Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, Diamond executive producer with I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech, and today's episode is inspired
Speaker 1: by a listener suggestion. Nick Sandor asked on Twitter, remember
Speaker 1: the handle for the show is tech Stuff. H s
Speaker 1: w if I had done an episode on uninterruptible power
Speaker 1: supplies a k a. UPS, but not the UPS that
Speaker 1: delivers packages, and also asked if I had maybe covered
Speaker 1: surge protectors. So today we're going to expand that request
Speaker 1: a little bit and talk about those and some circuit
Speaker 1: breakers and fuses and power strips in general, and vampire power.
Speaker 1: You know, I vant the suck your vaults. Wow. Okay,
Speaker 1: that that sounded way less wrong in my head, but
Speaker 1: let's dive in. First, let's talk about electricity and circuits
Speaker 1: in general, including topics like voltage and current, because I
Speaker 1: find that these concepts can be pretty easy for people
Speaker 1: to mix up if they're not working with them regularly
Speaker 1: or studying physics. So we use voltage to describe the
Speaker 1: electric potential between two different points. Uh, if the electric
Speaker 1: potential zero, if there's no difference between them. There's no voltage,
Speaker 1: there's no there to make an electric current flow between
Speaker 1: the two points, So everyone's just kind of cool and
Speaker 1: hanging out where there are. And we're gonna use water
Speaker 1: as sort of an analogy to talk about electricity quite
Speaker 1: a bit in this episode. So in this case, imagine
Speaker 1: you've got two clear beakers of water, and these beakers
Speaker 1: have a little spigot at their base, right, So though
Speaker 1: the water level is above where the spigot is, and
Speaker 1: you've got the exact same amount of water in each speaker,
Speaker 1: they're on a level table, so they're on the exact
Speaker 1: same elevation with each other. There's no tilt or anything,
Speaker 1: and you've got a clear tube connecting the end of
Speaker 1: one spigot to the other spigot. Well, now that we've
Speaker 1: got these two beakers their level, they have the exact
Speaker 1: same amount of water in them. If we open those
Speaker 1: spigots up, we're not going to expect to see water
Speaker 1: flow from one to the other. Right there, pretty much
Speaker 1: gonna stay in equilibrium because the water levels are the same.
Speaker 1: There's no pressure there to move the water around. Two
Speaker 1: points with zero electric potential are pretty much the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing as these two beakers. All right, but
Speaker 1: let's say we close the spigots on each beaker. Now
Speaker 1: water is still trapped in the tube as well, it
Speaker 1: can't go anywhere. And then we lift beaker one and
Speaker 1: we placed it on top of a small stack of books,
Speaker 1: So now it's at a higher elevation compared to beaker
Speaker 1: number two. Beaker number two is still on the surface
Speaker 1: of the table. Now, if we open up the two spigots,
Speaker 1: what happens, Well, water from beaker one will start to
Speaker 1: flow to beaker two. We will reach an equilibrium. Again,
Speaker 1: but that's not really important for our understanding of voltage.
Speaker 1: The point is, at the moment we open the figots,
Speaker 1: the water will flow from beaker one to beaker two.
Speaker 1: With voltage, a difference in potential will cause a current
Speaker 1: of electricity to flow from one point to the other. Now,
Speaker 1: because Ben Franklin made a fifty fifty shot and got
Speaker 1: it wrong, we describe current as moving from a positive
Speaker 1: charge to a negative charge. That positive moves to negative,
Speaker 1: and we frequently describe electricity as a flow of electrons.
Speaker 1: That's being a little simplistic, but it serves our purposes.
Speaker 1: But electrons are negatively charged particles, so the electron flow
Speaker 1: goes from negative to positive. Because remember opposite charges attract
Speaker 1: and like charges repel one another. So the electrons move
Speaker 1: from a point of higher negative charge to a point
Speaker 1: of higher positive charge. So while we describe current as
Speaker 1: positive charge moving toward negative, the actual electron flow is
Speaker 1: negative towards positive. Yes, it is confusing. No, that's not
Speaker 1: going to be the end of where things are confusing
Speaker 1: in this episode, but stick with me. It's all understandable.
