Can you Help me Visualize low scale electricity?

Question

So I'm holding a triple A battery between my middle finger and my thumb.


Apparently a small current of electricity is going through me. As I understand it that means electrons are being fired off in some kind of chain reaction. Also I find no difference between that and free radicals which are a chain reaction of imbalanced atoms stealing electrons. I can't see how an electron chain reaction can be polaried so I don't get why there's a + and - sign to the battery.


I can't picture any of it. Does stuff like electrolysis of water happen small scale too?

Answer 1

The battery doesn't have enough potential to push electricity thru your finger and thumb. There is too much resistance.

Volts = resistance X amperage.

Did you ever turn a wall switch from on to off very slowly? The resistance thru air is much higher than copper. So, you have 120 volts with 20 amps passing thru a copper bridge which has very little resistance about 6 ohms. Now you just disconnect the switch, you still have 20 amps but now the resistance is much greater across the gap of air. About 30 ohms. That's why you see a spark. The voltage is driven up.

30 ohms X 20 amps = 600 volts. The spark you see is about 600 volts.

If the battery had more amperage, it would pass thru your body for sure. Use a 9V battery, put the battery across the terminals of a simple transformer - like the one that you would use for a small radio. Instead of plugging it into a wall to get from 120 V down to say 6 V, use the transformer to go from a low voltage to a higher one. Now touch the plug end - you'll feel the juice now.

Answer 2

In a battery there is a chemical reaction going on that steals electrons from one material and adds them to another. Unlike a solution with free radicals, the materials are kept separated, either by space as in the various lead surfaces in a car battery or by holding the chemicals in a paste as in common house hold batteries. In small batteries, one of the materials is the metal outer shell of the battery and the other is the paste inside which is in contact with a neutral conducting rod of carbon down the center. When the chemical reaction takes place, electrons build up on the outside shell (minus terminal) and a lack of electrons (holes) develops on the rod (positive terminal) and the chemical reaction slows to almost nothing because of the potential. When a wire, your fingers or a bulb is connected, the electrons can move away from the metal shell and from the other end of the wire, electrons can be picked up to fill in the holes and complete the reaction and allow further ones to go on.
There is a tiny current going though your fingers, very hard to measure. If you take a small battery (no more than nine volts please) and rig a wire so you can have the plus and minus next to each other and touch it with your tongue, because your saliva is salt water and conducts electricity well, you will feel a slight shock and an acid taste.
You should learn of the disassociation potential in chemistry. This is a voltage that will break a chemical molecule apart (and also determines which way reactions go.) On the reference below, it gives the potential of the Water Hydrogen reaction as 2.07 which means that: No, using a 1.5 volt flashlight battery would not produce electrolysis. Some small current would flow in the water, draing the battery but no O2 or H2 would be given off. Some of the free H and OH radicals in the water would shift position.

Answer 3

the electrons are flowing from the place where there are more electrons (+) to the place where there are less (-) electrons, slowly neutralising this difference as the battery charge wears off.