Not at all unusual for a bulb catastrophic failure to pop a circuit on the instantaneous failure if it fails as in 'pop!'.
I hadn't seen the thread but sounds to me like perhaps you didn't actually reset it before trying to turn it back on...most (all?) require a manual "push _fully_ off" to reset after a trip; if you don't they're not reset.
I'm guessing this time your movement did include enough in the "off" direction to do the reset.
It's a trick for an EE to figure out that you could quickly debug it by switching the wire from an adjacent breaker? I can understand an EE not having knowledge of NEC requirements, etc, but come on, this is very basic stuff.
I flipped that circuit breaker scores of times from fully off to fully on (I have a lot of experience with circuit breakers, just like anyone here would - even if I've only replaced one in my entire life).
I can only think of three scenarios that make sense because the short was not momentary. It lasted for hours two days ago.
At the time I was actively flipping the breaker, so, it wasn't a
*momentary* short (the only thing I could find wrong was one bad bulb in a set of five in a ceiling lamp).
I have a BSEE. I had it before I owned a house. I couldn't spell Romex until I bought a house, realized that I needed more circuits and started learning about home wiring, on my own and with help from this ng, 30+ years ago.
Just because one of the E's stands for "Electrical" it doesn't mean that home wiring, car wiring, boat wiring, etc. is even mentioned, never mind taught. I can't recall one course that would have led to me consider pulling the cover off of the breaker panel, loosening that little screw and pulling out the black wire to test a breaker.
Do you think a person with a Hydraulic Engineering degree automatically knows how to sweat pipe? They learn all about water don't they?
Do you think that a person with Aerospace Engineering degree automatically know hows to fix a jet engine? They learn all about air and space travel, don't they?
I'm not sure which tack you're taking on the topic of what an EE knows about typical home wiring, but, I'll just reiterate that *this* is the kind of stuff we learn in Electrical Engineering!
I just wanted to mention that the symptoms that you originally described are no longer present, apparently as a result of you following the above steps. But, as you indicated, that doesn't explain why the problem occurred in the first place.
So, at this point, we don't really know what caused the original problem and symptoms.
I had similar situation and set of symptoms once with the electrical panel in a tenant occupied single family home. The complaint was that one of the breakers would trip every once in a while and that the tenant would reset the breaker and everything would be okay. Then, the current problem became that she sometimes had problems getting the breaker to reset and finally she was unable to get the breaker to reset at all. She also mentioned smelling a faint odor of something burning near the panel (which I know was not one of your symptoms).
I went there and, like you, I wasn't able to reset the breaker. I could switch it to "off", but on reset, it would just trip again. And, like you, I noticed a slight spark on one of my reset attempts. When I turned the main breaker off, I could reset the problem breaker, and when I turned the main power back on the problem breaker stayed on and everything worked. But, I wasn't convinced that the problem was resolved even though the breaker did reset and didn't trip.
So, I turned off the main power and I removed the breaker. That's when I saw that the center terminal to which the breaker attaches was melted.
Apparently, there was some type of loose contact between the breaker and the center terminal and it must have been causing some type of arcing that heated up the terminal to the point that it melted.
What I did then was take that breaker completely out. I bought a new breaker for that circuit but I moved the new breaker to a different position in the panel box where it would connect to a perfectly good center terminal. I put a snap-in cover plate in the space on the panel cover where the original breaker had been located (I forget what they are called) to cover the hole that was created by removing the original breaker.
That completely solved the problem and there has been no problem since then.
So, even though the symptoms that you experienced are now gone, you may want to try unsnapping that breaker and one or two nearby and look to see what the terminals underneath look like. Of course, turn the power off first and be sure to use all of the necessary precautions regarding any part of the panel that may still be live even with the main circuit breaker off.
Maybe your problem is now fixed, or maybe you will see evidence of arcing and burning where the breaker contacts the center terminal.
Some breakers are made to be used as switches and some are not. The ones made to be used for switching could be used in a place where the lights are cut off and on every day. If the incorrect breaker was used, it could wear out very fast.
I'm an electrical engineer myself. I also knew how to debug that breaker by just moving a wire from an adjacent breaker when I was
10 years old. I was building all kinds of hobby projects that were more complicated than that. Electric eyes for example, using photocells and transistors. Really, what is education coming to in America when you can get a degree in electrical engineering and not be able to debug a simple house circuit. Sorry, just the truth, painful as it may be.
You knew how to debug a breaker way before you had your EE. You learned it through some other means or from other source. It had nothing to do with your degree.
I'm guessing we're close to same age - within reason - which means we got our EE degrees in the same "America" time wise - within reason. What course taught you how to open a breaker panel and swap wires?
Certainly a light bulb dead short *can* happen. Did it happen? I dunno.
I will let you know, but most importantly, to those who did *not* say "call an electrician you stupid twerp", I do very much appreciate your help.
To those who said I should have known all about home wiring, because I have a degree in EE, I ask which of these books do you think I would have found this information in?
Would I have learned the information in this class on Assembly Language?
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Or, maybe this class on the Design of Microcomputer Based Medical Instruments?
I can design and simulate and lay out and physically verify and fabricate a Chebyshev filter, but what does *that* have to do with asking about pragmatic advice on debugging a circuit breaker panel?
Did anyone ever suggest that you needed either of those to debug your very basic home circuit? Ohm's law, an understanding of basic electrical principles is all you need. I was doing that when I was 10.
That apperently is the sad state of education today in America. You learned how to run spice simulations, but now how to solve simple, real world problems using the most basic principles of electricity. They didn't teach you Ohms's law? How a simple circuit works? And applying science to everyday problems is what engineering is all about. Rest of strawman analogies noted and rejected.
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