Speaker 1: So the greater the difference in that negative and positive charge,
Speaker 1: the greater the voltage. And you can think of voltage
Speaker 1: as water pressure. If we're talking about that system we
Speaker 1: were mentioning before, if we were to pour a lot
Speaker 1: more water into beaker one, filling it up all the
Speaker 1: way before we open up the spigots, you know, beager
Speaker 1: ones at that higher elevation as well, we would actually
Speaker 1: also be increasing the water pressure of the system in general,
Speaker 1: and so we would see more pressure pushing the water
Speaker 1: through to beaker number two. We see the same sort
Speaker 1: of thing with electrical systems, and we measure this pressure
Speaker 1: or voltage in volts, so you know, that's easy, and
Speaker 1: that pressure metaphor also tells us how much work a
Speaker 1: circuit can do. You know what kind of load can
Speaker 1: you put on that circuit. Higher voltages can do harder work,
Speaker 1: and a typical double A alkaline battery can offer up
Speaker 1: one point five volts, which is a relatively small amount
Speaker 1: In the United States. A wall outlet pushes out one
Speaker 1: twenty volts, which is why you can run heavy appliances
Speaker 1: using power from the wall, but a single double A
Speaker 1: battery just won't cut it. Current is different. Current is
Speaker 1: the rate at which electric charge flows past a specific
Speaker 1: point within a circuit. This is the rate of flow
Speaker 1: of electric charge, as opposed to voltage, which we can
Speaker 1: think of as the energy per unit of charge. So
Speaker 1: current describes how much electricity is flowing, even though that's
Speaker 1: a little misleading, and voltage describes how much omph that
Speaker 1: electricity has. We measure current in apps. Current needs voltage
Speaker 1: to flow. If you don't have voltage, you don't have pressure,
Speaker 1: you don't have current. It would be like our two
Speaker 1: beakers that are side by side with that same level
Speaker 1: of water. There would be no flow there either. Materials
Speaker 1: that allow current to flow more easily are called conductors,
Speaker 1: whereas materials that have high resistance to current flowing through
Speaker 1: them are insulators. Now, pretty much every thing has some
Speaker 1: level of electrical resistance, even the best conductors, at least
Speaker 1: in conditions that most of us are familiar with. Now,
Speaker 1: if you habitually cool down conductors to near absolute zero,
Speaker 1: then you might be used to working with stuff that
Speaker 1: has no electrical resistance a k a. Super conductors. But
Speaker 1: for practical purposes, it's something we have to deal with
Speaker 1: electrical resistance, and I also have to define circuits. So
Speaker 1: a circuit is essentially a closed loop pathway that electricity
Speaker 1: can follow. If you open any of that path, if
Speaker 1: you break the line of that pathway, the electricity can
Speaker 1: no longer flow through. And it's kind of like if
Speaker 1: you were driving along a track. Let's say it's a
Speaker 1: circular track, you know, like NASCAR racing, but part of
Speaker 1: that track is actually underwater and you can't go through
Speaker 1: that part. Well, you would start your race and then
Speaker 1: you would hit this part where the water was and
Speaker 1: you would have to pop and you couldn't actually continue.
Speaker 1: Electricity is kind of similar. It has to have that
Speaker 1: unbroken path in order for it to flow. So if
Speaker 1: you break that path, the circuit no longer allows electricity
Speaker 1: to flow. This is the whole basis of switches, right.
Speaker 1: If you have an open switch, it means that you
Speaker 1: have a broken path and the electricity cannot flow through it.
Speaker 1: When you close the switch, you have completed that path
Speaker 1: and now electricity can flow freely. So electricity will only
Speaker 1: flow through a complete circuit. But that also means that
Speaker 1: if you come into contact with a conductor, your body
Speaker 1: could serve the same as a switch in a circuit.
Speaker 1: You could close a circuit when you come into contact
Speaker 1: with a conductor, and electricity will always attempt to return
Speaker 1: to its source, and it will always follow the path
Speaker 1: of least resistance. In a circuit, however, it will take
Speaker 1: all available paths. So if you have let's ay you've
Speaker 1: got a pathway in your circuit, and you divided into
Speaker 1: three different lines, and you have different amounts of resistance
Speaker 1: on each line, most of the current is going to
Speaker 1: pass through the pathway that has the least resistance. You'll
Speaker 1: still get some current going through the other pathways, but
Speaker 1: it will be significantly less. So, if you come into
Speaker 1: contact with a conductor and your body represents an area
Speaker 1: of lower resistance, you're gonna take the brunt of that electricity,
Speaker 1: and that's a that's not a good thing. I'll get
Speaker 1: back into why that's not a good thing just in
Speaker 1: a little bit. But components in a circuit can be
Speaker 1: connected either in series, which means you have one right
Speaker 1: after the other in a sort of single pathway, or
Speaker 1: they can be connected in parallel, which means they be
Speaker 1: in side by side individual pathways. When they're connected in series,
Speaker 1: the same amount of current will flow through each component,
Speaker 1: but the voltage drops from one component to the next.
Speaker 1: In parallel, the voltage across each component will remain the same,
Speaker 1: but the total current is divided between each pathway. So
Speaker 1: it's it's an opposite situation from the series approach. Now,
Speaker 1: when it comes to electrical shocks, amperage a gave the
Speaker 1: current is really what we need to worry about, not
Speaker 1: the voltages. You know, something we can ignore. But you
Speaker 1: know you don't want to come into contact with a
Speaker 1: high voltage line. Definitely don't do that. You should never
Speaker 1: go near high voltage lines. Take it from electric six
Speaker 1: danger danger high voltage. But it doesn't take a very
Speaker 1: strong current to do serious damage. At around ten to
Speaker 1: twenty milla amps, and a mill amp is one of
Speaker 1: an amp. You would feel a zap of a shock.
