I was once involved in a similar (unintentional) experiment with a multi-billion dollar defence radar. A several metres deep underground bunker, containing several 19" racks full of electrical/electronic gear, filled to ground level with a combination of mineralised surface water and mud during a storm.
What we wanted to do was cut the power, pump the water out of the bunker ASAP and immediately clean the whole lot with pure water.
What the (arse-covering) site manager did was nothing, not even cut the power, until a "risk-assessment" had been done. For the first few days we were able to peer into the bunker's hatch and watch der blinkenlights happily operating in the gloom underwater. That stopped after a few days. About a week later the risk had been assessed and a path of action determined: the power was turned off, the water was pumped out and everything was washed with pure water. By then electrolysis had dissolved just about every conductor in the system.
Electrical systems will happily cope with water in the short term, but the longer the exposure the less likely they are to survive. Time is part of the risk.
I have a similar experience from waaaaay back (now near 30 years). We had a water leak in the basement of the institute of physics. Nothing terribly major, ran for a few hours shorted power downstairs eventually (that's how it was found). Once fixed, pumped out, all that remained was a musty smell for a few days.
Except four days later network connection failed in the building. Tracing the cabling eventually lead us to the basement; some under-stairs / slightly below floor level comms cabinet, empty other than the building's outbound router. 48V Telco, no mains connect, had sat under"water" (well some rather murky stuff) for almost a week and done well. Once we got it washed (with clear water) and dried, it continued fine (till replacement a few weeks after). We were a little amazed, to be honest, physicists or no. Brave device, that.
I wonder although wasteful, isn't this better than accelerated failures taking the defense radar offline at random times in the future?
Reminds me of a friend of mine who somehow blew a shift in his car and did something bad to his engine. Instead of pulling over and stopping, he just drove it home and ended up destroying the engine.
So he got a whole new engine instead of having insurance pay to dismantle the engine and replace a few valves. It might even have been a similar price, but a much more robust solution.
It's quite impressive it kept working for that long, and even more amazing someone was capable of saying "no, let's not cut the power, there might be a problem if we do"
The navy used to throw the boards in the cleaner and repairs the failures. Now we have better cleansing solutions, but damn if that isn’t nightmare fuel. I would have pumped and dehumidified the room until parts could be pulled/repaired. These days they just scrap everything. It’s terrible.
It is because people use heuristics to navigate their lives. Instead of doing complicated engineering reasoning all the time to ensure their safety they learn simple “rules of thumb”. These rules are incorrect in as much as they have both false positives (something which the rule prohibits, but is safe) and false negatives (something which the rule lets you do, but is not safe).
I’m a hobby jeweler and I use an ordinary household microwave to melt copper and silver to cast my projects.[1] At the same time “everybody knows” that you can’t put metal in a microwave.
What gives? Is everybody wrong? Of course not. It is just that the statement “don’t put metal in a microwave” is a simplified form of the true statement which would go something like this “don’t put metal in a microwave, unless you follow these safety precautions, and wear these safety gear, and your crucible is made of the appropriate materials, and your moulds are bone dry and …”. Aint nobody has the time to think about all the caveats and dangers when all they want is to warm their meals. So it is simpler, easier, and safer to tell people the abbreviated form of the rule.
> These commenters are speaking authoritatively on subjects about which they are completely ignorant, but they are strident in doing so because they are repeating what everybody knows. They are intellectually secure in the center of a vast mob; their wisdom was received, not crafted.
This is an important takeaway for me, maybe even more than “electirc devices are washable”.
World is filled with conventional wisdom that limits us in countless directions. Knowing how things work empower us to break these “rules”.
It's not the water that's the issue generally - it's the minerals in the water.
The article author got lucky this time - when electronics die from water contact, it's usually the minerals bridging connections and creating shorts. Letting the device dry does not remove those shorts. Some places have such hard water (lots of minerals) that evaporated water leaves calcium, limestone and other deposits on the surface of everything it's touched.
Does that mean doing it once will always cause an issue? Of course not... but repeatedly doing this, and/or becoming used to washing electronics in the dishwasher is a recipe to ruin them in the long term.
