why birds arent affected in transmission lines

        I have wondered why the birds sitting on the power lines are not electrocuted..! this led me to study the concept of electricity in the early childhood days but most of the people even didnt know that secret even now. lol quite funny lets learn...!

         Before knowing the reason first know abt the behaviour of the flow of electric currents.

generally the current flows from the higher potential to lower potential. i.e if you consider a battery  and a electric motor if you connect only the positive end which is at higher potential with the motor the current will not flow through it because it needs a another pole which is at lower potential than the older one.. now if you connect to the negative potential the circuit completes and the motor starts running indicating the current flow. from this example we learnt that the current needs a higher and a lower potential to flow. this makes the potential difference which is denoted by volts. 

            Now coming to the question our current transmission lines have positive and negative lines seperately. the current through one line is at maximum whereas the other is at nearly zero. the bird sitting on a power line,no current flows through the bird because it is at the same potential as the wire it is sitting on so no current flows.

  But, if it were to touch the positive and a negative line it would certainly be a boom.

  

              As it if it put one leg on the ground and another leg on the live wire. under these circumstances, there is a big potential difference between the wire and the ground. so the electricity would flow through the bird in an attempt to balance things out.

some amazing facts about current:

*electricity travels at a speed of light more than 186000miles per second!!

*a spark of static electricity can measure up to 3,000 volts.

lightning is a discharge of electricity in the atmosphere. Lightning bolts can travel at around 130000 miles per hour and reach nearly 54,000 F in temperature.

full article by mathy. no plagarism.. :p lol
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About Sooriyamathy

This blog is created to explain people the concepts, which they are finding difficult to understand in electrical and electronics world. This blog also post stuff related to stargazing.