No-one is going to comment on the outlet being installed upside down?
FYI: there’s a faction of people who believe this orientation is safer, given that the ground pin is on top (so if a plug is part-way out and something falls behind it, it’ll hit the harmless ground pin instead of the line).
Also FYI: anyone who doesn’t install it like it’s a little surprised face is insane and should be treated as such.
Regardless of the reason and whether it’s justified, this is code for US hospitals, or so I’ve been told.
Pretty common to see if you are in the US at least, builders tend to install a plug backwards if it’s operated by a light switch. Not code or anything, just something they do.
I think the picture is upside down.
All the outlets in our house were installed upside down, off it wasn’t for bulky transformers that plug directly in & chunky plugs which now have the wire going out upwards, I’m sure it would be a sensible and slightly safer way to do outlets
But bulky transformers are a thing, so there’s that. In any case, what would make the ground on top “slightly safer”?
If the plug is loose and you grab and yank it, there’s no risk of touching the hot, and the ground won’t hurt you. Also, with ground side down, loose outlets expose the hot connection when gravity pulls it down, while this doesn’t happen in the ground up orientation.
I’m not going to say rightside up is unequivocally the “right” way, but I’m not really convinced the things you (and others) are saying is demonstrably safer in any real sense.
If something conductive falls onto the contacts, it’s not bridging anything.
Technology Connections did an episode about why some plugs have holes in the flats. I believe he briefly covered this topic in that video.
Electricity flows over metal, not through it. As long as there’s an insulator on top, there shouldn’t be an issue.
Would I try it? No.
Could it work? Yes.
I assume the metal hanger is aluminium. Unless you competely cover the metal in an insulator at the outlet legs then this will short and trip a fuse the second it is plugged in.
Why are all the wires full of expensive metal if we only need the surface?
It depends!Sometimes wires are stranded–multiple small cores bundled together. This results in greater potential for electricity flow (per amount of copper), and results in greater flexibility of the wire. Most of the cords you deal with on a daily basis are made from stranded copper cable.But there are cases where solid core is important for other reasons. A solid core wire is stiffer and more difficult to bend, and will typically retain whatever shape it is bent into. But pump electricity through it for decades and it’ll last a lot longer and be more reliable than its stranded counterpart. This is why your house’s wiring typically uses solid core copper–doesn’t move once installed, and reliability is kinda important when it’s inside your walls.As the commenter below points out, I didn’t know what I was talking about. See below.
Both TO and you seem to have a sort of semi-understanding of things but you feel like you really know it, so you spread this stuff online. I hate it.
Stranded or solid is irrelevant for DC or 50/60 Hz electricity. The same cross section can carry the same current with the same voltage drop. The skin effect only starts to get relevant at much higher frequencies.
Shit, you’re right. Not sure if I was taught wrong or if I’m remembering wrong, but it seems there’s no difference at lower frequencies (my day job involves exclusively higher-frequency stuff, I thought it was universal).
Thanks for correcting me on that.
Mate, respect for this reaction.
Electrical engineer here. You’re mostly right–electricity does mostly flow on the outside of a conductor (a small amount does flow through the core).I was wrong abouy this part.But based on this picture, I don’t see an insulator on the hanger wire. Which means it’ll trip a breaker or blow a fuse as soon as you plug it in. And if it’s at your crazy uncle Ned’s house, where he casually replaces his fuses with pennies, you’ll get some visitors in a fancy truck!
Electricity flows over metal, not through it.
I don’t think that’s true, but I don’t know enough about electricity to refute it. electromagnetism, sure, but as long as the metal loops around it’ll pull in the electricity (I believe).
Electrical engineer reporting for duty!
It mostly does use the outside (a smaller amount can run through the core).(I was wrong about this). But your point is correct–if there’s no insultation between the hanger and the contacts, it’ll conduct electricity.I beleieve it’s true with high frequency electricity, like in speakers, but not at 60hz
Bismuth or Tungsten are very low in electrical conductivity. Coat them in clear rubber and it should be a long while before there’s a short.
one of the dumbest thing i’ve ever seen
Shocking if true
goddammit heres an upvote
The perfect dorm-warming gift:
My friend worked in a hardware store for a couple years and he said that around Christmas time you get about a dozen people asking for these.