I would not personally want to play games with a toaster that can be replaced for $20 at your local Walmart...
Of course I've seen the opposite all the time. People who find issues with the conventional reasoning, and then apply their own _extremely faulty reasoning_ to reach their own conclusion!
Someone having incorrect reasoning doesn't mean they are wrong, just that they do not know (in the sense of knowing something for the right reasons)
Case in point: OP decided to wash the toaster in the dishwasher. Their story about walking through water assuming that their hair dryer experiment validated them walking through water with a bunch of sockets.... they are applying super hand-wavy reasoning in the same way as the critics are!
The funny thing about the whole piece is that while "an unplugged toaster through the washing machine is probably fine" is not a huge leap, so much in the PS is indicative of how I would not really trust this person much for their decision making
A few years ago, an 8 port Cisco 2960 that was under my management went offline. This switch was in a plastic NEMA box mounted on the outside of a ski lift. When I went to imvestigate, I found that a small glacier had formed over the NEMA box, and had ripped the door off the box. When I got there, the box was full of ice, which was in the process of melting. The switch was still running, but the ice had ripped the trunk patch cable out - apparently the root cause of the switch going down. I unplugged it and extracted it from the ice, and dumped a not-insignificant quantity of water out from inside the switch. I let it dry out for a couple days, got a new cover for the NEMA box (which I screwed shut this time in addition to the little flip latch) and it's been running fine ever since. Who'da thunk?
I found an HP Elite 8200 behind a dumpster in the rain once. Brought it home, examined the innards, confirmed there was no rust. Let it dry for a few days while I waited for the hard disk to arrive from Amazon (it was once a corporate box, so its permanent storage had been removed and securely disposed of).
Sparked it up, it worked fine. I use it as a repo/build server to this day.
My favorite example of conventional ignorance: some guy was traveling on a plane the girl sitting next to him asked him whether there was wifi available so she could browse the internet. This was about 20 years ago... and the guy was convinced that the girl was an idiot. "We were flying in the middle of nowhere, 20000 feet in the air, and this girl is asking me whether we have wifi?? Some people have no common sense!" Turns out there's a fine line between being an idiot and being ahead of your time.
It's always interesting to me to see what you can get away with washing/getting wet without ruining it. I bought a bunch of vinyl 45's off of eBay several years ago and they were pretty gross. I stumbled across a forum where someone recommended washing them with water and a little bit of dish soap. As you can probably imagine, a lot of people freaked out in the responses and said it was a terrible idea. I gave it a whirl because the records were cheap and they sounded perfect after they dried. There was no warping or damage, although a few of the labels got a little messed up (but the needle doesn't go there anyways, so I didn't mind). I guess you're supposed to use distilled water, but Chicago water worked just fine.
The commonly accepted way to clean records among audiophiles is to use an ultrasonic cleaner, and a homemade cleaning solution containing some industrial attractants and anti-static additives that are recommended by the Library of Congress, but a few drops of dish soap works about the same. You don't need a lot, just enough to break the surface tension. There's usually a motor that slowly spins the record so that the label never gets submerged, and there are label protectors with o-ring seals that you can use while rinsing to protect the label.
The distilled water is mostly needed to avoid deposits from water spots after the rinse water evaporates. This can be mitigated with a vacuum drying system, which you can buy for between $25 and $500.
Most vinyls are made from PVC. That's actually where the name comes from: the V in polyvinyl chloride. So they are actually pretty resistant and can deal with a significant portion of the stuff found in your cleaning cabinet.
Nice. Once, just for fun, I followed online advice and cleaned a record with wood glue. It takes some time to dry, but it’s really fun, and the record was _spotless_ afterwards.
I've saved a couple keyboards from soda spills by unplugging them immediately, pouring the fluid out and running them through the dishwasher. Doesn't always work the second time, but it works often enough. It's worth a try.
On a related note, I wonder if people around the world are familiar with electric showers. Essentially, it's a resistance similar to the one found in a toaster, placed right inside the showerhead. It heats the water as it flows through. People hearing about it for the first time are usually shocked that we don't die from electrecution.
