Power Outlets PISSES LINUS OFF. [Discussion]

[Drak3]

Not going to lie, the whole reversible plug thing just sounds like "I'm too stupid to take half a second to look at what I'm doing."

[Techo238]

On 2/19/2019 at 10:47 PM, mariushm said:

Yes, because the things in your wall you're probably gonna replace once every 5-10 years, maybe less often.

Think of how much waste you have making all those adapters.

 

I think the easiest path would be to simply make legislation to require any new home or any update of electrical stuff in a home to install 220..240v outlets at least in places that would benefit from them (kitchen, for electric plates, heaters etc and near bathroom for washing machines, dryers etc, and garages for charging cars, unless there's an option to use tri-phase 380v or some alternative)

This way you could install the EU style plugs in US (as they're the most common and well known) and continue to use the old plugs for 110-130v only.

Gradually, houses would end up having 230v-ish plugs everywhere.

 

The EU plugs aren't the best (for example they're not keyed, which in rare cases can cause problems if a device has fuse only on the live wire

The UK plugs are much better, keyed, child proof, big earth prong, designed to have live and neutral wires break off before earth wire breaks if you pull hard on the cable to rip it out, have built in fuse, killer pain if you step on them ... but I don't expect to see both US and Europe switch to them.

 

 

I highly agree, UK plugs are hands down the best...bar the stepping on it issue.

[Dylanc1500]

3 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Not going to lie, the whole reversible plug thing just sounds like "I'm too stupid to take half a second to look at what I'm doing."

"What if the lights are off?!?!"

[Drak3]

Just now, Dylanc1500 said:

"What if the lights are off?!?!"

Turn on the lights.

 

Just now, Dylanc1500 said:

Fun fact, technically speaking, the one on the left is installed wrong.

[AlwaysFSX]

1 minute ago, Mihle said:

......

The size difference of the box is just because the different voltages and manufacturer, nothing to do with the plug. What you want is to have 12v or something in the wall right?

 

US plug is looser in the socket. It's also possible to shock yourself while it being plugged halfway in, not possible with European plug. Also, not reversible when you have a plug with earth. Just to mention some

The size difference is to accommodate your "brilliant" plug design, not the hardware inside of it.

-not much more, if at all, compared to an EU socket unless you manage to somehow jack up a power outlet
-just for my amusement, I didn't know Europe had a problem with people licking plugs that are plugged in??

-we never needed a design with a reversible plug because we didn't design an over-sized cable in the first place

2 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Not going to lie, the whole reversible plug thing just sounds like "I'm too stupid to take half a second to look at what I'm doing."

"Shoot the prongs don't line up, lemme rotate it."

[Drak3]

Just now, AlwaysFSX said:

"Shoot the prongs don't line up, lemme rotate it."

Again, half a second to look at what you're doing.

 

 

Which you should be looking at what you're doing anyways.

[AlwaysFSX]

1 minute ago, Drak3 said:

Again, half a second to look at what you're doing.

 

 

Which you should be looking at what you're doing anyways.

"Let's design something so even the most braindead person can do it because looking is hard."

You know, now the EU plug is making more sense.

[Dylanc1500]

23 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Turn on the lights.

 

Fun fact, technically speaking, the one on the left is installed wrong.

I agree.

 

Ya, I know that's what I was going to mention to someone else in this thread. Earth being up to lessen the likelyhood of something causing a short.

 

[Drak3]

Just now, Dylanc1500 said:

Earth being up to lessen the likelyhood of something causing a short

Theoretically the housing on the male end would guide water away from the prongs.

[Dylanc1500]

17 minutes ago, AlwaysFSX said:

"Let's design something so even the most braindead person can do it because looking is hard."

You know, now the EU plug is making more sense.

This is why we have so many different plugs, it keeps people from sticking things where they shouldn't. (Que @Drak3)

and this doesn't include locking connectors.

[Dylanc1500]

2 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Theoretically the housing on the male end would guide water away from the prongs.

That as well.

[mariushm]

3 hours ago, Kroon said:

 

WHAT?!?!  Are you serious?  Many many years ago, think I was about 10 years old we had a competition where the winner was the one that held his tongue on the poles of a 9V battery the longest.  Did this competition many times, even my son have done this so it's not something crazy with my generation only.  With all this I never heard about someone even hurt them self doing this.

See https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-50.html

 

(1999) A US Navy safety publication describes injuries incurred while doing don't's. One page described the fate of a sailor playing with a multimeter in an unauthorized manner. He was curious about the resistance level of the human body. He had a Simpson 260 multimeter, a small unit powered by a 9-volt battery. That may not seem powerful enough to be dangerous… but it can be deadly in the wrong hands.