Speaker 1: At between twenty million amps, the current is strong enough
Speaker 1: to deliver a powerful, painful shock and you lose control
Speaker 1: of your muscles. You know, our bodies communicate and operate
Speaker 1: on electrochemical signals, so electricity causes that to really go
Speaker 1: hey wire. So at this level, if you were to
Speaker 1: grab a wire that has between twenty and seventi five
Speaker 1: milliamps a current running through it, you wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to let go. Your hand would seize around that wire. Now,
Speaker 1: at around seventy five milliamps, your heart ventricles are affected
Speaker 1: by this. They start to twitch uncontrollably, and I mean
Speaker 1: that's seriously bad stuff. At one two d milliamps, it's
Speaker 1: incredibly dangerous and a shock is often fatal at that
Speaker 1: amperage above two hundred bill amps. Interestingly, your body's response
Speaker 1: would be to clamp down so hard that you might
Speaker 1: actually survive that shock because your heart is unable to
Speaker 1: fibrillate to have these uncontrollable vibrations because your chest muscle
Speaker 1: squeeze so hard it prevents your heart from fit relating. However,
Speaker 1: you would also suffer really terrible burns and possibly damage
Speaker 1: to your internal organs. So while you could survive that
Speaker 1: kind of a shock, it would really hurt you. You
Speaker 1: would be more likely to survive at that level, however,
Speaker 1: than if you were to encounter a current of between
Speaker 1: one two hundred milli apps that would be more likely
Speaker 1: to be fatal. And when we talk about electricity, we
Speaker 1: often talk about direct current versus alternating current. Direct current
Speaker 1: is the easiest for us to understand. It's very easy
Speaker 1: to draw and understand how this works. Electricity flows in
Speaker 1: one direction only with direct current. It's like a one
Speaker 1: way street. Batteries work this way. So a battery has
Speaker 1: a negative terminal and a positive terminal, and electricity will
Speaker 1: always flow from negative to positive, whereas the current is
Speaker 1: going from positives and i aative, but we've covered that
Speaker 1: with alternating current. However, it's like you're switching which terminal
Speaker 1: is negative and which one is positive, and you're doing
Speaker 1: that many times per second. The voltage actually kind of
Speaker 1: moves in a sort of wave. It hits the peak
Speaker 1: on one side. When terminal one is the most negative
Speaker 1: it can be. In terminal two is the most positive,
Speaker 1: it can be then it moves the other way as
Speaker 1: the two terminals switch. So remember when I said that
Speaker 1: the typical US household gets one volts delivered to outlets.
Speaker 1: That is an alternating current. So in the US the
Speaker 1: current alternates direction sixty times per second, So every sixty
Speaker 1: seconds it goes one volts with the current flowing in
Speaker 1: one direction and flips to one volts going in the
Speaker 1: other direction sixty times a second. Now I say all this, However,
Speaker 1: in reality, there is some variation in the amount of
Speaker 1: voltage coming to various outlets in a home, and it
Speaker 1: can vary to all sorts of stuff, like the gauge
Speaker 1: of wire that was used to wire the house, the
Speaker 1: temperature that the wires are at, the installation on the wires,
Speaker 1: the distance of the house from the transformer on the street.
Speaker 1: But you get the general idea. And moreover, electronics manufacturers
Speaker 1: design products that can tolerate a small deviation from the standard,
Speaker 1: whatever that standard might be in that particular country, and
Speaker 1: different countries do have different standards. I'll be working with
Speaker 1: the U S standard in this episode because I live
Speaker 1: in the US. So the electricity goes over the power
Speaker 1: grid and ultimately gets directed into your house or apartment
Speaker 1: or whatever, which represents a new circuit, which in turn
Speaker 1: is made up of smaller circuits, kind of wheels within wheels,
Speaker 1: as it were. One other thing I should mention our
Speaker 1: what's what's are a unit of power. And if you
Speaker 1: take an electrical circuit and you multiply the voltage across
Speaker 1: that circuit by the amps that are passing through the circuit,
Speaker 1: you get watts. Watts equals volts times amps. Most of
Speaker 1: our stuff actually runs on direct current, not alternating current.
Speaker 1: So these devices that we plug into our walls typically
Speaker 1: have what is called a rectifier. Uh. And if you
Speaker 1: have devices that have a power brick, the power break
Speaker 1: is your rectifier. Typically this converts the alternating current to
Speaker 1: direct current. Usually have a much lower voltage as well.
Speaker 1: You might wonder why we are even using alternating current anyway,
Speaker 1: since most of our stuff is running on d C power,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it make sense to just supply DC power instead
Speaker 1: of having to convert it? Well, it all comes down
Speaker 1: to transmitting electricity over great distances. More than a century ago,
Speaker 1: there was a big debate about which approach was the
Speaker 1: one to use. Thomas Edison wanted to go with direct current,
Speaker 1: which would have required building out lots of power plants
Speaker 1: to be close to the load. That is, you would
Speaker 1: have to add power plants close to the places that
Speaker 1: were actually using the electricity coming from those power plants.