R&D electrical engineer here! I have to do this sort of thing all the time and can confidently tell you it's pretty normal.
The real risk isn't really to the toaster (who cares, it's just a toaster, and even if it starts on fire when you plug it in, you're probably watching it pretty closely).
No, it's that you leach lead or other such nasties (sealing rubbers, PCB epoxies, what-have-you) into your dishwasher and start eating them when they get redeposited onto your dishes. Lead isn't that harmful... except when you eat it. Don't eat lead.
In fact, if you have a dedicated dishwasher for this (or ultrasonic cleaner! those are pretty awesome, most of the time, for most things!), I'd say it's perfectly reasonable to do this! You know what we call those kinds of things where I work? Parts washers. You know what we wash in them... circuit boards! It's fine! Circuit boards are cleaned with aqueous solutions all the time as part of normal manufacturing! If you don't have a dedicated dishwasher... well, I wouldn't do it then, but if you must, you'll want to run the dishwasher a few more times, empty, with a strong detergent, preferably a lead-chelating one. (You might also make one of those runs with dishwasher cleaner, and strike the whole "yearly dishwasher cleaning" task off your to-do list for the first time this... uh, decade?)
You will, of course, want to dry things well. This is both easier and harder with a toaster. Easier because, well, toasters get hot, and this will get any nooks and crannies dry. Harder because one of the tricks to get things dry faster after they come out of a parts washer is to rinse them in alcohol, because alcohol dries very fast. You, uh, don't want to do that with a toaster. At least not one you intend to run any time soon.
dishwashers normally dry the dishes by heating them with an electric heating element; this is more likely to damage electronics than the water
there are also some electronic components that won't deal well with water, especially strong streams of water. microphones and speakers come to mind, because they commonly include exposed paper, thin membranes, and sponges. i'm thinking an ocxo would also be a problem both because overheating it can cause rapid aging and hysteresis and because drying out the fibrous insulation is going to be hard
Jewish law requires some new utensils to be ritually immersed in water before use[1]. There are differences of opinion around electrical appliances, but I have successfully dunked toasters, cheese toasters, and many other small appliances, let them dry for a few days, and never had any issues.
In fact, had OP found this[2] article, they would have seen that
> Practice has demonstrated that immersion generally does not harm most equipment if allowed three days to dry out.
The drying is straightforward, water evaporates, but do you maintain a personal mikveh?
I'm reading through the requirements and this is a serious piece of plumbing, expensive to install at home.
But it has such a purifying ritual function that I think showing up at a communal mikva'ot with a toaster would be awkward.
Does everybody expect that some people will have toasters? You take out your dental bridge and your earrings, trim your nails and your calluses, pick up the toaster and walk on in?
These facilities mostly resemble nice spas.
I'm not mocking the belief here, just curious what it's like as a human participating. If I were trying to purify a toaster I'd pour deionized water into a rubber tub but I gather that doesn't count.
Edit:
To answer my own question, it looks like communal mikva'ots are built with separate sections similar to a sink just for the immersion of things like dishes and toasters and don't require as much personal cleaning, so that's simple and human. As these things usually are.
Are appliances such as toasters considered a culinary utensil?
Kitchen Utensil appears to be defined as `A kitchen utensil is a small hand-held tool used for food preparation.`[1]. Perhaps you don't actually need to submerge electronic appliances in water...
I'd use de-ionized water and Simple Green (a citrus-based cleaner which evaporates at about the same rate as water), but I'd expect a toaster to survive once dry. I've cleaned several Teletype machines that way. The problem isn't water; it's solids left behind when the water evaporates, and corrosion.
Not all parts will survive this. Microphones and MEMS devices tend not to do well. Motors and transformers with paper insulation don't do well. Most modern electronics goes through a dishwasher-like process after assembly, to remove any excess solder and paste. A few parts have to be added past that point.
Oh speaking of. I have this really gunked up Model 35 tape typing unit and was about to dunk it in motor flushing oil. But then I see it has felt pieces and the magnets appear to be coated in shellac. Do you submerse your units completely or do you remove the sensitive parts?