This tale is old, and I still don’t understand what people try to accomplish with these?! Like, I know hanging like a trillion extenders behind each other is also a way to start a fire, but what are people trying to do with male-to-male cables? I’m at a loss.
They get requested around Christmas time because someone strung their lights the wrong way and now wants to connect the female end of the lights directly to the wall instead of reversing all the lights they just hung.
Oh, I was thinking the holidays were just really depressing for some people, but I like this explanation better.
I always heard they were for powering a house off a generator
There is a kind of person who knows how to do that safely, but that kind of person has already installed an actual load transfer switch to do it the right way.
I still do it, I have a lot of blackouts here, I have to close the breaker, turn on the generator and then every 15 min go downstairs to unplug the gen, and turn on the breaker to know if the electricity came back, I’m cheap but I’m also getting tired of the whole process.
This is what automatic generators are for. They come on after sensing the power drop out and when it comes back on, it shuts down automatically. I have such a system because I live in the middle of a forest and trees fall over sometimes. And for bonus points, it can happen when the outside temps are at -30F/-29C and be off for a few hours or days.
It is expensive, but worth every penny.
I’m going to have solar with island mode soon so I will not invest in a new gen
My house has totally fucked-up electrical. For some reason, there’s a secondary breaker box in the basement which switches some of the outlets and lights in the house over to running off the generator outside. So when the line power comes back on, the lights that aren’t switched to the gen come back on (if I happened to have them on when the power went off, at least).
I’ve lived in this house for 15 years now and I’ve been without power here for a total of seven weeks during that time. I like how many trees we have here but that’s the price we pay.
Thats a transfer switch, and that’s exactly what you want here. You want only a few essential loads on the generator, not your entire home. The furnace should be on it, modem and networking equipment, a few outlets for charging phones, refrigerator and deep freeze. Sump pumps.
The electric hot water tank doesn’t need to be on the generator. The welder in the garage. Electric range. Dishwasher, Christmas lights, EV charger, pool heater, spa, or other big appliances that can be done without in an emergency.
That ain’t bad at all.
I’m baffled by people going without power being a somewhat regular thing. I’ve never in my life been without power. I grew up on an old farm, and not once did we lose power. Sometimes lightning would flip the breaker, but never more than that. I realise this is because of the difference in size and infrastructure between my country and USA, but it’s still wild to me, that some people in a rich country actually need a generator. I’ve only ever seen a generator once in my life. It was used at a beach party to power the music.
You have two bus bars in your breaker panel. It is designed to be fed from one main breaker. But, electricity can flow backwards through a circuit.
An interlock kit is a simple device that allows either your main breaker to be turned on, or a different breaker to be turned on. Not both at the same time. With such an interlock in place, you wire the auxiliary breaker to a generator inlet box, so you can plug your house into your generator.
A non-contact voltage detector is the rest of your answer. The detector is locked on, and placed where it can pick up voltage on the main feed into your house: tape it to the main feed into the breaker panel. When power is restored, it starts beeping, and you know you can transfer back.
Do it the right way, because you aren’t the only person who might be doing it, and the people who learn from you might not fully grasp the concepts involved. They might get lazy, skip steps, and set their home and/or generator on fire.
When you daisy chain christmas lights and just put up 1 of them backwards.
I made one for the little generator at my camp. The idea was to plug the output into an outlet in my homemade shed and power it all, plus energizing an outdoor socket.
Never got around to wiring the shed and it was easier to simply not use the other male end and wire it straight into the outside outlet. Now I can fire up the genny and have a hot outlet outside the shed.
They’re typically used for backup generators
My wife was stringing up lights on the garage wreath and had one strand turned around and wanted me to make one of these to “fix” it so it could plug in. It took a second to explain to her the other end was just going to be an exposed line voltage plug.
