this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2025
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All paths proportional to their conductivity! However air is very low conductivity until it's heated to its ionizing point
Tell that to the high voltage power lines I go for bike rides under... There's no visible ionization, but I can feel tingling in my hands and sometimes nuts...
Yeah it's not enough to heat up the air enough to arc, likely because the vast majority of it is going through the conductive wire it's supposed to be
You're experiencing the other part of electromagnetism: the magnetic field. As you and your bike pass across the magnetic waves, a charge is induced on you and your bike. You're feeling what it's like to be the rotor of an electric motor, or the other side of a capacitor, or the secondary coil of a transformer!
On top of that it's not like there isn't any energy outside of a wire conducting electricity. It's just that in the vast majority of applications it's insignificant. Electricity isn't really a thing, it's all just fields.