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A young couple was fatally electrocuted during yesterday's storms. The flooded streets in Queens stalled 19 year-old Alana Berenson and 23 year-old Joseph Cheetham's car, so they got out - not noticing a power line dangling in the 30 inches of standing water. Berenson was electrocuted first, and Cheetham got out of the chair to help her when he was electrocuted. Newsday reports that the power line was felled by the lighting, according power company. Gothamist wants to remind everyone that if there's lightning, staying in the car is pretty safe since it has rubber tires, which grounds the electricity, versus water which conducts it.
The NY Times reports that the thousands of home, both in Brooklyn and Westchester lost power; also, the 3.83 inches of rain that fell at JFK was a one-day record. Some airports are experiencing delays into this morning and are bracing for more rain today.
Yesterday's lightning and rain was practically biblical; for those few hours - it was just pouring and pouring and the sky would then light up. Gothamist Weather had a brilliant take on the situation.
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Putting on my best nit picking hat, the rubber tires of a car insulate electricity. When you ground electricity, you give it a way to flow to earth, completing a circuit. The tires of a car prevent the electricity from flowing into a car from a conductor (such as water outside the car.)
My bad on the URL above. For the extra curious:
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Ground_(electricity)
I thought the real reason a car wasn't so much the tires, but instead it is because electricity travels easily around the metal shell of the car, forming a sort of force-field around you...
Sorry, another pedant here. "fatally electrocuted" is redundant. If you're electrocuted, by definition, you're dead.
Regular water is actually an extremely poor conductor of electricity - that is to say its doesn't conduct electricity at all. When electricity hits water, it doesn't flow through in the form of a current but instead seeks out any object that will allow it to flow, any conductor such as a car or a person. Electricity hates water, which is why it is to get to you.
Salt water, on the other hand, is an excellent conductor of electricity. The Chlorine and Sodium that make up salt are separated and form ions, which allow electrons to transfer from ion to ion, forming regular isotopes and thus eliminating any electricity that would otherwise cause you harm. Think about it like this, how come lightning can strike the ocean but doesn't kill millions of fish at that spot? Salt water.
For the sake of argument, the human body is basically a big bag of salt water inside with skin as a relatively poor barrier. Electricity likes salt water.
Hope this explanation helps. My degree is not in chemistry, although I did study engineering and took a lot of chemistry classes. Please feel free to correct me.
what about people who are hit by lightning and survive? were they not electrocuted? not trying to start a flame war, just curious about the semantics.
Nosuch and Bee, I don't have the definitive information (how does this Internet thingy work?) but I think a car actually does ground the electricity, conducting it along its body to the earth. Because the people inside aren't touching the ground, the bolt doesn't bother with them (for the same reasons scott detailed about salt water). So, it's not the tires' insulation (they're pretty thin and laced with metal wires anyway), nor a "force field," but you are pretty safe in a car.
Also, a note on lightning strike survivors, I seem to remember that most survive because they are not touching the ground when struck--for example, they might be taking a quick hop-step up onto the curb, or jumping to safety.
Yeah, what some others had said.
The car acts as a Faraday cage, essentially shielding the contents from the electrical charge that flows on the outside. Same with what happens with airplanes.
The rubber tires do not do much when it comes to lightning. If an electrical charge can travel through miles and miles of air, it can very well reach that last few inches to the ground.
oh poo, we weren't talking about lightning were we...? hahaahah
SB - If you're question was about word definition, lightning strike survivors were not technically electrocuted (shocked, maybe?). To electrocute is to "kill by electric shock", according to Webster's.
I mean SP.
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im not sure if anyone still reads these....but some of you guys are clueless. the girl that was killed was my sister....and it wouldnt matter about the electricity because the car was filling up with water. plus if you are surrounded by water in the middle of a huge storm.......you are bound to panic. my sister was not responsible for what happened to her