This is all about standard issues.
Coming soon:
What do you mean my US dollars aren’t accepted at any big intl. tourist locations anymore… I have to actually exchange them?
People like this think Trump is a genius
I know it’s difficult to tell online, but I read that as a joke post. Not serious. But it’s better for others to make fun of others for being clueless I guess.
Yeah. It always strikes me as bizarre how many people online see something that would only be satire in a sane world and completely assume it’s serious. They have no doubts. Never occurred to them it might be a joke…
Damn Poe’s Law
I feel like it should be more like “Poe’s sometimes true thing” because satire does indeed still exist. People making assumptions is the issue.
And these people vote…
I live in a country with two plug types and actually have to use a fuckload of converters
that sounds like hell lmao where
I think British style plugs are the best despite their bulkiness. For one they are easily fixed and are designed to be so.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about watch this: https://youtu.be/COWlYUvzgZI
Thailand has really cool plugs. they’re shaped so they can fit European or American outlets, quite often. I rarely needed an adapter when I was there
Very cool, I guess there is a voltage adapter built in?
Nope. So don’t plug a 120V hairdryer or corded drill in those things.
No, voltage adapters are built into basically every electronic device now so it doesn’t matter which you plug into
Yes for electronic devices that expect low voltage DC and have a converter, like laptops, phone chargers, etc.
But don’t try and take a 120V hairdryer on holiday and plug it in because it will certainly blow up.
No-one going to mention that they said countries and named two continents?
Because it reads like this:
“In other countries, like [those in] Europe or South America”.
I didn’t realize because I am too used to it.
I mean makes sense, there is a big Chunk of population in the USA who don’t have the means and opportunity to travel abroad and get used to the other electrical outlets in other countries.
Hell I think 30% of the adults in there haven’t ever been abroad once on their lifetime.
Understandably, it’s going to baffle more than one person who gets shared those travel experiences from traveling acquaintances
exhales
Not do we need a “special adapter” but a converter as well, as Households in the US use 110V opposed to the usual 230V.
Oh this gets stranger.
It’s usually 120v, but I’m not going to split hairs over 10v.
So, 120v is not a voltage that is delivered from the grid… Technically speaking. Each home is given one circuit of 240v, which is usually part of one leg of a three phase, coming off of the Transformers… 120v is there because they center-tap the transformer. This halves the voltage by consequence. Inside the house the circuits are generally laid out to try to balance the load between each half of the 240v phase.
The idea is that two 120v loads, put in series, will total 240v. So power will ideally go from L1 to a 120v load, to “neutral”, then over to another 120v load, then finally back on L2.
More or Less.
120v is basically just half of what you should be loading the system with.
The center tap neutral from the transformer is to collect any load imbalance between L1 and L2 to allow for the two “sides” of the phase to be out of balance and still work.
The US “plug” ( aka receptacle ) is a NEMA 5-15R, or NEMA 5-20R (for 20A); these are designed for 120v operation using the half phase described above. Of course, you can mis-wire it and make all kinds of dangerous abominations if you so choose. There is, however, a less known NEMA 6-15R and NEMA 6-20R that is basically the same, but for 240v operation, replacing the neutral wire with L2 instead (and 15/20A respectively).
So it is entirely possible to have 240v outlets in a North American home, while still being compliant with code.
It’s actually really fascinating information when your dig into it.
What’s a good resource for learning about electrical engineering for people starting from nearly zero knowledge? I’d love to learn more so I don’t burn my house down if I want to, say, replace a light fixture in my house.
I’m not an EE. I apologize if I gave that impression. I just have an obsession with understanding anything I use on a regular basis, whether computers, smartphones, electricity, vehicles… Anything that does stuff, and I use it, I want to know how it does the thing that it does.
I’m weird like that.
I learned a lot from “Electrician U” on YouTube, along with a few others. Maybe worth a look. The scientific/physics side of things was more from watching other YouTubers (as to why it behaves the way it does), along with a fundamental knowledge that I learned from doing amateur radio stuff. Working in IT and having to deal with the power requirements of systems and making sure that we won’t blow a breaker under load… That helped motivate me to learn.
It all came to a head when we were deploying a network and server for a business that was still in construction of the facility. The electrician was going to run a temp line for our stuff so we could set up and be ready for opening day, and he asked how many amps we needed… I did a bit of a deep dive to figure out an answer for him, and I’ve been learning more and more since then.