Whenever I think I've cracked the code on something and know better than everyone else, it's often the case I haven't accounted for everything.
From his PPS:
> until I planted my bare foot on that bare concrete floor a few inches from the submerged power strip, at which point I felt a mild but discernable tingle in that one foot.
I'll give up a clean toaster in exchange for not getting myself into those kind of situations.
The big issue is not the water that will dry if you wait but that the hot water will make something that is glued or something that has two materials that expand different when heated break.
There is no amount of letting it dry out or adding rice that will solve if things are apart.
Having done that, I do recommend taking them apart and just washing the upper keycap board, and the elastic membrane underneath it.
The reason I recommend that is that the drying time takes long before all the water is gone from between the contact layers and all the keystrokes are reliable.
If it's okay for the keyboard not to be ready for use for a bunch of days, then you can just wash it as-is.
“GFCI” is maybe a bad name because it describes what the system is supposed to accomplish but not what it does.
It interrupts the circuit in response to a current imbalance between hot and neutral. Kirchoff’s laws… if the current is imbalanced, it must be going somewhere else.
Great article.
I had an argument with a coworker how a normal breaker works and that it won’t just fail when exceeding the rated amp-age. That it can happily continue for minutes. And of course the biggest misunderstanding: Breakers protect the cables in the wall not humans. That they can do that as well is just a nice side effect.
Never the less, I would still argue to kill the power before stepping into water with an active mains line running through it.
Just a question. How about doing this experiment in 240 land? I would assume the result would be different?
I was immediately reminded of the stern warnings to keep out of flooded basements until you've made sure the electricity to the house is cut off. I found[1] at least one person who died this year because of this lesser-known risk of flash-flooding (the more intuitive concern is drowning because you can't open the door due to water pressure). It's possible that it was more voltage at play, though, there are 400V lines in most German homes (electrical heating and stoves, mostly).
> Would he still have gone in the water to unplug the piano if he was in Europe?
Given that they did feel tingling, honestly I am not convinced one should follow that example anywhere on earth.
The post also describes that the breaker thing trips when the electricity takes an "some other route than expected" (their words), which I'd say tingling is indicative of: some electricity was being conducted away via the water and, at some point, their foot. Yet the breaker no trip, so either it wasn't a protected circuit or they drew another wrong conclusion based on that aquarium observation which they expected to go differently based on a previously wrong conclusion.
If you can assume the water has a similar conductivity as the tap water in the aquarium (not sure that's a safe assumption after it flooded a room with all sorts of dust and objects in it), and you can assume that your body can handle more electricity than the breaker needs to trip, then a fairly short distance ought to indeed insulate you well enough, but the objective was to get close and turn it off. The post sounded like they based this "I'll do it" opinion basically on the hairdryer-in-aquarium thing which we already know didn't go as expected. To me, the situations "hairdryer runs by itself in water" and "I, standing on a ground, stick my hand near the device's off switch in the water" are two very different things. There could easily have been further unknowns -- and apparently there were since the breaker didn't function in the way that this very post describes it should.
Since moving to Germany I've often noticed wariness around "Halbwissen" (loaning the word since it carries extra connotation), meaning half-knowledge but not in the sense of "you know something about it!"; rather, you kinda know but you don't know the details and that causes overconfidence. That works out until it doesn't
I don't honestly subscribe to that a whole lot: you can't know everything about everything and we use partial knowledge all day long for nearly every topic. Also electricity, I've noticed before a lot of mysticism and fear goes around unnecessarily. So I like the part where experimenting, when done carefully (letting it dry, using a protected circuit, being aware that it might fail and you should observe it first), is encouraged. However, this particular bit about going into the water and "I felt the electricity but everyone cheered me on!" is not what and how you're supposed to do these experiments
Assume that the water has a fixed resistance of R. You have increased the Voltage V about double.
As a result of V=IR, the I, or current flow, will be doubled. Which in this case is probably a moderate tingle since R is so high.
For reference, the heart muscles start getting involuntary twitches around 100mA, and at 200mA causes cardiac arrest. And the standard units of Voltage, Amp, and Ohm will serve you well here for any conversions.