 

The sailor took a probe in each hand to measure his bodily resistance from thumb to thumb. But the probes had sharp tips, and in his excitement he pressed his thumbs hard enough against the probes to break the skin. Once the salty conducting fluid known as blood was available, the current from the multimeter travelled right across the sailor's heart, disrupting the electrical regulation of his heartbeat. He died before he could record his Ohms.

 

[ ... ]

 

This sailor, like all other electricians in training, had already been through a safety class in which one of the excercises is to measure your body's resistance by simply holding the probes between your fingertips. (Most people read 500Kohms to 2Mohms.) Evidently, adding information from the internal resistance class, this sailor wanted to determine his own body's "internal resistance.". So he intentionally pushed the sharpened probe tips through the skin to elimate the rather high skin resistance and get only the "internal resistance". This, of course, caused his death.

How, you might ask, with only a 9V battery? Easy. One of the "rules of thumb" that the Navy teaches is the 1-10-100 rule of current. This rule states that 1mA of current through the human body can be felt, 10mA of current is sufficient to make muscles contract to the point where you cannot let go of a power source, and 100mA is sufficient to stop the heart. Let's look at Ohm's law. Ohm's law (for DC systems - I will not discuss AC here) is written as E=IR, where E is voltage in volts, I is current in Amps, and R is resistance in Ohms.

 

"The story doesn't say it stopped his heart, it says it disrupted his heart. A defibulator would have saved him."

Mike is quite correct. This sailor apparently did this alone in the lab, and spent a few minutes in ventricular fibrillation. A defibrillator might have saved his life had someone been there to use it -- or to stop the guy from attempting to measure his internal resistance.
--Dan Wilson

 

[Mihle]

58 minutes ago, AlwaysFSX said:

The size difference is to accommodate your "brilliant" plug design, not the hardware inside of it.

-not much more, if at all, compared to an EU socket unless you manage to somehow jack up a power outlet
-just for my amusement, I didn't know Europe had a problem with people licking plugs that are plugged in??

-we never needed a design with a reversible plug because we didn't design an over-sized cable in the first place

"Shoot the prongs don't line up, lemme rotate it."

- look at Samsung phone charger US Vs European plug, they are almost the same size because it's designed the right way.

 

- *facepalm* don't know if you are joking or stupid or how that have anything to do with what I said . Just use a US plug halfway in and touch your fingers in here (depend on your finger size ofc, think of for example children) or drop some metal on there and see what happens. Nothing to do with licking.

-what the hell do you mean, the cable is the same, what do you talk about. You make no sense.

[Drak3]

36 minutes ago, Mihle said:

Just use a US plug halfway in and touch your fingers in here

There isn't metal on metal until there is, if we're being generous, 1/4" of metal still exposed at most. Salad fingers has reason to worry, anyone that can realistically plug and unplug electronics has nothing to worry about.

38 minutes ago, Mihle said:

drop some metal on there and see what happens.

Or we could ignore hyper unrealistic situations.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Mihle said:

You are just trolling/joking

 

2 hours ago, AlwaysFSX said:

No, I'm really not. The European power outlet is a terrible design. Your wall sockets are huge compared to the US plates and the cables themselves are poorly designed. If you want to ground something you need the brilliantly ( /s ) designed flat earth style plug that wastes space. And any power bricks with the prongs attached to the body are significantly larger than a US style.

 

Same power adapter, EU one is stupidly larger.

 

 

Not sorry to say it but the US got power cables right, EU reeeeeaaaaaaaaaaally did not.

 

That explains it enough

[Nexxt]

Awards:

Most powerful plugs: Australia, New Zealand and Brazil

Safest Plug: United Kingdom

Worst Modern Plug: Japan

Most Confusing Standards: France (The circuitry does not have a standard for polarisation despite only fitting in one way and the socket will work with non-earthed plugs)

 

I can't comment on an award for size because I really don't have the time to look up the different technical specifications. It's likely to go to type A plugs however from looking at images.

Feel free to throw in any corrections with an "@" and I'll correct it later.

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, Stru said:

Awards:

Most powerful plugs: Australia, New Zealand and Brazil

Safest Plug: United Kingdom

Worst Modern Plug: Japan

Most Confusing Standards: France (The circuitry does not have a standard for polarisation despite only fitting in one way and the socket will work with non-earthed plugs)

 

I can't comment on an award for size because I really don't have the time to look up the different technical specifications. It's likely to go to type A plugs however from looking at images.

