120V AC is dangerous and downright painful; 125 volts DC is annoying. I run afoul of it occasionally in electric substations, where it is standard substation operating voltage. I once made very good contact palm to palm with 300 volts DC, which was a very strong jolt. My brother and I once got in series across the 800 volt DC supply in an amateur radio transmitter - it was glancing contact that made us recoil and we had a few sterile pits burned into our fingers. In my first job I worked with tube-type radios and got into 275 volts DC dozens of times. No doubt about it - DC is less lethal than AC.
The whole deal with voltage and current comes down to circuit resistance. Ohm's law still applies - current is equal to voltage over resistance. Human skin resistance varies from a couple hundred K ohms for very dry skin to a few K ohms for wet skin. Voltage sources may have high internal resistance - thus the saying about it being amps rather than volts that matter - but more than half the voltage sources we work with have low internal resistance; the current is limited by your skin resistance. 1 ma (AC) is perceptible, 10 ma is very painful, 50-100 ma is lethal. Higher currents can be less lethal, failing to trigger the ventricular fibrillation that makes electrocution so dangerous. We had a safety video produced by Public Service Company of New Mexico in which a lineman accidentally made contact with 7000 volts with one hand and the contact stopped when the current leaving his other elbow blew the 100 amp line fuses. It left a horrible burn path through his body but he lived to tell the tale.
Well yes but depends on the amperage. I've had electric shock from ~230V.
It depends. I have gotten shocked a few times touching household outlets while replacing them. And that is 120v 15amps but it was also for a split second. I know, it was stupid! HOWEVER No matter what the volts and amps. DO NOT play around with electricity! DO NOT!
Yes
its not the volts, its the amperage, and yes it very well can
