Electrocution can it vaporise a body?

Question

I was told a story of a person who worked for a large company, supposidlly a cleaner was cleaning a machine, he used to pull himself up onto it and in the process creating a pathway for electricity to run through.

One day the power wasnt shut off, there was a slight dip in the power and no one noticed it much, a few days later when they went looking for the cleaner they said all that was left was a scorch mark, it it possiable for enough electricity to vaporise a human being.

Answer 1

No!!! there will always be something left, along with a terrible smell.

Answer 2

It's not likely possbile, unless they had an extreme amount of voltage..but again it isn't possible but then again...scienctists haven't figured out everything

Answer 3

Ridiculous.Electricity only looks and only needs conductivity to pass onto the next media.It get the water in our system.It does not "burn"as we know burning.

Answer 4

Yes, but it is unlikely. That much electricity going through most wires would either melt them or burst into flames. A big enough spark could vaporize the entire world, so yes it is possible - just not likely.

Answer 5

Well seem electricity produces heat energy then I suppose it all depends on how hot he got.

A few thousand degrees is capable of evaporating the human body so I suppose if there were megavolts involved then one might expect the temperature to climb.

Answer 6

This cannot happen. The guy could have been electrocuted but he would not vaporize.

Answer 7

They wouldn't be vaporized, there would be some remains.

Answer 8

Yes it's possible, but it's very unlikely that any industrial circuit has enough current to do that. It would take on the order of 50 kilowatt-hours, absorbed instantaneously. It would also make an enormous explosion. In short, the story is BS.

Answer 9

It depends on how much electricity but it is absolutely possible.  Electric arcs are used in furnaces which melt many tons of steel at a time.  Electric arc is used to melt tungsten, the highest melting element.  The human body is about 80% water (that may be off some %) and the energy required to vapor even a couple hundred pounds of water is peanuts compared to the energy required to metal a ton of steel.

As far as the smell, probably would not be much.  At the very high temperatures in an electric arc, all the smelly hydrocarbons and sulfur compounds would be broken down into very simple compounds.

Answer 10

Theoretically, if the voltage and amperage were both high enough, a body could be vaporized.  I've seen it happen with small animals who made the mistake of having one paw on a power line and the other paw on the pole, and they get *zapped*.

In the case of a 150 to 250 pound human, that's going to be one h**l of a lot of voltage/amperage — and remember, even lightning doesn't ordinarily kill.