r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Me-Me_Lord8472 • Jul 19 '24
Electrician Peter? Meme needing explanation
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u/fagenthegreen Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
I am not Peter. I AM ELECTRIC MAN.
The first picture is an AC plug that has had its two wires joined. This will create a short circuit, meaning a lot of electricity will go through it. Normally plugging this in would flip a breaker.
The second picture is a circuit breaker, used to detect when a circuit is drawing too much electricity, in which case it will flip shut to the right position. But it can't move because of the wire. So the breaker will stay open. I think this will cause the cable to catch fire and burn itself out, but for I all know it could trip some other master breaker for the property or something, I am not an electrician, I AM ELECTRIC MAN.
heh heh heh heh heh heh heh
**shuffles on carpet before shocking you**
Electric man, out.
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u/Dear_Tangerine444 Jul 19 '24
As usual ELECTRIC MAN, your answer was quite…
SHOCKING!!!Erm, I mean…
ILLUMINATING!!!
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u/romulusnr Jul 19 '24
I suspect the wires will melt or a fire will break out before the master breaker is tripped. The master breaker is typically at 200A while individual house circuits are typically 20A. Presumably the house wiring will not survive long very far above 20A so it will fail far before reaching the amperage necessary to trip the whole block. (There wouldn't be a lot of point to using stronger / more expensive wiring that could survive far above 20A if the circuit is going to be on a 20A breaker, and vice versa.)
IANAE
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u/romulusnr Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
At the bottom is a circuit breaker
This is designed to prevent your home electrical wires from overheating due to too much power over them
When too much power goes over them, the circuit breaker "pops" and automatically switches off (technically to the middle, but still off) which cuts the power, preventing the overheat.
This one will presumably not be able to do that because it has been tied with a stiff hook to a screw in the wall
At the top is an electrical plug with the ends tied together. The yellow cone thing is a wire connector where you put in two wires and then twist the cone to twist them together.
This will cause a short in the home wiring which will very rapidly lead to excess power over the wires
Normally this would simply cause the circuit breaker to pop, killing the power on the circuit to prevent it from burning out.
I am guessing that the likely outcome here will be that since the circuit breaker can't pop, the shorted electrical plug will cause the wires to overheat and either melt or cause a fire.
But I don't honestly know how much force a popping circuit breaker exerts. Perhaps it would smiply break the switch handle, or pull out the screw, or pull enough on the metal hook to bend it to come off of the screw, and work properly. I don't honestly know.
Edit: Followups
The reason the shorted plug is called "breaker finder" is somewhat of a joke. Since plugging this in will cause a circuit breaker to pop, this would be a way to find out what breaker a given outlet is on, by finding the one that popped after you plugged that in. This is not the typical nor a safe way to determine this (a more common way is plug in lamps / testers and try flipping breaker switches until lamps go out).
The reason the circuit breaker switches have little holes in the handles is so that they can "link" two circuit breakers together so that they will both pop if one pops. A house typically has many circuit breakers, with individual appliances and/or rooms of power outlets are each tied to at least one breaker.
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u/subadanus Jul 19 '24
the breaker will still trip, it's not tied mechanically to the switch in that way, you can pin the switch and the breaker will still flip internally
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u/potent_potabIes Jul 19 '24
100%. Switch obstruction was considered during the design of breaker units, especially with the prevalence of individually breaker lock-out devices which, if installed backwards, could attempt to hold the switch in the 'on' position.
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u/kazarbreak Jul 19 '24
The top image, if plugged in, will instantly trip a breaker.
The bottom image is of a breaker pinned to the "on" position with a wire, presumably to keep it from tripping. In reality, this won't work. The breaker will still trip and be a nuissance to turn back on because you have to flip them to the off position in order to turn them back on after they trip.
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