A bird lands on an uninsulated 10,000 volt power line. Will it become extra crispy? — RKS, Texas
No. Birds do this all the time. What protects the bird is the fact that it doesn’t complete a circuit. It touches only one wire and nothing else. Although there is a substantial charge on the power line and some of that charge flows onto the bird when it lands, the charge movement is self-limiting. Once the bird has enough charge on it to have the same voltage as the power line, charge stops flowing. And even though the power line’s voltage rises and falls 60 times a second (or 50 times a second in some parts of the world), the overall charge movement at 10,000 volts just isn’t enough to bother the bird much. At 100,000 volts or more, the charge movement is uncomfortable enough to keep birds away, so you don’t see them landing on the extremely high-voltage transmission lines that travel across vast stretches of countryside.
The story wouldn’t be the same if the bird made the mistake of spanning the gap from one wire to another. In that case, current could flow through the bird from one wire to the other and the bird would run the serious risk of becoming a flashbulb. Squirrels occasionally do this trick when they accidentally bridge a pair of wires. Some of the unexpected power flickers that occur in places where the power lines run overhead are caused by squirrels and occasionally birds vaporizing when they let current flow between power lines.