Just a question based on electricity. Please answer it.?

Question

A person of age 19 years comes in contact with an a.c. supply of 120 volts. How many seconds will he take to die? Give an exact answer. Explain your answer in detail.

What else can happen to him? Under what circumstances can something else happen to him?

Please give a detailed answer. Don't think someone is really going to touch electric current. This is just a question. The most informative answer will get 10 points.

Note that age is not the main factor. The person can be of some other age also.

Answer 1

I was taught that "death current" is in the order of 100mA, or 0.1A. This current must pass directly through the heart muscle, and in such a way that it disturbs the resonance of the signal driving the heart's timing.

Voltage alone cannot do this and age has nothing to do with it. Many different voltage levels can induce death current, depending on many variables, including how wet the skin is, how conductive the body is(water, salt levels), and where on the body the voltage is applied.

Heart fibulators and defibulators can run on 9V cells or AA cells, which are very low voltage, but the voltage is applied just so, to make the heart respond accordingly. So it doesn't take much.

Answer 2

Age has very little to do with it. What usually determines life or death is how much current passes through the chest cavity. It only requirea about 11 mA (.011 A) to cause fatal fibrillation of the heart muscle. But 120 VAC may, or may not, be enough to cause that amount of current to flow. If, for example, the points of contact are the foot and the knee, there's a very good chanch all that will happen is a painful shock and, possibly, some burns where the contact was made. But if it;s from hand to hand, the current path is directly through the chest cavity and the danger is much greater.

HTH ☺

Doug

Answer 3

whats the relationship between his age and the voltage?