How not to wire up an electric grill

How bout the German Coast Guard....

I can't see movies on this PC. Tried to install VLC player but it only shows a black screen :-(

German Ensign sitting in the command room of a German Coast Guard station. Scratchy voice with a British accent comes over the radio: "Mayday! Mayday! We are sinking! We are sinking!" German guy pushes the send button on the microphone and says, "Hello, zis iss ze German Coast Gahd. Vaht ah you sinking about?"

Joerg skrev:

Look at the table, beerbottles! Beer in, sense out.

Actually I don't think that's very dangerous. It would be dangerous if, in the case of the power strip getting submerged, a substantial portion of the current went through the guys' bodies but I can't see how that would happen.

Same with the old "hairdryer in bathtub" situation. What IS dangerous is holding the dryer (or any other unsealed, mains-powered device) with wet hands while the rest of the body is well-grounded (as it is when sitting in the tub). What ISN'T dangerous, IMO, is to drop the plugged-in dryer into the tub while someone is sitting in it (but not on the sink or other grounded metal parts), especially if a FI fuse is fitted.

I couldn't bring myself to try it out to freak out the wife though (she's convinced that 230V can arc about half a meter between blow dryers and water), but I'm sure the biggest danger is that of an immediate divorce.

robert

You are probably right - but perhaps the human body is a better conductor than bath or pool water (being full of salty fluids). So the current might take a short cut!

As I understand it, it's not a case of a short cut but that the current flows through all available paths and a person in the bath or pool would be part of, and well coupled to, a non-trivial subset of "all paths."

Not quite. Current flows where the electrical field tells it to flow. Two contacts simultaneously dropped into the water will develop a dipole field which decays as s^-3 over the distance. If only the "hot" wire gets wet and the path to ground goes through the body, that's a different matter.

Let's assume an all-metal, grounded bathtub and a standard 20mA FI switch. The person sits in one end of the tub and a single wire, connected to "hot", is dipped into the water near the other end. Even if we assume the human body to be highly conductive it's not going to be as conductive as the tub, so the current will distribute in all directions and only a small fraction will go though the terrified would-be victim's body. He probably wouldn't even feel a shock before the FI cuts off.

With the electric BBQ -- if the power strip goes under, there will be considerable current between adjacing contacts, but not though the inhabitants of the pool, who are several feet from the strip.

Would I try this myself? Hell no.

robert

Mythbusters did a prog on this IIRC. Concluded that in a bathtub it would probably kill

ROFL!

Well, they are raising their conductivity as evidenced by the brewsky on the shelf ...

If there is a GFCI. And if the GFCI works. Older houses like ours generally do not feature such devices.

Oh well it's OK, they use 220 in Germany.

Yeah, it'll probably just go flash, boom, darkness as fuse blows.

me neither. Hey mikey, c'mere...

I agree. QuikTime sucks completely.

---and I avoid it completely.

If someone insists on using it, they lose me as a potential viewer. Plain and simple.

-mpm

However, my VLC doesn't show any other video clips either. Someone told me you need to have flash installed. Of course, that begs the question what VLC is good for then if the whole purpose was to avoid flash.

I'll bet it is NOT plugged in, and that the photo is a hoax.

Aside from that, the folks in the water are safe. The guy that would handle the grill is taking the chance, and from all appearances, it is euro power, so 240V!

ZZZZZZZZZZAP! Blow a fuse pretty quick when all those outlets take on water between their conductors. UNLESS they are all sealed, except for the one is use. Still, not a good idea.

Ours is better by far...

Not without a PATH, dipshit. The pool is thick PLASTIC, not a very good "conductor to ground".