Consider Ohm's Law: `I = V/R`. Why is it so frequently printed in this way, rather than the simpler `IR = V`? If we don't care about simplicity, why not `V = I/R`? What is special about `I = V/R`?

Resistance--be it your work load or your human fleshy bits--is usually roughly considered a constant--or at least a known--for a given application. And most power sources that you'll encounter in the wild are voltage-controlled and able to supply practically as much current as you want (aka "more than enough to kill you"). So Voltage is the independent variable, leaving Current to be the dependent variable.

While it is true that "it's the current that gets ya", it's the voltage over which we have control, so we tend to focus on that instead.

I don't remember the exact voltage I charged the cap up to, but it was definitely only a few volts.

So for show and tell, I explained how electricity worked, and then I grabbed one of the cap's terminals in each hand and started twitching and shaking like I was being electrocuted! Finally I somehow managed to break free, took a deep breath, and told my classmates "don't be as foolish as me."

To protect them from the danger, I then took the screwdriver blade and shorted it across the capacitor's terminals, with a big spark and a loud bang! Clearly, this cap had enough power to kill you.

I told my classmates, "Now it's safe. I discharged it. You can touch it now."

And they did. Nobody was harmed.

School was great back in those days. When I got to third grade and I wanted to etch a printed circuit board, I told my teacher I needed a tank of nitric acid, and she got it for me! But that is a story for another day.

"It's the volts wot jolts, its the mills wot kills."

You can have current without one or the other.

It's like saying that oxygen is the cause of a big fire, not the fuel.