Speaker 1: Because it was really hard to send direct current of
Speaker 1: sufficient voltage longer distances. You would have to have incredibly
Speaker 1: thick cables and you would lose a lot of energy
Speaker 1: in the form of heat waste. If you were really
Speaker 1: pushing the voltage super hard, then the cables would heat
Speaker 1: up to the point where they would just break under
Speaker 1: the stress. So alternating current, which was championed by George Westinghouse,
Speaker 1: could make use of electrical transformers, and with transformers you
Speaker 1: can step up the voltage for long distance transmission, which
Speaker 1: is much more efficient, and then you would have other
Speaker 1: transformers at the other end to step down the voltage
Speaker 1: once it got to wherever you were sending it. A
Speaker 1: C power was more practical at the time and one out,
Speaker 1: but it did mean having to use rectifiers to change
Speaker 1: the A C T D C in order to make
Speaker 1: practical use of it. With most appliances. If you're familiar
Speaker 1: with the basics of circuits, you know about resistors, These
Speaker 1: are elements that have a specific electrical resistance, you know,
Speaker 1: a resistance to the flow of current, and they're used
Speaker 1: to do all sorts of stuff. For example, the filament
Speaker 1: in a light bulb is essentially a resistor which resists
Speaker 1: the flow of current, and as current pushes its way
Speaker 1: through anyway due to having a sufficient amount of voltage,
Speaker 1: some of the electrical energy converts into heat, which heats
Speaker 1: up the filament and ultimately causes it to glow. Well. Essentially,
Speaker 1: all things you plug into a power outlet are acting
Speaker 1: as a type of resistor in the circuit that is
Speaker 1: your home's wiring. The appliance represents a constant resistance. Your
Speaker 1: home is supplied with a constant voltage, so that means
Speaker 1: the current is kept constant as well. Because all of
Speaker 1: these things relate to one another. Now that's a good thing,
Speaker 1: as good old Tom Harris wrote in a house stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com article about circuit breakers. Quote, too much
Speaker 1: charge flowing through a circuit at a particular time would
Speaker 1: heat the appliances, wires, and the building's wiring two unsafe levels,
Speaker 1: possibly causing a fire. End quote. So let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and define a power strip. Now that we've got these
Speaker 1: basics out of the way. A power strip is a
Speaker 1: bunch of outlets that are mounted into a frame of
Speaker 1: some sort. Now, while it might appear that these outlets
Speaker 1: are in a series, like if you have a long,
Speaker 1: thin powder strip, it looks like you've got a series
Speaker 1: of outlets, they're actually wired in parallel. If you were
Speaker 1: to take one of these apart and don't do that,
Speaker 1: but if you were, you would see they're wired and parallel,
Speaker 1: not in series. And if you remember, that means the
Speaker 1: voltage is going to remain the same for every component
Speaker 1: that gets plugged into that strip. That's important because otherwise
Speaker 1: you would have a voltage drop if they were in series.
Speaker 1: As you plugged more components into the strip, the voltage
Speaker 1: would drop further down the series. And if you've got
Speaker 1: a few components that require a hefty amount of voltage,
Speaker 1: you could find yourself out of luck. The devices wouldn't
Speaker 1: receive enough pressure to work. Now, while the voltage will
Speaker 1: remain constant across the components plugged into a power strip,
Speaker 1: and the resistance remains constant per component, adding more components
Speaker 1: means increasing the load of current moving through the power strip.
Speaker 1: So as you plug more stuff into a power strip,
Speaker 1: the power strip has to supply more amperage. If the
Speaker 1: power requirements of the components are super hefty, it could
Speaker 1: mean overloading that specific circuit, which could lead to some
Speaker 1: of those really bad outcomes like an electrical fire. And
Speaker 1: that's where circuit breakers come in. I'll explain them more
Speaker 1: in just a second, but first let's take a quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: so without circuit breakers or fuses, there would be no
Speaker 1: fail safe to prevent someone from overloading a home electrical
Speaker 1: circuit and causing wires to heat up enough to melt
Speaker 1: or cause a fire. So thankfully we do have these
Speaker 1: elements to help keep us safe as we use electricity.
Speaker 1: Let's start with fuses, because they are pretty simple to understand.
Speaker 1: A fuse has a thin wire inside that's kind of
Speaker 1: like a filament to a light bulb. Fuses are designed
Speaker 1: to handle a certain amount of current within a circuit.
Speaker 1: If the fuse receives more than that allotted amount of
Speaker 1: current based on the type of fuse you're using, then
Speaker 1: the electrical energy that's running through that thin wire will
Speaker 1: cause it to heat up rapidly and it begins to disintegrate.
Speaker 1: It burns through that cuts off the electrical circuit. We
Speaker 1: have now cut off that pathway broken it. But the
Speaker 1: bummer of the sort of approach is that when that
Speaker 1: does happen, you have to replace the fuse. They are
Speaker 1: a one use item. Uh so they do protect your
Speaker 1: home in the case of a increase in current, which
Speaker 1: could be a real problem, but it means also that
Speaker 1: once that does happen, you have to go out and
Speaker 1: replace the fuse and the fuse box. I used to
Speaker 1: live in a house that still had a fuse box
Speaker 1: and occasionally we'd have a fuse go out and that
Speaker 1: was a real hassle. I mean, just finding the right
Speaker 1: fuse to go in the right section was was something
Speaker 1: of a challenge at times. Circuit breakers are way easier
Speaker 1: from an end user standpoint, and it typically involves opening
Speaker 1: up a panel and flicking a switch that has been
Speaker 1: turned off to on. So when you flip the switch
Speaker 1: to on, it completes a circuit. It allows electricity to
Speaker 1: flow through, but if the current running through that circuit
Speaker 1: exceeds a certain amount, it trips the switch, so it
Speaker 1: turns off. And there's actually a couple of different ways
Speaker 1: this can be done, but one of them is using
Speaker 1: an electro magnet. The current causes the electro magnet to
Speaker 1: generate a magnetic field, and if the current peaks, if
Speaker 1: it gets too strong, that magnetic field comes strong enough
Speaker 1: to pull a metal lever and mechanically move it to
Speaker 1: a different position, which actually causes the switch to flip off.
Speaker 1: It's the power of magnetism that pulls the switch into
Speaker 1: the off position. It's incredibly clever because that only happens
Speaker 1: if the electrical current is strong enough to create that
Speaker 1: magnetic field in the electro magnet. So very ingenious design.
