Martin Angove wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@tridwr.demon.co.uk:
Hmmm - must confess. I used to take wodges of magnesium ribbon and shove strips across the live/neutral of the sockets in the dormitory. Then switch on. Amazingly bright flash, impressive bang and, quite often, blown fuses.
Rod
Ooh yes.. I've seen the effect of a big spanner dropped over 3 phase bus-bars. Since the spanner never touched both bars for more than a microsecond at a time, the very hefty fuse failed to scrifice itself for the good of the spanner. The spanner was turned into a spray of fine droplets until it became short enough to fail to bounce down on both bars. A JCB going through the main incomer cable for an industrial estate was fairly impressive too. There were large chunks missing from the digger bucket of the smoking JCB that was lying on its back some 40 feet from the hole. As it had been a fairly new digger, the rubber mats and insulation were still in place properly and the driver survived to hone his map-reading skills. The site I was involved with on that estate had a demonstration of why larger fuse carriers are enclosed in steel cabinets with some big outward dents in the doors of the cabinet where fuses had blown to bits and hit the casing.
Warwick -- has a friend called 'mains test Duncan'
And the moral of the story is "Never let a wrench use a spanner". I wonder if they still laugh about it in the pub. :-))
16V capacitors.... When they take 240V mains they go bang & spray bits of lively ribbon everywhere...
They were always popular with us...
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