Just pushed a plug into the wall, the lamp came on at the point where I couldn't possibly get my fingers round the back (or a child's fingers - the gap is about 5mm). So er.... why bother with the sleeved pins?
10/10 for observation, but 0/10 for thinking it out for yourself or even googling the answer.
Googling gives you health and softy morons like this:
Wow, 1984? So this triple adapter without sleeves that I'm using must be over 34 years old. They don't make things that well anymore. The sleeved ones are more prone to overheating.
they have to cover people that insert plugs with knifes or fencing wire in their hand, silly. :)
I must admit I did once deliberately blow a circuit at school by using a paperclip and a plug.
But if you're that determined, you can easily push two screwdrivers into the socket. One into earth to open the pins, and one into live. Then you can electrocute yourself, someone else, or trip a breaker.
ouldn't possibly get my fingers round the back (or a child's fingers - the gap is about 5mm). So er.... why bother with the sleeved pins?
Because it's primarily for stopping your fingers from touching the pins whi le plugging in but also anything else, a flatmate of mine had a lucky escap e when her silver necklace did hit the pins of the plug when she plugged in her electric fire. The plug fuse does't protect from this type of accident .
This happened to someone at work who was plugging into a below-floor level socket and her ID card chain went between the two pins. Her main injury was from hitting her head on the desk above. Suddenly all our ID card "chains" wew replaced with ribbons.
Children have small fingers. However some of my plugs are not shrouded, as they are quite old but then I have no children. I think a better question is about lampholders which have no protection at all if there is no bulb in them and can be on at the time. Brian
Yes well he obviously never used a screwdriver inappropriately and there are people on here who seem to think he should do so. However I think enquiring minds are good things, even if sometimes the question does not show the person in a good light. What I'd also like to know is, what is the point of having the live and neutral colours in a two core lead when the innards of the device have no polarity at all. Brian
Because you know up to the point of the cable entering the device and being soldered onto the internal wiring, which wire is live and which is not.
This doesn't stop the internal switch being fitted in the wrong wire within the device. My dad once got a shock and tripped the house when he tried to retrieve a bit of toast from the toaster using a knife. He'd turned off the power switch on the toaster but not the one at the wall (or unplugged it). And the appliance switch was in the neutral, so the element was permanently live. Trading Standards were not impressed and promised to take it up with the importer who in turn should take it up with the foreign manufacturer.
Moral: *NEVER* trust the switch on the appliance. Always unplug at the wall before tinkering...
I can very close to electrocuting myself once when I was cutting my grandpa's grass with his electric mower. The cable became tangled so I unplugged the three-pins-in-a-row plug and socket between the appliance cable and the long cable to disentangle it. Something didn't look right and it took me a couple of seconds to work out what it was: the plug and socket were on the wrong ends of the cable so the plug with the exposed pins was on the cable that was plugged into the wall and the socket was on the mower. Wrong! I quietly went and unplugged at the wall, before finding a screwdriver so I could remove the plug and socket, and put them on the right way round (socket on live cable, plug on appliance). My grandpa probably never even noticed as the plug and socket look identical when they are connected together, but I wanted to spare his blushes if he'd been the one that had wired it like that.
The whole house from one appliance?!
Most people would just turn the toaster upside down and shake it. Even if you think it's switched off, why risk breaking the fragile elements?
So you're a grasser then. Shame on you.
Dunno why people use those things. I just use a normal extension lead.
Some don't. I've got a reel of cable here with two blacks and a green/yellow. The two blacks are marked all the way along with 1 and 2, but they're not different colours.
Not under 5mm diameter they don't. That's how close the face of the plug has to get to the socket to make electrical contact.
I'm surprised some health and softy moron hasn't come up with a redesign for lampholders.
My parents used to freak out when I was a child and changed a dead bulb without turning the lightswitch off. My reasoning was if I did that the room would be dark so I couldn't see what I was doing. Easier to leave the other room lights (usually on the same switch) on. No reason I'd put my finger inside the socket, I grabbed the bulb, not the socket.
your ignorance always impresses.
What am I ignorant of? We still use the same lampholders.
Yes. The purpose of an RCD (residual circuit breaker) is to cut off the supply when even a very small current (typically 30 mA) flows between live and earth or neutral and earth. That is a situation which never normally happens, irrespective of the live-neutral current that the appliance draws during operation, hence the very low threshold for an RCD.
It is fairly normal for a house to have just one RCD protecting all the circuits, rather than one for each circuit (upstairs ring main, downstairs ring main, lights, cooker, shower etc) - probably because RCDs are more expensive than fuse wire or MCBs (miniature circuit breakers) which protect against excessive live-neutral current.
Good reasoning, The only problem is when you come to put the new bulb into the empty socket, when there is a very small chance that you may (somehow, through carelessness) insert your finger into the socket if you mis-aim the bulb. Though with the other lights on, you should at least still be able to see what you are doing.
The only time I turn the power off to a light fitting when replacing a dud bulb is with a very high-powered tungsten photographic bulb (eg 500 W photoflood): a) because suddenly powering-up those bulbs can blow the filament (*); b) such a bulb gets hot *very* quickly and could burn your hand while you are still pushing the bulb in and twisting it into place, before you've had chance to let go.
(*) I had a special four-socket mains block with a three-position switch for each socket. Centre was off; one way was full power; other way put a diode in series to do simple half-wave rectification to apply reduced power to the bulb to warm it up for a few seconds before switching over to full power, to reduce the thermal shock on the filament.
As long ago as 1989, when I worked for a few months at a manufacturer, they produced bayonet lampholders where the pins were not live until they were pushed down by inserting a bulb. Ok, they would not stop you deliberately pushing a pin down with your finger, but they'd certainly stop you just catching it and getting a shock while getting hold of the lampholder.
There were changes to the standards (in 1997 I think) - do they not require similar safety features?
SteveW
You could jam a 1p coin between the three pins of an unsleeved plug. This modification would go unnoticed until the plug were pushed into the socket. Or so I've heard.
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