My uncle had great fun hosing out his TV in the front yard, many years ago. It was the old CRT type with nice furniture type box, had years of dust built up and was causing problems he suspected in the high voltage. The neighbours raised eye brows, but all worked after.
I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)
201–210 of 331 posts
Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)
#202I was once involved in a similar (unintentional) experiment with a multi-billion dollar defence radar. A several metres deep underground bunker, containing several 19" racks full of electrical/electronic gear, filled to ground level with a combination of mineralised surface water and mud during a storm. What we wanted to do was cut the power, pump the water out of the bunker ASAP and immediately clean the whole lot w…
I wonder although wasteful, isn't this better than accelerated failures taking the defense radar offline at random times in the future?
Reminds me of a friend of mine who somehow blew a shift in his car and did something bad to his engine. Instead of pulling over and stopping, he just drove it home and ended up destroying the engine.
So he got a whole new engine instead of having insurance pay to dismantle the engine and replace a few valves. It might even have been a similar price, but a much more robust solution.
Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)
#203It is because people use heuristics to navigate their lives. Instead of doing complicated engineering reasoning all the time to ensure their safety they learn simple “rules of thumb”. These rules are incorrect in as much as they have both false positives (something which the rule prohibits, but is safe) and false negatives (something which the rule lets you do, but is not safe). I’m a hobby jeweler and I use an ordin…
You can also just have a spoon in the microwave too, right? I think It's only from things like crinkles in aluminium foil and the prongs of a fork that produce sparks and arcing inside.
CDs are fun in a microwave, arcing and spitting like fury for a while. So not just crinkly things
Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s the fire risk that’s the issue not 20$.
What fire risk if it's in a dishwasher? :)
You only save money if you plug it in afterwards. At which point residue poses a fire risk.
Also, many dishwashers have a garbage disposal which isn’t inside the water and may fail if the cord gets into it. Not likely to happen, but enough people try it and someone may directly get an electrical fire while the dishwasher is running.
Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)
#205> These commenters are speaking authoritatively on subjects about which they are completely ignorant, but they are strident in doing so because they are repeating what everybody knows. They are intellectually secure in the center of a vast mob; their wisdom was received, not crafted. This is an important takeaway for me, maybe even more than “electirc devices are washable”. World is filled with conventional wisdom th…
I've always put my (dumb, wired) keyboards in the dishwasher and they have always come out great. I'm a statistic of one, though. I don't know if I just got lucky.
Are they dumb? Isn't there a microprocessor in every keyboard?
Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)
#206> These commenters are speaking authoritatively on subjects about which they are completely ignorant, but they are strident in doing so because they are repeating what everybody knows. They are intellectually secure in the center of a vast mob; their wisdom was received, not crafted. This is an important takeaway for me, maybe even more than “electirc devices are washable”. World is filled with conventional wisdom th…
Of course I've seen the opposite all the time. People who find issues with the conventional reasoning, and then apply their own _extremely faulty reasoning_ to reach their own conclusion!
Someone having incorrect reasoning doesn't mean they are wrong, just that they do not know (in the sense of knowing something for the right reasons)
Case in point: OP decided to wash the toaster in the dishwasher. Their story about walking through water assuming that their hair dryer experiment validated them walking through water with a bunch of sockets.... they are applying super hand-wavy reasoning in the same way as the critics are!
The funny thing about the whole piece is that while "an unplugged toaster through the washing machine is probably fine" is not a huge leap, so much in the PS is indicative of how I would not really trust this person much for their decision making
Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s the fire risk that’s the issue not 20$.
To be fair, a toaster is always a fire risk. That's why the manual says never put them under flammable things. You should always assume your toaster will catch fire.
The toaster body itself may not be a big deal, but the cord and plug are also going to be a risk here.
Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can also just have a spoon in the microwave too, right? I think It's only from things like crinkles in aluminium foil and the prongs of a fork that produce sparks and arcing inside.
My understanding is that if you want to put metal in a microwave keep it away from the walls . If not, you can get an arc jumping from the metal to the wall and it can burn a hole in the wall of the oven. You should also put something (eg. a cup of water) in the oven to absorb some of the microwave energy. The metal doesn't absorb much energy so without an additional absorber the microwaves can get reflected back int…
A while back on a whim I put my stainless steel coffee cup in the microwave and it just warmed the coffee. No sparks or drama. The metal didn't even get hot.
Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)
#209My favorite example of conventional ignorance: some guy was traveling on a plane the girl sitting next to him asked him whether there was wifi available so she could browse the internet. This was about 20 years ago... and the guy was convinced that the girl was an idiot. "We were flying in the middle of nowhere, 20000 feet in the air, and this girl is asking me whether we have wifi?? Some people have no common sense!…
It still amazes me, even in a world where I can order starlink. That it works with the other 200 people onboard also using it is incredible.
Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
>You, uh, don't want to do that with a toaster. Maybe I'm slow, but what goes wrong if you rinse a toaster with alcohol?
I guess the joke is that it evaporates rather easily and it's rather flammable, especially fumes that are nicely pre-mixed with air for completer combustion. But that's just my guess at what they meant, author should ideally confirm
That is indeed exactly what I meant.
At one point I was involved in cleaning out a large system with alcohol to actually get the thing clean and dry. We went through I think it was three 55-gallon drums of absolute alcohol. By the time we were done, the air in the shop (not a small space!) was noticeably... alcoholic... and we were, uh... sensitive to it. So alcohol vapors in the air are a real thing.