Cool. Thanks for the direction. I’m curious about electrical stuff, and I’d like to be able to do some things around my house. There’s some DIY stuff online, too, involving building projects from old parts of appliances that interest me, but I realized quickly that I’d need some very good knowledge about electrical work to stay safe. It’s unlikely I’ll actually pursue the latter, but I’d like to at least know the how and why of my home wiring.
For most things people bring on vacation it wouldn’t be a problem since chargers and power supplies can run on multiple voltages. It’s for things like hairdryers where you need converter. Since they are calibrated for a specific voltage to create heat. Though you could probably run them at half settings on the double voltage.
It’s less of a problem nowadays where most things have switching power supplies that can handle either just fine
Oh don’t worry about that, just plug in your 110V appliances and watch them run twice as fast
When I was 17 my father brought back a stereo from Japan. I was too eager to use it and plugged that directly to 220. It worked for a glorious 2 minutes. We got it working again after we replaced the transformer. Still have it and it still works fine to this day. Learned a lesson too!
Houses in the US generally have 220v too but not at ordinary wall outlets
There’s a technology connections video on it if you’re interested in the specifics
Yes and in Europe houses generally have 400V too but not at ordinary wall outlets
A few years ago there was the possibility of me moving to the US from Germany and if I would have bought a house there, I would probably have installed additional Schuko-outlets all over the place.
There’s a technology connections video on it if you’re interested in the specifics
Exactly :)
See also any ElectroBOOM video where he travels. Though they’re a very different kind of content.
Why?
Because he makes videos about technical details like this.
And don’t call me Shirley.
“I don’t have an accent…YOU have an accent!!”
I dated someone who in earnest believed she has no accent. She didn’t understand what could be wrong about that.
People in other countries use all sorts of crazy “languages”. We don’t bother with that here, we just talk normally.
Why can’t people just be normal. I am being my normal self, but other people seem different. Bastard freaks.
Language proficiencies: Common
Galactic Basic
I moved to California last year from Oklahoma. Occasionally I will say something about moving from Oklahoma and people are like, “oh that makes sense, you have a Midwestern accent sometimes”. We all sound normal to ourselves but everyone has an accent. Like the way California people say their O’s.
Like the way California people say their O’s
As a Canadian, it’s all I can hear when they speak.
I have a hard time understanding the people in a friends village and he lives 50km away
I guess it makes sense. I wouldn’t understand you either from 50km away.
Lemmy: We’re just a bunch of dads
And Linux nerds.
Midwesterners are the only people I’ve ever met who don’t think they have an accent. And I’m like “you have a midwest accent.” They’re stunned because to them it’s just a “normal” accent, and they know it must be so because it’s what the TV man talks like. Obviously I know midwesterners who know they have an accent and the TV man is trained to speak that way. But everyone else I meet and know knows their own accent and can recognize variations of it. They’re not so conscious of how they make their accent happen, obviously, since it is their own. But they know they sound different from other people
Part of that is, out side of a few regions of the Midwest that have a really unique accent.
Most of the Midwest is “nutural English”. Yes there’s an accent, but there is a huge lack of slang, regional quirks, and is widely one of the most understandable accents across every English speaking country.
It’s the “universal English accent” in a sense. It’s a large reason why call centers became so popular there. That and low costs.
Functionally Midwestern accent is in a way the English that’s so boring that the banality of it IS the accent. Lol it’s kinda funny.
It’s the “universal English accent” in a sense.
… for American English
Relevant exchange from Suicide Squad (the good one with Idris Elba and Flula, not the bad one with Will Smith and Jared Leto)
Would be great if an equally clueless European followed up with
“So I visited your country and remembered seeing this post but when I got there, none of my stuff would fit in your outlets. What the fuck?”
One of worlds longest running experiments is when an european tourist visited america and tried to boil water using a kettle and a travel adapter.
The paper published on the experiment noted that water finally reached temperatures of 63c in 2017.
I’ll be choosing an inverter soon. In the US, but considering a 240v just for the kettle.
Steam irons heat faster too, you know, just in case you need to iron your fancy shirt in a hurry before you leave, not that that would ever happen to me or anything…
Btw do you have a big solar array or what is the inverter for?
Yea, big steamer vs iron fan here. This will be for a van. A while back we aquired a mini van and through the magic of DIY it now has no back seats, a couch+bed, fold up kitchen and running water. We are very outdoorsy and like cheap travel, so we are doing some planning for potential next/future stage of life in something that could replace structural living 😉
Take the adapter off, moron.
Someone from Germany or France or one of the other States should do that to take the piss.
/s
I mean, they’re right. It does sound really stupid
