Question: why do birds not get electrified when they sit on the electric wires?
Keywords: bird, electric, electrified, electrocution, wires
Comments
-
When a bird sit on one electrical wire with both of their feet on that wire, the electricity doesn’t travel through the bird electrocuting them because it needs more work to travel through the bird in order to get from one end of the wire to the other end so it just travels along the wire. In technical terms, the bird has more resistance to the electrical current than the wire.
Another thing as well is that touching two points on the same wire means that there is no difference in potential. This is also important because electricity flows between two points as soon as there’s a difference in potential.
But sometimes you do see the occasional bird that has been fried by the electrical wires. This is because the bird may have come in contact with two wires at the same time and this creates a potential difference allowing electricity to flow through the bird.
And if birds were electrocuted when they sat on an electrical wire, we wouldn’t get awesome videos like this one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJzQiemCIuY
When a bird lands on an electric wire it gets filled up with electrons which can conduct electricity, but it doesn’t get zapped because the electrical current doesn’t flow through the bird. The bird has a higher ‘resistance’ than the wire so it is easier for electrons to flow through the wire.
If the bird lifts one of it’s legs and touches it to something which can suck up electrons, eg. the ground or a tree, then one leg will be charged and the other will not. Electrical current will flow through the bird and into the ground, creating a lot of heat within the bird and generally unpleasant consequences.
Humans could hang out on electrical wires too as long as they weren’t touching any objects connected to the ground. However, there are a number of reasons why this is inadvisable 🙂
0
Yep – birds have high resistance, so the electrons prefer to go through the wire. Touching two points on the same wire means the left and right foot also have no difference of “potential” so there’s nothing driving the electrons through.
Touch the floor, though, and though you (or the bird) still has a high resistance, there’s suddenly a potential difference between the wire and the ground that forces current through you creating what Aimee describes as unpleasant consequences.
Usually electric fences have pulses of electricity to knock you back. Don’t do this, ever, but if you did touch a fence you might be knocked back by a pulse, and that kind of prevents any damage to you from a long period of current. I know this from an episode when I was about 8 that I’d rather not discuss.
0
To be electrified, a current needs to flow. Since the birds are not connected to anything ELSE, the current does not flow from the wire through the bird to something else. No current, no electrification.
0
Most birds don’t get electrocuted because they only sit on a single wire. If the bird has one foot on one wire and another foot on the next wire (or it’s tail is touching the other wire) it acts as an electricity bridge between the two wires. The electricity flows from one wire to the other through the bird and – zap! That’s one unlucky bird!
0