Made one of these on accident.
Threw one end of the cord out in the yard and put a new male plug on the other end. Went to plug my saw in and found a male end. Silly me! So I swapped the cord around the threw the other end in the yard. Went to plug my saw in and found a male end. Stood there a minute trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
I’m sure Freud would have something to say about that “mistake”.
OK, that got a literal LOL over here. And that fact I tried to make it work twice!
I did this with sausages on plates once. I’d laid out 2 for me, 2 for my wife. She said she only wanted one, I swapped one of hers for one of mine, but I couldn’t work out why there were still two on each plate. I tried again, same result. Had to take a pause for a sec and and work out what exactly was going wrong 😂
I just recently did the same with a set of patio lights. Was shortening a set of lights which hang over my porch. Measured out the length I needed, cut the cord, attached a new female end. Went to plug the other end in… also female!
Female-female is OK. It’s male-male that’s hot. Know what I mean? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
There’s a type of power cord
You’ll touch the end and see the Lord
And you wouldn’t want that current going through ya
While male on male is usually great
You’ll find yourself in a sorry state
You’ll learn volts jolt but milliamps will kill you
hallelujah etc
You’ll learn volts jolt but milliamps will kill you
The whole volts safe amps kill thing is so stupid though, you can’t have any serious amps without serious volts, unless you have near-zero resistance, which a human body does not.
In fairness the sort of person who needs a song to remind them why male-male mains leads are an idiotic idea probably isn’t going to appreciate Ohm’s Law in any sensible capacity.
I find it similar to “the fall doesn’t hurt, it’s the sudden stop at the end”.
But it’s not entirely accurate, because we can be exposed to thousands of volts. For instant, most ESD are between 2k and 10k volts. Van de Graaff generators can generate up to 1,000,000 volts, yet they are regularly used in school classrooms.
Static discharge has a high amperage as well, but it lasts nanoseconds, plasma globes and tesla coils are way too high of a frequency to disrupt heartbeat. people want a simple thing, but electricity is not simple.
lethality of electricity means some amount of energy was dumped in a certain time-range, in a form that is disruptive to muscle function. any of that missing, and you’re either fine, or cooked from the inside depending on the current.
I like this, thanks
Hillbilly generator hookup. Backfeed hazard.
You see, if the device from the meme was ever plugged in, it’d blow the breaker immediately. This male to male cord, if plugged into two outlets would do nothing.
That’s not always true. If the two outlets are on the same electrical phase, you may be okay. If they are on different phases, it would be dangerous.
Also after plugging one side in, the other side is a fun little cattle prod.
Define fun
Fun for your nipples.
Know anyone withholding information?
you can just cut a normal power cord and have that.
If I’m not mistaken plugging this in to the same outlet won’t do anything. And as far as back feed problems couldn’t you just shut off the the main breaker, i.e. where the power comes into the house?
People usually want them so they can run Christmas lights the wrong way, either because theyve already strung them up backwards or they’re too dumb to figure out a better solution, but the end result if one end is left unplugged is an enormous amount of power just running loose at the exposed end. Even if you just wanted to plug it into the same outlet as a joke, if you plugged one end and touched the prongs on the other end while in the process of plugging the other side in, you’re pretty fucked.
They’re illegal and it’s only safe IF the home owner remembers to turn off Mains.
There are legal ones for generators (especially small scale solar stuff) that turn off automatically when they detect no main power on the line, so grid workers can’t get zapped. They are pretty common around here.
Those are called Interconnects, use “Inlets” to hook them up and are not illegal. The suicide cable with two male ends can electrocute the owner and the line workers.
It will either instantly trip the breaker or do absolutely nothing, depending on how it’s wired internally.
The real danger comes from when only one end is plugged in, though. With only one end plugged in, the other end becomes a 120V cattle prod.
Failed fleshlight experiment #13
The DIY Hot Dog Fleshlight.
At least this actually turns all those electricity into heat, it’s basically just an electronic kettle without the case
Just be careful when you grip the handle
Don’t stick your dick in that….
