--- title: Electricity and safety — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Electricity and safety», a lesson of the physics course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Electricity flows wherever it finds a path to somewhere with a different push, such as the ground, and a human body can be that path. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Physics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/) / Electricity and safety # Electricity and safety Lesson 28 of the physics course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/0/) — Electricity flows wherever it finds a path to somewhere with a different push, such as the ground, and a human body can be that path. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/1/) — Ordinary water, the water in the bath, in puddles and in sweat, has salts dissolved in it that let electricity through, so wet hands and electrical things must never meet. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/2/) — A bird can sit happily on a power line because it touches only one wire and nothing else, so the electricity has no reason to go through it; a person on a ladder touching a wire and the ground at once gives it a path straight through the body. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/3/) — In a thunderstorm a car is a safe place: lightning runs over the outside of the metal body and into the ground, and it is the metal shell, not the rubber tyres, that protects you. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/4/) — Your own body runs on tiny electric signals too, far too weak to feel, which is why a strong shock from outside can upset your heart. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/5/) — Ordinary water carries electricity because of the salts and minerals dissolved in it, and so does a wet body. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/7/) — Bathrooms have no ordinary sockets, and hair dryers must never be used near a bath. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/8/) — Sockets have little shutters inside the holes that stop things being pushed into the live parts; only a plug opens them properly. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/9/) — The electricity at a socket is strong enough to stop a heart. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/10/) — A bird on one power line is not hurt because there is no path through it to anywhere with a different push, such as the ground. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/11/) — In a thunderstorm, the metal body of a car carries lightning round the people inside and into the ground; the tyres are not what protects them. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/12/) — Lightning often hits the tallest thing around, and it can jump from a lone tree to a person standing under it; in a storm, go indoors. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/13/) — An electric eel has special cells that work like hundreds of tiny batteries in a row, and a large eel can knock a person over. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/14/) — A kite string, especially a wet one, can carry electricity from a power line to the person holding it. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/15/) — Nerves carry messages as tiny electric pulses, and doctors measure the heart's signals with stickers on the chest. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/28-electricity-and-safety/16/) — The thick earth pin on a plug gives stray electricity a safe path into the ground, so metal kettles and washing machines are earthed. - ← previous: [Batteries, circuits and how electricity flows](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/27-batteries-circuits-and-how-electricity-flows/) - next →: [Magnets: pulling and pushing without touching](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/29-magnets-pulling-and-pushing-without-touching/) - ↑ back to [Physics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/)