Speaker 1: Now that's a very high level look at circuit breakers.
Speaker 1: It's also not the only way that circuit breakers can work.
Speaker 1: But I want to segue over to surge protectors because
Speaker 1: that was the actual area of interest that I was
Speaker 1: asked about. So circuit breakers are all about cutting off
Speaker 1: a circuit once the current becomes too strong. Surge protectors
Speaker 1: are about protecting against a quick increase in voltage. So
Speaker 1: this is about finding a way to deal with a
Speaker 1: sudden increase in electrical pressure. If you like surges, don't
Speaker 1: have to laugh very long before they are a problem.
Speaker 1: If you get a super fast jump and voltage that
Speaker 1: only lasts for a nanosecond or two, we call that
Speaker 1: a spike, But if it lasts three nanoseconds or more,
Speaker 1: it's a surge. But a nanosecond is one billionth of
Speaker 1: a second. So yeah, surges can be quick, far faster
Speaker 1: than we can perceive, though we definitely can perceive the
Speaker 1: consequences of a surge. Now, if you have something plugged
Speaker 1: into an outlet and the outlet experiences a surge, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like if you were to have a water
Speaker 1: hose connected to a spigot and suddenly that spigott forces
Speaker 1: way more water through the hose than it can handle.
Speaker 1: The hose itself can burst if there's too much water
Speaker 1: pressure inside of it. So voltage surges can cause wires
Speaker 1: to melt or make devices work way harder than they
Speaker 1: are supposed to. You know, devices are meant to work
Speaker 1: at a certain voltage. There you can in add more voltage.
Speaker 1: You could create more voltage and thus make the device
Speaker 1: work harder than it was intended, but that's not a
Speaker 1: great idea. So, for example, the device you've got plugged
Speaker 1: into a wall has a motor in it, then the
Speaker 1: motor may suddenly operate at a speed much higher than
Speaker 1: it was meant to and this might not result in
Speaker 1: immediate failure, but it definitely adds to the wear and
Speaker 1: tear on a device. It can also be a safety issue,
Speaker 1: so you want to avoid surges. A surge protector deals
Speaker 1: with a rapid increase in voltage by directing excess current
Speaker 1: into the wall outlets. Grounding wire and a grounding wire
Speaker 1: is kind of what it sounds like. It's a safety
Speaker 1: wire in the outlet that ultimately connects to earth. So
Speaker 1: under normal circumstances, this wire does not carry any electricity.
Speaker 1: It's it doesn't hold a current. Under normal operating conditions,
Speaker 1: it has very low resistance, but current does not flow
Speaker 1: through it. The grounding wire is there to serve as
Speaker 1: an alternate pathway for current to flow in the event
Speaker 1: that something has gone wrong. By the way, there's also
Speaker 1: a grounded neutral conductor sometimes called a ground wire or
Speaker 1: grounded wire. So you have a grounding wire and a
Speaker 1: grounded wire, and yeah, that makes stuff gets super confusing
Speaker 1: because it's very easy to mix up grounding wire and
Speaker 1: grounded wire. So let's step back for a second, and honestly,
Speaker 1: we can get around this confusion if we just call
Speaker 1: it the neutral wire in the first place. So at
Speaker 1: bare minimum, if you want a circuit, you need two wires.
Speaker 1: And let's just imagine a very simple circuit with a
Speaker 1: battery and a light bulb and a pair of wires.
Speaker 1: So you've got a wire that connects the negative terminal
Speaker 1: of the battery where the electrons are coming out to
Speaker 1: the bulb, and this is the hot wire. It is
Speaker 1: carrying electrons to the circuit load. The load being the
Speaker 1: component that requires electricity to work, and this example it's
Speaker 1: the bulb. The wire that connects the bulb to the
Speaker 1: batteries positive terminal is called the neutral wire. This is
Speaker 1: how the electrons returned to the battery and complete the circuit.
Speaker 1: So if you don't have that neutral wire connecting back
Speaker 1: to the battery, you don't have a circuit. No electricity
Speaker 1: is flowing, the lamp is going to stay off. It's
Speaker 1: only when you complete the circuit by adding this neutral
Speaker 1: wire that you are going to have any light on
Speaker 1: that that bulb. So with an outlet, the hot wire
Speaker 1: carries electricity to the load and the neutral wire carries
Speaker 1: the quote unquote used electricity back. So the neutral or
Speaker 1: grounded wire is actually carrying an electric current under normal
Speaker 1: operating conditions, unlike the grounding wire, which is a safety precaution. Now,
Speaker 1: this actually gets more complicated because in the US you
Speaker 1: actually have two hot wires coming in circuits and one
Speaker 1: neutral wire coming in, and then you have the grounding
Speaker 1: wires all part of the outlets that you're using. But
Speaker 1: really that merits its own podcasts, so I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: go into it too much. It's all has to do
Speaker 1: with the fact that we're relying on alternating current, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter for the rest of this episode.