Don’t yuck someone else’s yum
That’s what they want you to believe.
It’d be alright if made from plastic.
And yes, I’ve chosen to disregard that something between the connector and the socket theoretically makes it more unsafe; US sockets are an awful design to begin with, so it doesn’t make much of a difference.
What if it was plastic and on top of the charger block?
Then it just wouldn’t be very secure. What would be holding it in place?
Love for its existence and purpose 💖 or maybe gorilla glue
I mean at that point why not just put the whole loop of cable over the charger block?
Might slide off/away. The holder has a “catch” yk
What a genius! Has he sent his CV to Elon Musk already?
Just as well the us is only 110v, here in the UK you would blow the house fuse
not an electrician but am in the US and have blown an entire middle school gymnasium with a paperclip lmao
Gym teachers hate this one simple trick
Are we still doing phrasing?
lmao im leaving it
She forgot to say away
phasing
Blow anything else walking across the parking lot?
Crazy how high of an arc fault current such a small piece of steel can carry.
This would almost certainly trip a breaker in the US as well
Not just the house fuse. They’d arc flash their eyeballs and probably develop tinnitus.
Some Americans would be dead in an afternoon if they had access to 240 at every outlet, and others would do it on purpose to try and get a settlement payout. If you ever wonder why there’s so many warning labels, this is why.at least all the european plugs i’ve seen are responsibly built. They expose the contacts on the very end of the little needly things so you can’t just casually touch them while plugging something in. Here, the entire shaft is metal and you can just like, touch both of them with the plug half plugged in.
it hurts
Probably not though, 220v here and flipped the house fuse, still have my eyeballs, didn’t exploded
Same here, though mine was from a PSU that hadn’t fully discharged. Though it felt like it affected my taste buds for a few days… I stayed awake through it. Also made my balls tingle for an hour.
This is a continuous line of rather thick metal. It wouldn’t arc or electrocute anyone, it would get a fraction of a degree warmer before the circuit breaker tripped
It’s about the current though no?
UK we have 32A / 6A (e.g. lighting) circuit breakers, but our individual devices are fused at the plug at 1A / 3A / 6A depending on load. A single house has maybe 10 fuses max at the consumer unit.
US they have more circuit breakers, with breakers at 3A / 6A (?) without any fuses on their device plugs, so they have to routinely change the the tiny circuit breaker at the consumer unit, but because of this limitation, they typically have double the number of circuit breakers at the unit ?
In the above example, the short circuit would still happen through the plug and not before it, so in the UK we would just chuck the plug fuse
(Asking, because I genuinely don’t know)
Circuit breakers are not one time use like fuses. You can think of them as reusable fuses. An in device fuse only protects if the fault is in the device. If you were to put metal in the outlet, to stop current, you need a fuse in the outlet or somewhere else between the outlet and makns, which is what US has. Circuit breakers are typically 20A (or 15A) and multiple outlets are connected to the same circuit breaker.
Oh right, thanks for that. So fuses in the outlet are pretty typical in the US?
No, we don’t have an actual fuse in the outlet or plug. Some devices have an internal fuse, but not like the UK where almost everything has a fuse in the plug.
No. Our appliance wiring standards basically require every appliance to be able to tolerate a fault current high enough to trip a breaker. We put a 20A cord on a 500mA clock radio. If we get a short inside the appliance, it will draw enough current to trip the breaker.
The UK allows appliances to have much much lower fault current requirements than their household wiring. They can get away with this by including a current limiter (a fuse) in their plugs.
We do have provisions for fuses in plugs, but they are typically only used where we would use a lot of very low current wiring: Christmas lighting typically has a tiny fuse in the plug protecting very small wiring.
oh, very interesting – for the clock radio example, wouldn’t the radio fry the circuit board before it tripped the breaker?
