#breadboarding

[breadandblankets]

i don't know what engineering student needs to hear this but there are many well paying jobs that don't involve imperialism

[geekygeekygeekgeek]

Breadboarding? More like Bitchboarding, this shit is making me go insane

[nixcraft]

Impressive. Some super-clean Breadboarding.

Via https://www.reddit.com/user/ParanoidPerv

[breadandblankets]

the Worse (best) part about being a electrical engineer is everyone you know will now send you the most horrifying nec and osha violations known to man and you just have to live with that shit

[breadandblankets]

hi bread! I'm here to ask about the Magnetic Horrors of electrical engineering

yayyyyyy! im taking a nec code class and i had to learn about this and now so do All of You!

this is the full video but im going to take some strategic screenshots

these are three cables that are being bound to a tray by cable ties. we do this for certain applications like a bunch of power all going to a single location. my job prefers to put this all in conduit (ridged tubes that contain the horrors) so that shit like this doesn't happen.

what shit you ask? well....

a fault (in this case a short circuit, ie the electricity now has a Very quick path to ground, like a lightning strike) occurs in the cable, and like a dam breaking there is now a LOT of electricity with nothing holding it back

im stealing this from google dot gov but this is a wire carrying electrical current (current in this case means the same thing as a water current, it is a strong flow in a single direction) along its length. as you can see magnetic fields propagate out perpendicular to the path of electricity this makes basically tree rings at all points along the wire

the magnetic field of the wire is directly proportional to the flow of current, so when the current suddenly breaks free of the circuit and rushes through the cable all at once, there is suddenly a Huge spike in magnetic field

now why do they explode apart like that?

actually to show how they want to play no touching here is another still of that video

so you see how the cable separate anywhere they're able to? for the visually un-inclined, the picture above has the cables bound by very strong metal cleats, they have bulged outwards away from each other in the places they aren't bound. Kinda the same way a rubber band reacts if you pinch it on two sides and bring your hands together.

so to explain that im going to do a QUICK dive into electrical distribution

look at this graph cool? cool. so basically in order to reduce return current on the neutral (what goes in must come out, this is the law of energy) if all the legs are balanced the neutral current is zero (0) because the waves all cancel each other out, if you remember physics you probably know what i mean, if you don't look up "destructive interference" its SO cool.

so because the electrical current is just tilted Slightly away from each other the cables are desperate to get away from each other, and so they explode outward with literally thousands of newtons of force.

if you compare the little star shaped phase diagram from the picture above with the picture of the cleat enclosed cables after the fault, you'll notice that they are following the same shape! this is because the magnetic field is following the shape of the current flow and makes a triangle!!

if you are ever in a place where a fault occurs 1) run but also 2) you can literally hear these whip around in their enclosure, even if they're held snug in conduit

this is my nightmare now, come back for more electricity related nightmares! misery and company etc.

[breadandblankets]

🦈

something you probably know but! sharks have what's called electroreception, ie they can sense electric fields underwater. This is an occasional problem for underwater cables cause sharks tend to bite AS a question, this has led to the development of "shark proof" cable jackets, which i don't even wanna know what the cost per ft that is ;-;

send me an emoji and i'll send you a fun fact about my special interest!

[breadandblankets]

so i live in the US southwest and we are absolutely Dog Shit at building to our environment here. and its something that is becoming more apparent to me the more energy modeling we have to do for construction (california energy code lets goooo) the walls are paper thin and we're trying to remedy that by stuffing the walls full of glass and rocks and putting more and more panes on the windows and never really addressing the fundamental problem.

we're not building to our environment. we're building to some ideal of what a house be and then building yet another balloon framed building (yes im aware that balloon is not necessarily the technique every building is using but it all evolved from balloon framing so you get the idea) (but also balloon framed buildings are from the midwest and it Shows).

tilt up concrete is just another iteration of balloon framing that uses a different material but its all the same methods. and it Sucks Slightly Less at maintaining a decent building envelope than wood and insulation.

is this a long winded way of saying that i want more masonry/earthworks houses in the southwest? of fucking course it is. bring me some fucking adobo

[breadandblankets]

🐩

not at dog fact but i'll pick another animal, electric eels have three special organs that lets them create electrical impulses and they can choose between low and high voltages, which they can choose between to either stun or electrocute prey, their maximum discharge can be up to 600 volts

send me an emoji and ill send you a fun fact about my special interest