[+] [-] femto|1 year ago|reply
What we wanted to do was cut the power, pump the water out of the bunker ASAP and immediately clean the whole lot with pure water.
What the (arse-covering) site manager did was nothing, not even cut the power, until a "risk-assessment" had been done. For the first few days we were able to peer into the bunker's hatch and watch der blinkenlights happily operating in the gloom underwater. That stopped after a few days. About a week later the risk had been assessed and a path of action determined: the power was turned off, the water was pumped out and everything was washed with pure water. By then electrolysis had dissolved just about every conductor in the system.
Electrical systems will happily cope with water in the short term, but the longer the exposure the less likely they are to survive. Time is part of the risk.
[+] [-] fch42|1 year ago|reply
Except four days later network connection failed in the building. Tracing the cabling eventually lead us to the basement; some under-stairs / slightly below floor level comms cabinet, empty other than the building's outbound router. 48V Telco, no mains connect, had sat under"water" (well some rather murky stuff) for almost a week and done well. Once we got it washed (with clear water) and dried, it continued fine (till replacement a few weeks after). We were a little amazed, to be honest, physicists or no. Brave device, that.
[+] [-] m463|1 year ago|reply
Reminds me of a friend of mine who somehow blew a shift in his car and did something bad to his engine. Instead of pulling over and stopping, he just drove it home and ended up destroying the engine.
So he got a whole new engine instead of having insurance pay to dismantle the engine and replace a few valves. It might even have been a similar price, but a much more robust solution.
[+] [-] rcxdude|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] BikiniPrince|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] appplication|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] krisoft|1 year ago|reply
I’m a hobby jeweler and I use an ordinary household microwave to melt copper and silver to cast my projects.[1] At the same time “everybody knows” that you can’t put metal in a microwave.
What gives? Is everybody wrong? Of course not. It is just that the statement “don’t put metal in a microwave” is a simplified form of the true statement which would go something like this “don’t put metal in a microwave, unless you follow these safety precautions, and wear these safety gear, and your crucible is made of the appropriate materials, and your moulds are bone dry and …”. Aint nobody has the time to think about all the caveats and dangers when all they want is to warm their meals. So it is simpler, easier, and safer to tell people the abbreviated form of the rule.
1: here is a video https://youtu.be/Oim2QsDp0rY?si=CZrhg6ux1GfiDWqd
[+] [-] raicem|1 year ago|reply
This is an important takeaway for me, maybe even more than “electirc devices are washable”.
World is filled with conventional wisdom that limits us in countless directions. Knowing how things work empower us to break these “rules”.
[+] [-] Alupis|1 year ago|reply
The article author got lucky this time - when electronics die from water contact, it's usually the minerals bridging connections and creating shorts. Letting the device dry does not remove those shorts. Some places have such hard water (lots of minerals) that evaporated water leaves calcium, limestone and other deposits on the surface of everything it's touched.
Does that mean doing it once will always cause an issue? Of course not... but repeatedly doing this, and/or becoming used to washing electronics in the dishwasher is a recipe to ruin them in the long term.
I would not personally want to play games with a toaster that can be replaced for $20 at your local Walmart...
[+] [-] rtpg|1 year ago|reply
Someone having incorrect reasoning doesn't mean they are wrong, just that they do not know (in the sense of knowing something for the right reasons)
Case in point: OP decided to wash the toaster in the dishwasher. Their story about walking through water assuming that their hair dryer experiment validated them walking through water with a bunch of sockets.... they are applying super hand-wavy reasoning in the same way as the critics are!
The funny thing about the whole piece is that while "an unplugged toaster through the washing machine is probably fine" is not a huge leap, so much in the PS is indicative of how I would not really trust this person much for their decision making
[+] [-] qingcharles|1 year ago|reply
I'm a statistic of one, though. I don't know if I just got lucky.
[+] [-] jaredhallen|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bitwize|1 year ago|reply
Sparked it up, it worked fine. I use it as a repo/build server to this day.