Feel free to throw in any corrections with an "@" and I'll correct it later.

Tbh saying the best or safest isn't the great thing to say, the fact is in different continents electrical circuits in houses are different, circuit breakers are used instead of fuses, depending on the source voltage it will use more amps, etc...

 

Edited February 23, 2019 by Guest

[Guest]

6 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

True but higher voltage isn't exactly good for you  I'd rather take 10A at 5V instead of at 200V.

There is that one time I pulled a live spark plug wire from a running car and I wasn't properly isolated.  Threw me back a good 10 feet.... but I'm fine... I think.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

There is that one time I pulled a live spark plug wire from a running car and I wasn't properly isolated.  Threw me back a good 10 feet.... but I'm fine... I think.

Ouch.

 

It happened to me to while I was trying to start an old moped with the lever... I was trying the spark plugs actually, and I had the brilliant idea to put it on the metal chassis of it...

 

But a battery is definitely worse...

[Nexxt]

5 hours ago, Lukyp said:

Ouch.

 

It happened to me to while I was trying to start an old moped with the lever... I was trying the spark plugs actually, and I had the brilliant idea to put it on the metal chassis of it...

 

But a battery is definitely worse...

Interesting, I'd thought the 10,000 V sparkplug would have felt significantly worse than a 12 V battery. I can hold the poles of a 12 V with my bare hands but wouldn't dare mess with touching live spark plugs (and I'm yet to). Perhaps its because they inherently can only supply a very brief pulse of current?

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Stru said:

Interesting, I'd thought the 10,000 V sparkplug would have felt significantly worse than a 12 V battery. I can hold the poles of a 12 V with my bare hands but wouldn't dare mess with touching live spark plugs (and I'm yet to). Perhaps its because they inherently can only supply a very brief pulse of current?

I was not hurt directly, I was holding the metal chassis while the spark plug was on it, and the current passed through me

 

BTW I wouldn't try it, but if you have a small 12v battery for motorcycles and try to hold the wires in close sections of your body I'm surely it would hurt.

I got zapped by a 12V battery while I was on a boat having hands wet from salty water

[Stefan Payne]

14 hours ago, Stru said:

Feel free to throw in any corrections with an "@" and I'll correct it later.

The table is bullshit and made by the british supremacist.

The Ground usually connects first, regardless on the Plug. 

That is true for Schuko, type F, the Swiss Plug. that is usually the Standard.

 

So the fuse we discussed a couple of pages before. Its also bullshit as the circuit is often protected with no more than the value of the plug.

So why the heck would you need 2 of the same fuses in the same Circuit?!

You NEED a fuse in the plug if you plug a 13A Plug in a 32A Circuit. Then a Fuse is necessary, obviously.

 

What are you talking about with the "Coated Pins"?! 

And the Child Proof is optional in many countrys or there are inlets.

But you know what:
Here in Germany you don't have that child proof nonsense (or you put in those inlets in) and still hardly any child dies because you can train your child that you don't put anything in outlets....

 

And why would you want to switch the Outlets?! 

Sorry, but that to me looks like a bullshit marketing Table that is to prove that you are right when its just random.

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

The table is bullshit and made by the british supremacist.

The Ground usually connects first, regardless on the Plug. 

That is true for Schuko, type F, the Swiss Plug. that is usually the Standard.

 

So the fuse we discussed a couple of pages before. Its also bullshit as the circuit is often protected with no more than the value of the plug.

So why the heck would you need 2 of the same fuses in the same Circuit?!

You NEED a fuse in the plug if you plug a 13A Plug in a 32A Circuit. Then a Fuse is necessary, obviously.

Even on type L

[mariushm]

The coated pins thing is ... uk plugs have the big long earth prong that's not coated, but the live and neutral pins have a big of insulation on them ... if you don't insert the plug all the way, you can't touch the live and neutral wires with a blade or a wire or fingers. 

 

 

This is needed basically because the outlets are flat.

 

Schucko works around that by having the outlets recessed, in a depression, so by the time the pins go deep inside to make the actual contact, you should not be able to insert anything between plug and outlet and the earth contacts on the sides already made contact.

 

 

 

 

 

[Kroon]

16 hours ago, mariushm said:

See https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-50.html

 

Read that source and a few others but found none of them really trustworthy.  No matter how hart you poke your fingers with metal probes a 9v batteries will not kill you.  Even with broken skin you will have 1000 ohms.

 

Only explanation is that the device in question had capacitors or something similar.