Great moments in electricity/electronics
Posted 23rd May 2008 at 06:09 AM by ZONEZERO
One day I found myself working with an elderly semi retired electrician. He was wiring a series of lights down a hallway. He was taking turns wiring, picking up parts, and eating a sandwich. after the 11th light socket was installed all the bulbs where put in. At that point he told me "sonny so flip that switch and let's see what we got". Never the less, I flipped the switch. That was possibly the brightest flash of light I've seen in some time. Out of the darkness his voice said "I take it that wasn't 120 volts, hmmmmmm I have more lightbulbs". He had somehow wired across 220 volts.
The words of wisdom from my electronics instructor in vo-tech school.
#1 a desoldering iron is not a super duper solder shooter.
#2 if a fuse blows don't use a bigger fuse.
#3 if you smell it and it's working fine, there is probably something wrong.
#4 twice the voltage on a motor doesn't mean it goes twice as fast.
#5 Hmmmm it's on fire and working perfectly, I've never saw that before.
What's your "great moments in electricity/electronics
"? I'd like to see them. Everybody has at least one funny moment.
The words of wisdom from my electronics instructor in vo-tech school.
#1 a desoldering iron is not a super duper solder shooter.
#2 if a fuse blows don't use a bigger fuse.
#3 if you smell it and it's working fine, there is probably something wrong.
#4 twice the voltage on a motor doesn't mean it goes twice as fast.
#5 Hmmmm it's on fire and working perfectly, I've never saw that before.
What's your "great moments in electricity/electronics
"? I'd like to see them. Everybody has at least one funny moment.
Total Comments 6
Comments
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Yeah. I tried to recharge a 9 V alkaline DIRECTLY from the main when I was a kid
. Connecting the live and neutral to the +ve and -ve terminals using tape, and turn the power on from far. I saw smoke coming out with smell the battery was HOT after that but no one got injured 
Posted 25th May 2008 at 03:44 AM by bananasiong
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Sounds like quite an interesting day. There was a kid in my school's technology club that decided to stick a 12V dc motor into a socket; 120VAC didn't agree well with the motor at all. Thank goodness the fire alarm didn't go off now that I think about it...Posted 30th May 2008 at 06:32 AM by theinfamousbob - Well ever wonder what the insides of a 555 looks like? I bought a heap of electronic gear off a bloke for a song and in it was a 555 based circuit. so I decided to power it up with a 12 volt battery and found out the fun way the bloke who made it had used the red wire for negative and the black wire for positive. So you can guess what happened when I used the red wire for positive, just a loud bang and the sound of a 555 ic top hitting the shed roof. Surprisingly there wasnt any magic smoke so thats why they call the 555 the indestructable IC. Well unless you hook the power up the wrong way.Posted 5th June 2008 at 11:05 AM by bryan1
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Hooked a mains full wave bridge rectifier up the wrong way lights dimmed briefly, fuse popped, four fried diodes, no biggie, took less than 20ms. Just about everyone has done something like that. The great moment was in my mind when I looked at the fuse and realized that in the 20ms it took to blow the fuse that it took me 5 seconds to realize what had happend the entire molecular structure of the fuse wire had been rendered into a liquid and gas phase and condensed on the side of the fuse glass. We truly have no idea of the forces involved in even the simplest of electronics devices. The number of electrons involved in any 20ms's of current flow through an active circuit would take the greatest super computers multiple lifetimes to calculate, and it takes us roughly 300ms to blink. Bang, shock to the conciousness, but you'll never truly understand it, that awe never leaves me.Posted 8th June 2008 at 01:53 AM by Sceadwian -
I remember opening up a dead flash drive once, and applying 9v. Kinda funny, everything started frying and smoking and the led exploded.Posted 29th August 2008 at 06:37 PM by wmmullaney - can I ask for just a simple ac voltage regulator with a 220 and 110v output just for our project....Posted 18th February 2009 at 02:34 AM by marlou