Speaker 1: So the important thing to remember is that the grounding
Speaker 1: wire terminates ultimately in the ground itself, in the earth,
Speaker 1: and it allows the circuit to discharge excess electricity in
Speaker 1: special circumstances. So, for example, if the hot wire in
Speaker 1: a circuit, the one that's carrying electricity to a load,
Speaker 1: were to make contact with something other than the intended load,
Speaker 1: like say the casing around a light socket, the ground
Speaker 1: wire would represent a low resistance pathway for electricity to
Speaker 1: flow back out rather than for things to start heating
Speaker 1: up and becoming a real problem, because otherwise the casing
Speaker 1: is going to act like a resistor. So in a
Speaker 1: surge protector, you've got an element that connects the hot
Speaker 1: wire to the grounding wire. But you have to be
Speaker 1: careful about this, right. You don't want to have just
Speaker 1: a simple connection from hot wire to groundwire because then
Speaker 1: the electricity is just gonna flow straight to the ground wire.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna do any work. So one example of
Speaker 1: this is a thing called a metal oxide verista. This
Speaker 1: is made up of a piece of metal oxide that
Speaker 1: sandwiched between two semiconductors, and the semiconductors have special properties
Speaker 1: that determine how they perform within a circuit. Semiconductors typically
Speaker 1: can act as either a conductor or an insulator depending
Speaker 1: on specific circumstances. In the case of this metal oxide verista,
Speaker 1: we would look at the voltage. So at low voltage,
Speaker 1: the semiconductors have a very high electrical resistance, and because
Speaker 1: electricity wants to follow the path of least resistance, that
Speaker 1: electricity is just gonna keep on going past the verista.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be like not interested. But at higher the
Speaker 1: normal voltage, the semiconductor's resistance drops dramatically. Now electricity can
Speaker 1: flow through that pathway easily because there's very low resistance,
Speaker 1: so it means current is going to pass through the
Speaker 1: hot wire, through the verista and to the grounding wire,
Speaker 1: which ultimately terminates in the ground itself, and that discharges
Speaker 1: the extract current and returns the voltage in the hot
Speaker 1: wire to normal, And so the semiconductors, once the voltage
Speaker 1: is normal, will return to their normal resistance and electricity
Speaker 1: will follow the usual pathway. What this means for your
Speaker 1: electronics is that if there's a surge in voltage, the
Speaker 1: extra pressure gets relieved through this grounding wire and doesn't
Speaker 1: make it to the devices that you're plugged into the
Speaker 1: surge protector itself. It's kind of like a pressure relief
Speaker 1: valve in a water pressure system. Now, the metal oxide
Speaker 1: verista is just one type of surge protector. There are
Speaker 1: lots of others, such as gas discharge arrest rs. I
Speaker 1: love the names for these. These have a gas tube
Speaker 1: that are that's filled within the inert gas and this
Speaker 1: gas can conduct electricity, but its conductivity is variable, so
Speaker 1: at low voltages it's not a very good conductor. It's
Speaker 1: akin to having a high resistance. At higher voltages, however,
Speaker 1: the gas inside the tube begins to ionize, it begins
Speaker 1: to release some electrons, so you have some free flowing
Speaker 1: electrons in the gas that allows current to flow through
Speaker 1: the gas more readily, and so again it acts kind
Speaker 1: of like a pressure release. Both the Varista and the
Speaker 1: arrestor are based off parallel circuit designs, but you can
Speaker 1: also have surge protectors that use series circuit designs. And
Speaker 1: if you remember, components that are connected through series have
Speaker 1: a lower voltage as you add more loads more components.
Speaker 1: These protectors don't bypass surges the way the parallel ones do.
Speaker 1: They suppress surges. Oh and and for the parallel based designs,
Speaker 1: there's another important thing to keep in mind. These protectors
Speaker 1: work by sending that excess electricity to the homes ground wire.
Speaker 1: So home needs a grounding wire, like there needs to
Speaker 1: be a wire that actually extends down into the ground.
Speaker 1: Without that grounding wire, a surge protector wouldn't be any
Speaker 1: help because there would be no pathway to serve as
Speaker 1: that pressure release system. The US outlets that have three slots.
Speaker 1: When you see a three slot outlet in the wall,
Speaker 1: those are supposed to be grounded outlets. The D shaped
Speaker 1: rounded slot, the the hole in the bottom or sometimes
Speaker 1: the top, depending on how the outlet has been installed.
Speaker 1: That's the one that connects to the home or buildings
Speaker 1: ground wire, or at least it's it's supposed to. Now
Speaker 1: let's talk about them buyers, or rather vampire power. So
Speaker 1: a lot of our devices don't really turn off when
Speaker 1: we turn them off, at least they don't shut down completely. So,
Speaker 1: for example, I have a computer mouse that is connected
Speaker 1: to a second computer at my desk, and that second
Speaker 1: computer is currently turned off, Yet my computer mouse has
Speaker 1: led lights that are still lit. Now there's no battery
Speaker 1: inside my computer mouse. Clearly my computer mouse must still
Speaker 1: be drawing power from the computer, but the computers off,
Speaker 1: So what gives Well, my computer, like a lot of electronics,
Speaker 1: is actually still drawing some power even when it is
Speaker 1: turned off. Televisions tend to be the same way, printers
Speaker 1: to Really, a lot of stuff has a type of
Speaker 1: standby power mode, so that even when you shut them off,
Speaker 1: they're only what you know, Miracle Max would call mostly off,
Speaker 1: there's still slightly on. And there are a few reasons
Speaker 1: for this, but the big one is that it's very convenient.
