> You win the thread! There's less resistance along the current path (the 
> wire) then the sheet of water.

Ermm, I don't know if you're joking here or not.  But for the sake of 
everyone else, this is not how electricity works!  It does NOT "choose" the 
lowest resistance path and ignore anything else, it follows Ohm's law (V=IR) 
for every part of the circuit.

Because the voltage is so high on power lines, even a HUGE resistance (like 
a human body, or a wet tree, for example) will make a pretty large current 
flow, certainly enough to kill you or catch the tree on fire.

As a quick calculation, put a 10 MOhm resistance (millions of times higher 
than the resistance along the current path) between a 400 kV power line and 
ground, whilst the *current* through the resistor will "only" be 40 mA, the 
power that needs to be dissipated by the resistor will be 16 kW, enough to 
fry most things pretty quickly :-)

Also, I suspect the electricity company would be *really* interested if they 
were losing 16 kW at each connection point along their power line!

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