Comment on Why shouldn't electric plugs screw in?

Cybermass@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

Basically that weak contact before the device finishes being screwed in would cause a lot of arcing which would definitely cause a short circuit and would definitely trip your breaker almost constantly. The reason lightbulbs can be screwed in is not so much that it’s a convenient way to design an installable electronic but more that lightbulb companies wanted to create a design that would be so easy to replace any person could do it without any training.

So Edison hired a team of engineers to design an easy and safe application and they made the screw in application such that the contact would only get close enough at the very end of screwing and so that none of the metal would be able to contact human skin, avoiding electrocution and minimizing arcing.

For literally any higher draw application this would cause arcing so intense it would flip a breaker or possibly destroy the device and cause a fire. If you want a real life example just take a portable heater, set it to on and plug it into the wall but make that plugging motion last 3-5 seconds. WARNING you will at the very least flip a breaker and at the worst cause a fire and destroy your wall outlet, so don’t actually try this at home lmao

source
Sort:hotnewtop