Speaker 1: It means the devices have a shorter startup time when
Speaker 1: we power them on. So when you grab they're clicker
Speaker 1: and turn on the old picture box, you don't want
Speaker 1: to wait for them hamsters inside to get up to
Speaker 1: run speed. I'm sorry I allowed an old prospector to
Speaker 1: write that last bit. What I meant to say is
Speaker 1: we don't really like a delay between when we turn
Speaker 1: something on and when it's actually usable. So standby power
Speaker 1: is a kind of cheap mode to cut down on
Speaker 1: the weight times we have. So if you power something
Speaker 1: on and you're waiting for it to warm up, that's
Speaker 1: really frustrating. Standby power helps cut down in that weight time.
Speaker 1: Smart power strips are meant to detect when the device
Speaker 1: is off but attempting to draw a standby power, and
Speaker 1: these power strips cut off the source of that standby power,
Speaker 1: thus ensuring that the device is well and truly off.
Speaker 1: It's not sipping electricity, and that means using less juice
Speaker 1: during the month, which also means a lower power bill.
Speaker 1: Is it significant Well? Estimates vary, but analysts say that
Speaker 1: stand by power consumption can make up but wween five
Speaker 1: and ten percent of a household's energy consumption, so it's
Speaker 1: definitely enough to be noticeable. It might be around a
Speaker 1: hundred bucks a year in savings, so it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's not nothing. Smart power strips have some extra circuitry
Speaker 1: in them compared to your run of the mill normal
Speaker 1: power strip. They still represent a group of outlets that
Speaker 1: are mounted in parallel because you still want to make
Speaker 1: sure you're not causing a voltage drop from one device
Speaker 1: to the next as you plug them in. But they
Speaker 1: also contain circuits that monitor a drop in power consumption,
Speaker 1: which would indicate a transition into standby power mode, and
Speaker 1: at that point, the power strip would break the circuit
Speaker 1: to the device, cutting off power. There are different ways
Speaker 1: to do this. One common one is to have a
Speaker 1: master outlet that then determines whether or not power gets
Speaker 1: supplied to some control outlets. This is easier to understand
Speaker 1: if I actually use an example. So let's say I've
Speaker 1: got a home entertainment system and that consists of my television.
Speaker 1: I've got a surround sound system, I've got a video
Speaker 1: game console, I've got a Blu ray Player, and I've
Speaker 1: got a cable box. Now, let's say I always want
Speaker 1: to have the cable box running. Let's say it's also
Speaker 1: my DVR and stuff, so I plug that into an
Speaker 1: outlet on my smart power strip that is always hot,
Speaker 1: meaning it's always going to have power supplied to it
Speaker 1: no matter what that outlet is, just like if I
Speaker 1: had plugged it straight into the wall. But the surround
Speaker 1: sound system, the video game console, and the Blu ray
Speaker 1: player are really only useful to me if the television
Speaker 1: is also on, So I plugged those three devices into
Speaker 1: the control outlets in my smart power strip. The control
Speaker 1: outlets take a queue from the master outlet that's where
Speaker 1: I plug in my TV, So TV goes into the
Speaker 1: master outlet, Blu ray players, surround sound system, video game
Speaker 1: consoles into the control outlets. The circuits in the smart
Speaker 1: power strip will detect when the TV is on because
Speaker 1: they detect an increase in power consumption, So when that happens,
Speaker 1: the power strip also allows power to flow to the
Speaker 1: devices that are plugged into the control outlets. But if
Speaker 1: I turn off my television, the drop in power consumption
Speaker 1: tells the power strip that it no longer needs to
Speaker 1: supply electricity to those control outlets. So in that case,
Speaker 1: the Blu ray player, of the surround sound system, the
Speaker 1: video game console, all go dark, they can't sip any
Speaker 1: phantom power. That makes sense, right, I mean I can't
Speaker 1: use those devices unless the television is on. Anyway, when
Speaker 1: we come back, will transition over to uninterruptible power supplies.
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break. Sometimes the stuff
Speaker 1: we count on just asn't dependable. Like electricity, there are
Speaker 1: times when the power goes out. Maybe a transformer is
Speaker 1: over did which can be pretty darned spectacular, not to
Speaker 1: mention loud and dangerous. Maybe something has broken a power
Speaker 1: line leading to your home. Whatever the root cause, the
Speaker 1: effect is the power goes out in your house, and
Speaker 1: that can potentially damage certain electronic devices if they happen
Speaker 1: to be plugged in and active at that moment, like computers,
Speaker 1: And that's where an uninterruptible power supply or UPS comes in.
Speaker 1: These are systems that are intended to supply electronic loads
Speaker 1: with sufficient power to continue operations at least for a
Speaker 1: short while in the event of a power outage. For
Speaker 1: the type that the average person like you or me
Speaker 1: might be dealing with. It may just be something that
Speaker 1: lasts long enough for us to you know, save whatever
Speaker 1: we were doing on the computer and then shutting it
Speaker 1: down in a controlled power off cycle. It's not something
Speaker 1: that can supply power forever, but rather work as a
Speaker 1: type of stop gap while you wait for your electricity
Speaker 1: service to come back on. There are a couple of
Speaker 1: versions of these uh. In fact, there's really three main types,
Speaker 1: but I'm really only going to cover two of them.