[+] [-] whack|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] teruakohatu|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] codelikeawolf|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] buildsjets|1 year ago|reply
The distilled water is mostly needed to avoid deposits from water spots after the rinse water evaporates. This can be mitigated with a vacuum drying system, which you can buy for between $25 and $500.
[+] [-] wongarsu|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sonofhans|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] hinkley|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 01HNNWZ0MV43FF|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mikedelfino|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] exmadscientist|1 year ago|reply
The real risk isn't really to the toaster (who cares, it's just a toaster, and even if it starts on fire when you plug it in, you're probably watching it pretty closely).
No, it's that you leach lead or other such nasties (sealing rubbers, PCB epoxies, what-have-you) into your dishwasher and start eating them when they get redeposited onto your dishes. Lead isn't that harmful... except when you eat it. Don't eat lead.
In fact, if you have a dedicated dishwasher for this (or ultrasonic cleaner! those are pretty awesome, most of the time, for most things!), I'd say it's perfectly reasonable to do this! You know what we call those kinds of things where I work? Parts washers. You know what we wash in them... circuit boards! It's fine! Circuit boards are cleaned with aqueous solutions all the time as part of normal manufacturing! If you don't have a dedicated dishwasher... well, I wouldn't do it then, but if you must, you'll want to run the dishwasher a few more times, empty, with a strong detergent, preferably a lead-chelating one. (You might also make one of those runs with dishwasher cleaner, and strike the whole "yearly dishwasher cleaning" task off your to-do list for the first time this... uh, decade?)
You will, of course, want to dry things well. This is both easier and harder with a toaster. Easier because, well, toasters get hot, and this will get any nooks and crannies dry. Harder because one of the tricks to get things dry faster after they come out of a parts washer is to rinse them in alcohol, because alcohol dries very fast. You, uh, don't want to do that with a toaster. At least not one you intend to run any time soon.
[+] [-] extraduder_ire|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] floam|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kragen|1 year ago|reply
there are also some electronic components that won't deal well with water, especially strong streams of water. microphones and speakers come to mind, because they commonly include exposed paper, thin membranes, and sponges. i'm thinking an ocxo would also be a problem both because overheating it can cause rapid aging and hysteresis and because drying out the fibrous insulation is going to be hard
[+] [-] krackers|1 year ago|reply
Maybe I'm slow, but what goes wrong if you rinse a toaster with alcohol?
[+] [-] llimos|1 year ago|reply
In fact, had OP found this[2] article, they would have seen that
> Practice has demonstrated that immersion generally does not harm most equipment if allowed three days to dry out.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tevilat_Kelim
[2] https://oukosher.org/blog/consumer-kosher/tevilas-keilim-a-p...
[+] [-] StrictDabbler|1 year ago|reply
I'm reading through the requirements and this is a serious piece of plumbing, expensive to install at home.
But it has such a purifying ritual function that I think showing up at a communal mikva'ot with a toaster would be awkward.
Does everybody expect that some people will have toasters? You take out your dental bridge and your earrings, trim your nails and your calluses, pick up the toaster and walk on in?
These facilities mostly resemble nice spas.
I'm not mocking the belief here, just curious what it's like as a human participating. If I were trying to purify a toaster I'd pour deionized water into a rubber tub but I gather that doesn't count.
Edit:
To answer my own question, it looks like communal mikva'ots are built with separate sections similar to a sink just for the immersion of things like dishes and toasters and don't require as much personal cleaning, so that's simple and human. As these things usually are.
[+] [-] Alupis|1 year ago|reply
Kitchen Utensil appears to be defined as `A kitchen utensil is a small hand-held tool used for food preparation.`[1]. Perhaps you don't actually need to submerge electronic appliances in water...
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_utensil
[+] [-] perihelions|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] hughdbrown|1 year ago|reply
- "Is it okay to wash a toaster in a dishwasher?"
- "Is it okay to put an electric hair drier in a fish tank when it is plugged in?"
And I am hoping he gets a very productive year of science for the effort.
[+] [-] ThrowawayTestr|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|1 year ago|reply
Not all parts will survive this. Microphones and MEMS devices tend not to do well. Motors and transformers with paper insulation don't do well. Most modern electronics goes through a dishwasher-like process after assembly, to remove any excess solder and paste. A few parts have to be added past that point.
