When Elijah Wood's character was sitting on the guard rail and the wire flopping around hit the rail and sent juice down it, would he have died? Since he wasn't grounded at all (wasn't touching any other metal objects) wouldn't the current pass through the rail alone taking the path of least resistance?
Any electrician's out there?
Maybe thru his feet? Also the rail its' self my have been grounded thus it would just be an extension of the wire. But I'm not an expert either.
:) D
Interesting question. I'm not an engineer, although I worked in the field for 10 years. I'll take a shot at it.
In The Ice Storm, Eliga is sitting on a guard rail that has multiple support posts, each of which would be a low resistance path to ground. This would basically be a parallel circuit and some current would flow to ground through each of the posts. Elija, sitting on the rail, would have been another path to ground. His body has much higher resistance than a well grounded post (resistance and current flow are inversely porportional), but current (amps) would still flow through his body. It actually takes very little current to kill a person, and a high voltage source can easily push enough current to do the job.
Hi,
the support posts that go directly into the ground are made of metal, as it can be seen in one shot. So they should have very low resistance.
Elija, however, is wearing the super-fat "Moon Boot" Shoes that were popular in the 1970s and 1980s. So the path through his body to the ground should have very high resistance.
Additionally, since he sits on the rail, the current flowing through him should only flow through his legs, and not through his torso/heart.
Also, the power line is not a high voltage one.
So, I found it very strange that he died. When I saw the scene I took it for granted that he was just unconscious.
The people in the movie, however, took it for granted that he was dead for good and didn't even bother to try reanimation, or at least call a doctor - not even his own parents. Very strange.
bye,
Till
In addition to what you said and maybe to clear up the whole thing about people not really checking to see if he was still alive :
There was frostbite on his cheek, he was probably lying there for a while before Guy found him.
If he did survive the electricity, it's probably likely that he would have died from the cold.
Hope I helped a bit?
*M*
Saw the movie just now and totally agree with lemoncem , he´s supposed to be dead , no matter how or why !! And if You start asking , why they didn´t try to reanimate him , You can ask as well , why Elijah has been so stupid to sit on a guard rail at all :)
why they didn´t try to reanimate him
LMFAO!!! Dude that's hilarious. Man that was a good break from all the serious talk. Superb movie and interesting topic. Thanks for the laugh though, I needed that.
shareVoltage lines.. It may not have been a high voltage transmission line in the 380 kv range, but it was clearly a distribution line. Distribution lines are typically 480 volts. That may not sound like much, but consider that all but the household dryer and HVAC system run on 115 volts. when one factors in the considerable amperage, it's deadly dangerous.. electricity behavior in a non specific conductor environment is highly erratic and unpredictable.
share[deleted]
But isn't distance a factor as well? I thought that in this type of situation, the fact that the electricity is spread out over a much greater area - the heavy guard rail, all that ice everywhere. Doesn't it get, I dunno, diluted because of all that? (And yes, I know next to nothing about this, I freely admit it.)
I asked the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
by lenny66 (Sun May 1 2005 19:18:34 ) Ignore this User | Report Abuse
In The Ice Storm, Eliga is sitting on a guard rail that has multiple support posts, each of which would be a low resistance path to ground. This would basically be a parallel circuit and some current would flow to ground through each of the posts. Elija, sitting on the rail, would have been another path to ground. His body has much higher resistance than a well grounded post (resistance and current flow are inversely porportional), but current (amps) would still flow through his body. It actually takes very little current to kill a person, and a high voltage source can easily push enough current to do the job.
by lemoncem (Mon Apr 3 2006 19:36:51 ) Ignore this User | Report Abuse
In addition to what you said and maybe to clear up the whole thing about people not really checking to see if he was still alive :
There was frostbite on his cheek, he was probably lying there for a while before Guy found him.
If he did survive the electricity, it's probably likely that he would have died from the cold.
Hope I helped a bit?
maybe it wasnt the eletrocution that killed him. he possibly got knocked out by it and froze t death it would make more sense with it being called the ice storm
shareThe electrical current takes the path of least resistance - it would go through the nearest support post, most.
This current would have decided it would be alright to take a trip up the rail, ignoring all of those support posts, and then through the icy rail (not particularly electrically conductive), through him, and yeah, through the previously-mentioned boots. It's just not all that likely.
In the book, there's a line where the EMTs say Mike died of electrocution. I feel the movie followed the book and had him die of the same fate, not dying of frostbite/exposure after he became unconscious.
Since you seem convinced that there was not enough power through the metal poles to electrocute someone, I guess the movie goofed in a way. I did have a cousin who died in the 1970s when he was a teenager - he was shoveling away in the backyard and his shovel hit a live wire under the dirt. It electrocuted and killed him instantly. So who knows about the power of electricity sometimes...
Was he not also touching the rail with his hands? My memory of 70's kids' clothing is that any pretence to being waterproof was just an illusion. In reality gloves, shoes & socks often ended up saturated in wet conditions, so it's quite conceivable that the current had a relatively easy path, possibly through an arm and then the heart.
It's not impossible to imagine a scenario where the shock does nothing more than jolt or stun him. He falls, knocks himself unconscious when his head hits the deck, then dies of exposure. Just a series of unfortunate events.
--
All other priorities are rescinded.
He froze to death after being knocked unconscious by the electrocution.
shareI have to ask why the boy was outside all night anyway? Lonely? Hurt because the girl was not home and he didn't want to go home to his brother? Every one of these characters was irresponsible.
