Fellow engineer here.
I decided to see if the motor on a Scalextric (slot car for you west pondians) would perform well on a diet of 240V AC instead of the usual dinky 12V DC. It does: very fast, but only for a very short period of time. My Dad found me sitting in front of the socket in my room, remains of the two stripped wires in hand, hands shaking gently.
ETA: on seeing the UK socket info posted, this was an old school 3 pin with round pins and no retractable covers inside the socket
Of course, stepping on one of these in the dark with bare feet hurts like hell so it’s not all good
So many people fake sadness?
I personally have never met someone faking sadness/depression.
Are they really sad about inauthenticity?
Are you really sad about inauthenticity?
What makes you think I am sad?
Yes but those were limited to 5A at 240VAC, and therefore entirely safe to lick.
PS Danish sockets use a different safety approach, with a jolly face to lure children to find out about electricity
Eliza, is that you?
and @RadioSilence
Britain has a lot to thank Caroline Haslett for
During the Second World War she was the only woman member (and the only safety expert) on the 20-person committee convened by the IEE to examine the requirements for electrical installations in post-war Britain, part of a larger scheme of Post-War Building Studies.[18] An important part of those recommendations was a new plug and socket standard, the first requirement for which was To ensure the safety of young children it is of considerable importance that the contacts of the socket-outlet should be protected by shutters or other like means, or by the inherent design of the socket outlet.
The plastic insulators have only been standard since 1984, so if you have a 40 year old plug you can still kill yourself doing this “challenge”
I thought those became mostly obsolete after WW2. I have only ever seen those used on lighting systems.
Eh, it depends on the context. Authenticity can lead to terrible violence.
So your feeling violent?
Wait, what about Asimov’s first law of robotics?
Surely Amazon… oh fuck it, who am I kidding!
(Appologies to @the_borderer, didn’t mean to reply to you specifically! Must check out Caroline Haslett though…)
I do not claim to be authentic, and therefore any violent impulses on those grounds must therefore be absent.
Oh, I got that part. Have an authentic day or an inauthentic day, it’s up to you.
Here’s a fun thing I did when I was 9. Get two carbon rods from two D cell zinc carbon batteries (you know, the batteries you got from Radio Shack® with your free Battery of the Month™ card). Get a power cord that was severed from whatever it was you recently took apart in the house, strip the ends a couple inches and wrap the wires tightly around one side of the each of the rods. Plug this into the wall and (very carefully!) pick up each wire (touching the insulation only of course!) and bring together the tips of each rod (you might want to be wearing some goggle for this, but hey, maybe you don’t have any and just wing it?). When they touch, a very bright light will appear, then slowly separate the rods and watch a fiery arc form.
Actually - don’t do any of this.
Something else you can do with the rods from your free Radio Shack® batteries is wrap wires around the ends of the carbon rods like the first “experiment” and submerge these in water. Connect the wires to some more batteries you got over the months with your Battery of the Month™ card from Radio Shack®. On one of the carbon rods little bubbles will form. This will be hydrogen. On the other rod little bubbles will form. This will be oxygen. Put a giant test tube you begged your mother to buy for you from who knows where, filled with water over both rods. As the bubbles float up the tube they will displace the water. When all the water is gone from the test tube you can carefully remove it and hold a match up to the bottom. You will hear a giant “WOOF!” as the two gasses ignite. Water vapor will be left on the walls of the tube. You have just broken water down into its parts and assembled them back together, plus heard a neat little explosion. Well done!
(An alternative to this - put some salt in the water. In this case you will create chlorine gas, and the water that these bubbles are bubbling up through will eventually be able to be used to bleach things. You’ve created your own noxious chemicals. Well done!)
Well, this was mid 70’s, in the maisonette my mum & dad moved into in 1961 - they were built mid '50s as far as I can tell from OS maps. Sockets were about the same dimensions as modern ones, but round pins and no shutters - and obvs no plastic on the live and neutral pins. I think we had a few of the tiny ones for table lamps etc as well.
Dad wasn’t best pleased having to replace the one in our room, I think for the second time…