[+] [-] varjag|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] scohesc|1 year ago|reply
I would never walk over to a live, submerged power bar to unplug it. Especially with your feet in the water. Very risky.
[+] [-] hahajk|1 year ago|reply
From his PPS:
> until I planted my bare foot on that bare concrete floor a few inches from the submerged power strip, at which point I felt a mild but discernable tingle in that one foot.
I'll give up a clean toaster in exchange for not getting myself into those kind of situations.
[+] [-] a1o|1 year ago|reply
There is no amount of letting it dry out or adding rice that will solve if things are apart.
[+] [-] cmiller1|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] askvictor|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kazinator|1 year ago|reply
Having done that, I do recommend taking them apart and just washing the upper keycap board, and the elastic membrane underneath it.
The reason I recommend that is that the drying time takes long before all the water is gone from between the contact layers and all the keystrokes are reliable.
If it's okay for the keyboard not to be ready for use for a bunch of days, then you can just wash it as-is.
[+] [-] klodolph|1 year ago|reply
It interrupts the circuit in response to a current imbalance between hot and neutral. Kirchoff’s laws… if the current is imbalanced, it must be going somewhere else.
[+] [-] larusso|1 year ago|reply
Never the less, I would still argue to kill the power before stepping into water with an active mains line running through it.
Just a question. How about doing this experiment in 240 land? I would assume the result would be different?
Edit: replaced rated power with amp-age
[+] [-] metadat|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jorgemendes|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cassepipe|1 year ago|reply
What about Europe's 230V ? Would he still have gone in the water to unplug the piano if he was in Europe ?
[+] [-] morsch|1 year ago|reply
[1] https://www.rnd.de/panorama/67-jaehriger-will-keller-leer-pu...
[+] [-] lucb1e|1 year ago|reply
Given that they did feel tingling, honestly I am not convinced one should follow that example anywhere on earth.
The post also describes that the breaker thing trips when the electricity takes an "some other route than expected" (their words), which I'd say tingling is indicative of: some electricity was being conducted away via the water and, at some point, their foot. Yet the breaker no trip, so either it wasn't a protected circuit or they drew another wrong conclusion based on that aquarium observation which they expected to go differently based on a previously wrong conclusion.
If you can assume the water has a similar conductivity as the tap water in the aquarium (not sure that's a safe assumption after it flooded a room with all sorts of dust and objects in it), and you can assume that your body can handle more electricity than the breaker needs to trip, then a fairly short distance ought to indeed insulate you well enough, but the objective was to get close and turn it off. The post sounded like they based this "I'll do it" opinion basically on the hairdryer-in-aquarium thing which we already know didn't go as expected. To me, the situations "hairdryer runs by itself in water" and "I, standing on a ground, stick my hand near the device's off switch in the water" are two very different things. There could easily have been further unknowns -- and apparently there were since the breaker didn't function in the way that this very post describes it should.
Since moving to Germany I've often noticed wariness around "Halbwissen" (loaning the word since it carries extra connotation), meaning half-knowledge but not in the sense of "you know something about it!"; rather, you kinda know but you don't know the details and that causes overconfidence. That works out until it doesn't
I don't honestly subscribe to that a whole lot: you can't know everything about everything and we use partial knowledge all day long for nearly every topic. Also electricity, I've noticed before a lot of mysticism and fear goes around unnecessarily. So I like the part where experimenting, when done carefully (letting it dry, using a protected circuit, being aware that it might fail and you should observe it first), is encouraged. However, this particular bit about going into the water and "I felt the electricity but everyone cheered me on!" is not what and how you're supposed to do these experiments
[+] [-] Spellman|1 year ago|reply
Assume that the water has a fixed resistance of R. You have increased the Voltage V about double.
As a result of V=IR, the I, or current flow, will be doubled. Which in this case is probably a moderate tingle since R is so high.
For reference, the heart muscles start getting involuntary twitches around 100mA, and at 200mA causes cardiac arrest. And the standard units of Voltage, Amp, and Ohm will serve you well here for any conversions.