Hi John,

I am an electrical engineer and I will attempt to explain why I think
you didn't get shocked.   First of all, water itself is not a conductor
of electricity.  There needs to be a certain amount of dissolved salts
or minerals in the water for it to conduct electricity.  I just thought
I would note this, but I don't think it is the reason behind why you
didn't get shocked.

It is important to remember that electricity always likes to travel in
closed loops or circuits. Only when you put your body in this path
will you get shocked.  If you think of a typical 3 wire extension cord,
there is a "hot" wire, a ground, and a neutral.  Electricity can return
through the neutral (the desired behavior), or the ground. (not the
desired behavior).  That is how ground fault breakers work.  They sense
if the current in the hot wire and neutral are different and if they
are, assume there must be current flowing through the ground and shut
down the circuit.

So, if you assume that the water in your basement is a good conductor
of electricity, the shortest return path is out the hot prong of the
cord, through the water, and right back in the ground or the neutral
prong.  (a total distance of less than 1 inch)   There is really no
reason for it to go across the room and into your body.   Maybe if you
grounded your hand really well on a metal pipe, the electricity might
travel up out of the water and through you, but I doubt it.

Jody spoke of electric field theory and I will explain that too.  I
think, however it applies to a different situation than you describe.
Suppose you had a basement full of water, with only a hot wire poked
into the middle.  You can think of the electricity as radiating out
from this wire in a concentric "field".  If you were to take a volt
meter with one lead grounded and poke the other lead in the water at
various places, you would find that the further you got away from the
hot wire, the lower the voltage would be.  If you were to connect all
the points with the same voltage with lines, they would form a series
of concentric circles radiating out from the wire.  They would look
much like isobars on a weather map.  However, since the ground and
neutral wires on the extension cord are right next to the hot wire, I
don't think the electricity would form an electric field in the water.

Benjamin J. Haass
email:  bjh@fc.hp.com.geentreop [ drop .geentroep to use ]