321–330 of 331 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you die of electrocution, let us know.
Had to make sure mom did not find out but it seems to have worked fine. No toast yet but I plugged it in and was not electrocuted. It was still pretty hot and a little damp (did not finish the dry cycle). plugged it right in. A little sizzling from the damp elements but looks ok.
It 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
you do realize the reason why fires get started is because things become a BAD conductor right?
it's not that simple. it's because things are medium bad conductors, like the nichrome wire in the toaster, which is absolutely fantastic for setting things on fire things that are really good conductors like the copper wires in the toaster don't heat up (much) because they don't drop much voltage, and things that are really bad conductors, like the panels that support the nichrome wires and like calcium carbonate, d…
yes, there are places that don't heat up because the current doesn't go through them, but only because they have easier paths. if the electricity wanted to go through them, they would heat up hotter than anything else.
the point is, things can corrode, electricity goes in places it wasn't intended or through resistances it wasn't intended, and becomes a fire hazard.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is only impressive coming from the consumer grade electronics. Microchips, capacitors, PCB's and other stuff like manufactured for defence have much wider and higher tolerances. One won't find the cutting edge 2 nm processes (depending on the specific area of defence, 200-300 µm would still be cutting edge today for them), materials used are different, plus all sorts of chemical and physical hardening is employed.…
> 200-300 µm would still be cutting edge today for them Sorry, I think you're off by a few orders of magnitude, do you mean 200-300nm?
Smaller processes result in chips either becoming very unstable or plainly kicking the bucket when exposed to strong electromagnetic fields and electromagnetic radiation. Radar equipment generates such strong EM radiation that is lethal to humans and to microelectronics no matter how well shielded the chips are. Then there are highly charged particles released during a nuclear explosion, so the electronics have to survive at least for some time at the battlefield.
Chips produced for defence and military use some of the most conservative design and manufacturing processes, and even the analogue processes may still be used somewhere (I have not checked recently though).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, well I'm guilty! The videos I saw, in the past, were just a ball of fairly fine wire on a plate. This was probably 20 years ago, when I was looking into melting black beach sand in the microwave. For a rant about that, it turned out pretty neat. I put the beach sand in a thin layer on a dinner plate that was a half wavelength above the bottom of the microwave, turntable removed. The beach sand would start to melt…
This was a wonderful little read, thank you!
Jewish law requires some new utensils to be ritually immersed in water before use[1]. There are differences of opinion around electrical appliances, but I have successfully dunked toasters, cheese toasters, and many other small appliances, let them dry for a few days, and never had any issues. In fact, had OP found this[2] article, they would have seen that > Practice has demonstrated that immersion generally does no…
Are appliances such as toasters considered a culinary utensil? Kitchen Utensil appears to be defined as `A kitchen utensil is a small hand-held tool used for food preparation.`[1]. Perhaps you don't actually need to submerge electronic appliances in water... [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_utensil
My son is starting his first week of high school. I am recommending to him that he pose related questions to his physics teacher: - "Is it okay to wash a toaster in a dishwasher?" - "Is it okay to put an electric hair drier in a fish tank when it is plugged in?" And I am hoping he gets a very productive year of science for the effort.
If he's anything like my high school science teachers he'll be told to shut up and hated by his peers for daring to ask questions.
I 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US you're also allowed to use an ungrounded GFCI if you need to retrofit an existing electrical circuit and the ground wire wasn't provided originally.
I believe in this case, it also has to be labeled "no equipment ground". IANAE