![]() If that is the case, you have turned your toaster and bath tub into a crude, open, water heater. The electrical conductivity of the water will be so low that the toaster never draws enough current to trip the breaker on the circuit. One of two things will ultimately happen. Your drain, tub composition, water ionization content, etc. Assuming that the electrical conductivity of the water in the bathtub is much better than the resistive elements, the majority of current will try to flow around the elements via the path of least resistance.Īs it turns out, that path starts where the normal low resistance leads tie to the resistive element, and ends at the other end of the resistive element, where the complimentary low resistance wire connects. Toasters operate by connecting each end of a large resistive element to the "hot" and "neutral" wires that run back tot he panel in your house. Unless something has gone terribly wrong, it will not kill you. Now, hypothetically if you were standing on one foot in a tub with a toaster, I suspect you would only get skin burns. But that means that some portion of the toaster current will be flowing through you, probably enough milliamps to kill you. (pores open up in hot water) Certainly your body is only about 100 or 1000 times more resistive than the water. Distilled water is much less conductive and de-ionized water is not very conductive.Īnd you can be electrocuted with a few dozen milliamps, so if the toaster is putting 10s or 100s of amps through the plumbing, if you are in the water, it is likely that your body is only slightly more resistive than the surrounding water. Plus the current can still just go across the water near the toaster and through the neutral or the ground and electrocute you. And it is unlikely the house breaker will trip (if you didn't have a GFI) because you could easily pass 15A or 20A or even more for a decent amount of time before the breaker would trip and given the resistance of the water and the plumbing and the ground path, you might not be able to pass much more than 20A anyways. So the toaster can electrocute you because your plumbing may form a decent return path for the current. So in other words, you have current flowing on the hot wire, and nothing on neutral, it has to be going somewhere, so probably through the ground somewhere. GFI is called a "ground fault interrupt" for a reason, the breaker cuts off the live/hot 120 VAC if it doesn't detect the same current flowing in both the hot and the neutral. ![]() ![]() Sidenote: Ground is connected to a big metal rod hammered into the ground by your house, telephone poles with transformers on them also have a wire running down the pole and into a rod into the ground, and the third prong in your outlets are all tied together and through a stake in the ground or a wire wrapped around your metal plumbing, is a path through the Earth ground. The reason you are required to put in GFI outlets or breakers in bathrooms and kitchen is because when an appliance fails and the live/hot wire shorts to the appliance metal case or you drop it in a pool of water, the current flows from the live/hot wire to ground. I really hope this doesn't have some obvious answer that will make me feel stupid Why does throwing a toaster or other electronic device in a tub with a person kill that person? I doubt that the tub gets hot enough to cause irreparable damage before the person gets out (lets face it, a full bathtub of water requries a huge amount of energy to heat to the point of being dangerous). Even in the case of a toaster, why would the current take an uneccesarily long route through the persons skin and into the nervous system on the way to the other side of the toasting bits. ![]() I mean, even if it was grounded the water shouldn't even conduct electricity well (that is unless they are taking a bath with epsom salts). I can't imagine that there is an rational reason for the current to pass through them. why exactly does putting a toaster in a bathtub kill the person inside? Now this scenario isn't esclusive to Psych as I have seen it in many different shows, but. Hey Reddit Engineers, I am watching a Psych episode and, while hilarious, I came across something that didn't "jive with me", if you will. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |