He is already standing too close and that stick would arc with that many volts flowing through it. The most likely outcome in reality if it had been energized. The arc would have jumped from the stick to him and no more New Zealand guy.
I don't remember the scene, but personally I'd test an electric fence with a nonconductor. You'll probably get some sparks but won't die. You do you, ppl in this thread.
Characters in Jurassic Park are portrayed as flawed, imperfect people who make mistakes. None of the plot relies on them being idiots or anything, but people screw up, panic on occasion, and don't know things from time to time.
Dr. Grant using a stick to test the fence is a mistake, albeit a small one without real consequences. While it doesn't distract from his character arc of how he feels about kids, it is his character simply messing up.
I also disagree with the person you replied to. While their assessment is correct, Dr. Grant is a character with a lot of time working in the field and therefore has a lot of practical skills. He does way, way better than a doctorate in mathematics working in academia would. Writing off all people with a doctorate (or experts in general) as being hyper specialized is a mistake.
My fiancee has a couple degrees while I just graduated high school. She's incredibly smart but I'm definitely more street savvy. She grew up a bit sheltered.
Genuinely asking, I'm just an engineer... with very very bad grades. Passed was enough for me.
Once a professor asked me if I wanted to take the exam again because it was clear that I knew more than what I showed on the exam (a lot of 2 + 2 = 5 mistakes, I was fairly good at that and owe most of my low grades to that). I asked him if I passed, he said yes. Fuck that shit, I'm taking that grade and parading it across town, wooohoo 🥳.
As they say, a PhD is about learning more and more about less and less. Some of the smartest people at conferences I've attended legitimately risk death crossing the street.
My arm once got pulled into an electric fence when I was a kid and I couldn't stop getting shocked until someone physically pulled me away. It was more of a self-control issue than accidentally bridging the gap.
That was the day I learned that some pain can be pleasant. The owner of the property didn't seem as pleased with my discovery as I did. He had to shut off the fence and yanked my arm away and then told me to go explore my perversions somewhere else. I was too young to understand the word "perversion," and I'm now eternally grateful to that poor unprepared rancher.
You find it enjoyable? I regularly touch electric fences, but not because I want to but because I'm too stupid to think of another way to figure out if the thing is working. I find it to be the opposite of pleasant.
At approx 3kV/mm, you would have to be pretty close to a 10kV fence.
Humidity plays a big role as does the frequency that the fence is running on. But you would be pretty safe standing a meter away, on that dry sunny day in the picture.
Also above a point, the high voltage causes the conductors to buzz.
I have a 10KV electric fence. 5KV to 15KV is typical electric fence voltage in a farm or bear prevention fence. Can't feel a thing unless you actually touch it.
They are also not lethal. Very low current, just very high voltage. So it only hurts like fuck, but won't kill a human, cow, or any other mammal that touches it.
They can kill an animal (including a mammal) if they become entangled and give up out of suffering, though.
This is pretty rare, but can happen.
It's virtually zero risk to a human, though, who can cognize things like getting their hand disentangled from a string (even in a panic situation), or to most mammals, which tend to jerk backwards on contact.
This is why you should never try to remove a tree from a power line yourself.
Electricity always takes the path of least resistance back to the source. A tree, and possibly your body, may end up being the "path of least resistance".
You won't know if YOU are the path of least resistance or it the line is even energized until it's too late.
I always saw it as being part of messing with the kids, he looks at the warning lights on top of the fence first. And for my headcannon at least, Grant is savvy enough to know that's no way to test if the fence is live or not, lol.
Just because you're very good at one thing doesn't mean you're good at another. Sometimes the further you go down one path, the less you know about everything else.
Even throwing a metal pipe against it won't do anything. Electric fences have one electrode in the ground, and that's how your body makes the circuit. If they had run and jumped onto the fence, then jumped off on the other side they would have been fine with the fences still active.
Source: I've set up an electric fence and been shocked multiple times, once through my head.
You're assuming the dinosaur fence operates on the same principal as a regular livestock electric fence. I put it to you that the Dino enclosures use alternating positive and negative stringer wires, where touching one won't do anything, but touching two will make a short circuit.
That would make a lot of sense, but as we can see the stringers are connected together, meaning they'd just short out if they were alternate polarities. To me this indicates that it's like a standard livestock fence, with an electrode in the ground somewhere and the circuit completing through the animal.
However, considering my 16'x48' pig enclosure required a three-foot rod to be grounded, a system large enough for a sauropod would need a lot of grounding. Considering this, the fact that they used a circuit-through-animal design indicates it probably wasn't the best way to do it.
Yet Tim gets shocked when hanging on the fence when it turns on while he’s climbing down. I trust movie science far more than your acquired knowledge. Your ignorance is probably what’s holding you back from full blown deity.
The higher the voltage, the less the electricity cares how good a conductor something is. Air is a shitty conductor, and yet, lightning doesn't give a shit.
How good of a conductor wood is depends on its state. If it is very dry and not salty, this should be safe (although he could have taken the piece of wood more at the end to increase the distance between him and the fence and the length=isolation through the piece of wood). If it is wet and salty, it might be dangerous.
There was a major storm just a few hours before this, so the wood is likely wet. However, he threw it against the fence; he wasn't touching it when it made contact with the wires.
A PhD wouldn't know anything about science, so its pretty accurate really :/
Edit: It's the internet so naturally im being downvoted for learning but after looking it up, I was wrong. The PhD does stand for philosophy doctorate, but no longer refers specifically to the feild of philosophy as it once did. Apologies to anyone offended.