatory even on old houses.