It depends on where the fault is. Starting at the input power from the cord, the first component on the circuit board is going to be a factory installed fuse. It’s probably the same on circuit boards made for UK and EU devices because it makes good engineering sense to do it that way, even if the plug is equipped with a fuse. So if the fault is somewhere on the board, it blows the appliance fuse. If it’s somewhere before the appliance fuse, it blows either the plug fuse (if equipped), or the breaker.
true!
Depends on where the short was. If it was a frayed lead in the PSU contacting the neutral, that short might not even hit the board.
US breakers are usually 16 A.
15
oh wow. So when a device shorts out, it can do some real damage…
Only about 1500 watts worth
15A @ 120V. Basically, 7.5A @ 240V.
That’s a lot!
I was pretty sure you guys on that side of the pond could draw a lot more… AFAIK, you have kettles that draw 3000W, which is 12.5A @ 240V.
(Technically, we can install an outlet capable of doing that, but they are not typical in residential use. Outside of commercial-grade appliances and dedicated circuits, we’re pretty much limited to 1500-1800 watt portable appliances here. Fixed appliances like ranges, water heaters, pools, spas, are effectively unlimited, of course.)
I’ve seen a 16A fuse on a power cable for a 1000W PSU. I don’t know the fuse for my kettle, but do know it runs off a 20A circuit breaker, so that’s it’s upper bound likely
Depends. In my kitchen it’s all 32A/230-240volt lines, enough to boil stuff or heat stuff. In the rest of the house a single 16A is for a whole room.
so they have to routinely change the the tiny circuit breaker at the consumer unit,
If I understand the nomenclature correctly, your “consumer unit” is our “load panel” or “breaker box”. We use 15A or 20A breakers for our typical outlets.
If you used unfused plugs, your lower-rated cords could potentially reach fire temperatures without drawing enough current to trip the breaker in the consumer unit. Which is why you use fused plugs: to protect the lower-rated wiring from higher current.
The US uses a different approach. If we used power cords rated to 5A for a 5A appliance, and we plugged them into a 20A circuit, we could have the same problem: A 15A fault current through this cord wouldn’t trip the breaker, but could start a fire. So we don’t do that. Even on our lowest current, corded appliances, we use a cord that is rated to carry a 20A fault current capable of tripping the breaker.
(You will occasionally find cords rated for 7A. This is 7A duty current, and the limitation is because of the specific appliance socket, which has a fuse immediately inside the casing, and other restrictions. The 7A rating is not on the wire itself. On these cords, the wiring is still required to have a fault current rating of 20A)
Oh that’s an angle I never thought of – protection via thicker wires designed to trip but not to heat. Very clever!
A sparkling future indeed.
Oh hey it’s a felony tube.
Seems more like a flash light
While it will make a flash of light, it can only do it once.
What if a flash light was all at once?
I don’t get it
pipe bomb
“Harry I’ve found the source of ticking sound”
Toothbrush
Hand warmer.
Boy are they gonna be shocked when he doesn’t make it.
That household is a hotspot of geniuses.
They have a bright future ahead of them.
From an electrical engineering major who’s not at Harvard: how could you fuck it up that badly.
for starters it won’t be a secure fit because the prongs have some thickness to it, which means possible sparking of the outlet from the inductor because there are changes in current (inductors hate changes in current).
OK so now the big question, will this be problematic? I don’t actually know. The two main contributors to impedance in this instance is the conductivity of the metal and how well the connection between the clip and the prongs of the charger. Best case scenario, it all goes into heat (via the impedance), worst case scenario it destroys the power electronics of the charger and the wall. Worse worse case scenario it starts a fire as a result of too much current not being dissipated.
This is a purely resistive load. Short circuit will pop the fuse in a second or two. Electronics will be fine. Won’t have enough time to heat up much, even if arcing.
The son already fixed the circuit breaker problem by replacing the fuse with a screwdriver
Clever boy
People do this regularly when the fuse keeps popping
From an electrical engineering major
We’re doomed.
Don’t worry, they don’t have a degree yet
I was hoping for an unusual cause of demise on that plaque. Sometimes old gravestones list a cause of death with wry humor.
I imagine there could be a lot of gravestones that just read “engineering”