"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne
He went out into the ice storm because the molecules would be relatively still in the cold and he would have no contact with them. He was afraid of molecules. He seems to have been a germophobe or something, and more generally, he was just afraid of contact with people, afraid of relationships, afraid of life. That's why he missed the football, didn't notice when his dad was gone for a few days, didn't hear his brother blowing things up outside, and idolized geometry, which is an abstraction of the messy physical world. Maybe the reason Cristina Ricci's character came on to his little brother is because Mikey had not yet tried anything with her-- again, afraid of contact. It's only after she seduced the little brother that Mikey makes a pass--if you can call it that--at her: "We could mess around.... but only if you want to." Lamest pick-up line ever?
What I want to know is, what does the electric shock have to do with Mikey's fear of molecules and contact? Was he electrocuted because he was grounded? Did contact kill him?
Thanks to you, I understand this character much better. Maybe the electrocution showed that dangerous molecules are unavoidable, unfortunately.
"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne
"Since he wasn't grounded at all (wasn't touching any other metal objects) wouldn't the current pass through the rail alone taking the path of least resistance? "
well, possibly, but people do get electrocuted all the time by relatively small amperages and arcing. he was sitting on a wet rail, in wet clothes, so that would increase his conductivity. wet skin increases conductivity by 100x. he is sitting on the rail with his feet on the ground, so he was grounded. and most guardrails i've seen are supported by wooden posts, which are very poor conductors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_shock
From the book:
"This is the kind of guardrail they had on the secondary roads of New Canaan: a steel cable stapled onto, a pre-determined intervals, substantial wood posts that were then cemented into the embankments on the side of the road....The problem with this kind of guardrail, though, was that unlike a totally steel construction, which is grounded directly into the earth, this steel cable was essentially freestanding. And therefore conductive. And the live wire hopping gaily beside Valley Road was also touch the guardrail at the moment which Mike Williams sat upon it. His sneakers, immersed in the snow beneath him, acted as a ground and what power was lost -- very little -- in the movement of electricity along three wooden posts, along seventy-five feet of cable, and through three heavy staples -- this electricity passed into Mike."
The next paragraph explains in some explicit detail, what happened next...but the operative phase is: "Then his heart stopped."
In the book, Ben did try CPR, but Mike had been dead for some time.
Although perhaps not infinitely more. The wooden posts would have been iced up too I imagine, so there'd still have been plenty of also-low-resistance paths to the ground. But much more plausibility than the metal ones in the movie.
shareIt's really quite silly to debate whether there was enough voltage to kill a person. Maybe Mikey had an underlying heart problem. Some people die from a punch tom the head or from falling against a bathroom sink. Some people live after diving out of a plane and their parachute malfunctioning. There's no point in debating this as if all humans have the same fortitude against risks.
shareOf more importance in this scene (strictly from a technical standpoint, not an artisic or story telling one) is that a downed live electrical line will not - can not - move itself around like a fire hose. It would just lie there.
I guess they did it for the obvious drama.
I have seen some actual clips of electrocution (I will NOT post them here, it is frightening what you can see nowadays thanks to the internet, rather you can search for nightmares yourself) but I do feel compelled to describe them in response to your post.
1) A crowd is trying to talk a man down from on top of an LRT, or light rail transit of some kind. He is on top of a metal train car, blissfully grabbing a power line above his head. Then he grabs another line with his other hand, and there is a large blue flame and ferocious buzz/boom noise and he comes limply sliding off the roof. I don't know if it would have mattered wether he was on a metal train car, I think by touching the second line he completed a circuit.
2) A crowd of people is trying to pull an unconcious (dead?) man away from a downed line (which is just laying there). One man trying to help steps on the line, not touching anything else, there is a small orange spark/poof and he collapses to the screams of the crowd.
Someone on this thread mentioned that maybe his boots were a thick rubber and might have offered some protection. If so, then his boots would be an insulator, but they would have to be between him and the charge - ie if he was standing on the metal guardrail.
At any rate, to answer your question directly, yes he would have died if the powerline touched the metal guardrail and he was sitting on it.
Your question is fair and I do not boast an excellent understanding of physics. But in the novel, Mr. Moody spends a paragraph or two describing the "guardrail". It was the sort of thing you see on secondary roads in New England to reduce trauma in a car crash: a cable stretched between wood posts rather than a grounded steel fence construction. Mikey was essentially sitting on a live wire. So if it does not make sense in the film, it does in the novel.
shareEver touch an electric fence? You don't have to take your shoes off in order to get a jolt.
Just because an item is an insulator doesn't mean it will stop electricity. Insulators are also conductors; they just don't conduct as well.
With high voltage and high amps, insulation provided by clothing is not a factor. You touch it, you die. There is no insulation.
Electricity doesn't just follow the path of least resistance. But more of it will go that way than down a path of higher resistance. Look at formulas for resistors in parallel.
When electricity flows along a uniform metal conductor, it stays on the surface. The electrons repel each other so strongly that there is no current flowing inside. They flow better on larger conductors because there is more surface area, not because there is more metal inside. The electrons try to expand to any conductor that enlarges surface area.
The only way Mikey (Elijah) could have survived that jolt is if he only touched the guard rail, and nothing else. That way he wouldn't provide a circuit. He would have been like a bird sitting on a telephone wire. But even then, there is no guarantee. If he had straddled a defective section of rail, he would have provided a new circuit. Or if he was in close proximity to another grounded object, he could have acted like a spark plug, discharging through the air to the object.
.