181–190 of 311 posts
Plugging things in that SHOULD NOT be plugged in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L08LjkN1k70 In the video, the guy made once of those cords and uses it to electrocute all different kinds of things.
Still can't watch him, I get anxious
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USB-C? Scale up the size as needed... but if you don't have smart devices on each end you have more issues than just the plug... you don't want people plugging wall sockets into wall sockets for obvious reasons.
USB-C is not genderless. The cable is physically different from the port on my laptop and phone. They're suggesting a connector where there isn't a difference between a "plug" and a "cable".
*Someone is going to point out "extension cables" here, I'm going to ignore them.
All these cable stories always make me wonder: Is it possible to design a safe gender-less power plug? By that I mean one that has no male and female end but two symmetrical ones. That would not only be safer but also more convenient as there would only be one type of such cable, instead of three: (female-male, female-female, male-male).
It's called USB-C
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Interesting. I’ve never tried it out, but I assumed that an RCD / GFCI would trip more or less instantaneously. I’m kind of surprised you felt much of anything.
You'd be surprised... They usually can only trip at the end of the cycle - ie. in a 60 Hz power grid, that might take 17 milliseconds. Many take 40+ milliseconds. Luckily, electricity is about 20x safer as long as it is supplied for less time than one heartbeat[1] - ie. 500 milliseconds. Thats how RCD's can be so lifesaving even though they are relatively slow. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_injury#/me…
Imagine you had an ideal switch that could disconnect a circuit instantly.
Any devices powered on that circuit with transformers, inductors or motors in (think vacuum cleaners, power tools, microwaves, blenders, etc) will have a current flowing through them, and as that current is interrupted there will be a huge voltage spike - easily 10x the normal voltage for a few milliseconds.
If a human is touching that circuit, the 10x higher voltage will cause 10x more current to flow into the human.
Hooray - your 'safer' RCD kills more people.
The real solution is to have a more complex switch which disconnects the circuit at the same time as shorting out the circuit, to allow any current that was flowing to gradually dissipate into the wiring resistance. To my knowledge, such things don't exist today.
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Multiple people in the military in Iraq died in shower trailers on bases (2003-2008) due to improper wiring. I went into one where you could detect current in metal walls (not in the shower area, but an ungrounded piece of backsplash and shelving above sink...); I had someone stand in front of the door to keep people out and went over to the base electricians to yell at them.
I remember one summer camp I went to as a kid where the showers were "spicy". Much in the same way a 9 volt battery feels on your tongue. In hindsight... what the hell???
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I don't know what percentage of electrical work is inspected, but I would certainly not characterize it as "reliably". There are aisles full of electrical equipment sold at Home Depot and Lowes. The (vast?) majority of that is getting installed with no inspections.
Inspections are hard to avoid when you build a new house, or perform major renovations. If the outlet were required at that point in time, there wouldn't be a temptation to improperly retrofit the outlet in later.
How can folks not see that using such contraption is obviously a shitty idea? That’s why we need to completely overhaul the teaching of physics in middle and high school. Every citizen should have at least a basic understanding of basic physical concepts that allow then to understand why this kind of thing is a bad idea
Just try and find those male-male cords for other outlets than US ones (try Schuko for the European variant). You will find that they're much more rare or even impossible to find. Realizing that these cables basically exist only in one variant, which is for US style outlets, should tell you a lot ;-)
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There's a terrifying teardown of one of those heated shower heads here: https://hackaday.com/2018/08/25/electric-shower-head-tear-do... When he opens it, the ground wire is just floating in the enclosure, not hooked up to anything. Contacts that would mechanically fail to shorted, etc. He also mentions it flows ~24 amps of 220V on the high setting.
I used them for over 20 years in South America. I even burned them many times, to the dismay of my dad. I burned them because I wanted hotter water, and closed the water line as much as I can, the resistance heated up to red and then melted. The fact that ground contacts the water is by design. As far as I know, no one has ever been electrocuted by using one of these showers, not even me, so used to burn them. The on…
> I even burned them many times, to the dismay of my dad. I burned them because I wanted hotter water, and closed the water line as much as I can, the resistance heated up to red and then melted.
I'd imagine making one with PTC (element that decreases resistance when heated, self-regulating temperature) would prevent that but that would add a buck or two on material bill
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What other use is there for male-to-male cables?
I made one from spare parts I had laying around in 2012 after a derecho knocked out power to my house for eight days. I used it to connect a generator to the circuit that my refrigerator, my daughter's CPAP, a fan, and some lights were connected to. They were selling generators off a back of a truck as fast as they could be brought into the state. I managed to snag a generator but extension cords and power strips wer…
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Isn’t the usual advice to turn off your main breaker? Both to protect a lineworker and to avoid stalling your generator by trying to power up the neighbourhood?
I’m not sure I want to see the Venn diagram of people who would buy this cable, and people who would know they need to do that.