Speaker 1: A standby UPS is sort of UPS is just waiting
Speaker 1: in the wings, so in the event of a power outage,
Speaker 1: then it kicks on, using a rechargeable battery as the
Speaker 1: power source. These types of UPS systems typically have some
Speaker 1: sort of switch to handle the change from supplying power
Speaker 1: from the outlet to the devices to switching over to
Speaker 1: supplying power from the onboard UPS battery. With continuous UPS devices,
Speaker 1: the stuff you plug into the UPS is always drawing
Speaker 1: power from the battery, but in turn, the battery is
Speaker 1: in a constant state of recharging, drawing power from the
Speaker 1: wall outlet. So if the power from the outlet goes out,
Speaker 1: the computer or you know, whatever you have plugged into
Speaker 1: the up US just keeps drawing power as it always
Speaker 1: had because it's always taking power from the battery. It's
Speaker 1: only when the UPS battery itself runs out of charge
Speaker 1: that you have a problem. But again, the typical operating
Speaker 1: procedure here is to use the time that you have
Speaker 1: to take care of saving stuff and shutting down your
Speaker 1: electronics safely. Um. Granted, it's a different story if you're
Speaker 1: talking about industrial uses. In either case, the UPS has
Speaker 1: to do something really interesting and it also can seem
Speaker 1: a little backward. Okay, remember when I said most of
Speaker 1: our devices run on direct current d C, so they
Speaker 1: have to have what's called a rectifier to convert the
Speaker 1: incoming alternating current from the wall sockets into d C
Speaker 1: power that the device can use. Well, batteries if you
Speaker 1: recall supply direct current d C power, not alternating current. However,
Speaker 1: our devices still need to accept alternating rant even though
Speaker 1: they ultimately run on direct current. So this means the
Speaker 1: direct current from the battery in the UPS has to
Speaker 1: convert into alternating current so it can be sent onto
Speaker 1: the devices, which then use rectifiers to convert the alternating
Speaker 1: current back into direct current. What a way to run
Speaker 1: a railroad. So a rectifier takes a C turns it
Speaker 1: into d C. We call devices that do the opposite,
Speaker 1: that take DC and turn it into a C. Inverters.
Speaker 1: So the UPS has an inverter to take the d
Speaker 1: C power out of the battery converted to a C
Speaker 1: which goes to the devices rectifier to get converted back
Speaker 1: into d C. And to make this even more complicated,
Speaker 1: rechargeable batteries need a direct current to recharge, so that
Speaker 1: means the UPS actually has its own rectifier. So the
Speaker 1: UPS has a rectifier. It takes a C coming from
Speaker 1: the wall right, the a C goes to the directive
Speaker 1: fire gets converted into d C. That DC power charges
Speaker 1: the battery on the UPS. Then from the battery there's
Speaker 1: the inverter to convert the d C into a C.
Speaker 1: And at this point I really wish Thomas Edison could
Speaker 1: have cracked the problem of long range power transmission using
Speaker 1: direct current because it really would have simplified things a
Speaker 1: ton on the user end. Now, I like to think
Speaker 1: of rectifiers and inverters as something Luke Skywalker would really
Speaker 1: be interested in. After all, he was really looking forward
Speaker 1: to going to Tusky Station and picking up some power converters.
Speaker 1: And if you don't get that reference, you need to
Speaker 1: watch Star Wars a New Hope. If you're shopping for
Speaker 1: UPS systems, chances are you're going to be looking at
Speaker 1: stand by UPS devices. They tend to be much less
Speaker 1: expensive than continuous UPS devices, and they work pretty well
Speaker 1: for most of us. If you oversee something that's really
Speaker 1: mission critical, like a server room or something that's a
Speaker 1: different story. In those cases, the need for a stable
Speaker 1: source of power is enough to justify the higher cost.
Speaker 1: Your typical UPS will have some sort of way to
Speaker 1: signal that the power has switched over to the battery.
Speaker 1: Usually it's a beeping noise, and that gives you the
Speaker 1: opportunity to get stuff you know powered down in a
Speaker 1: controlled way, and they may also require you to reset
Speaker 1: a UPS once power has been restored to the home
Speaker 1: or building. I have often worked in offices where you
Speaker 1: could hear a beeping going off and realize that someone's
Speaker 1: UPS had tripped, and you need to find which one
Speaker 1: it was and reset it, and it's a fun game
Speaker 1: of hide and seek or lose your sanity. Now, normally
Speaker 1: I would have jumped right into history at the beginning
Speaker 1: of an episode, but I figured it would make more
Speaker 1: sense to kind of tack it on at the end
Speaker 1: of this one, to be kind of a little bit
Speaker 1: of just bonus tidbit information sort of a pub trivia
Speaker 1: kind of bit of info. So, way back in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two, a guy named John J. Hanley filed for
Speaker 1: a patent titled Apparatus for Maintaining an unfailing and uninterrupted
Speaker 1: Supply of Electrical Energy. Now, I cannot say for certain
Speaker 1: he was the first person to come up with this idea.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think it's safe to say that the
Speaker 1: idea was one that was forming in a lot of
Speaker 1: places around the same time. Because we were becoming more
Speaker 1: dependent upon electricity, people saw the need for there to
Speaker 1: be some way to have a dependable source of electricity
Speaker 1: in case our primary source, the power grid, were to
Speaker 1: become unreliable for some reason. But I can say that
Speaker 1: most sources point at Handley as being the first person
Speaker 1: to patent and approach toward creating an uninterruptible power supply.
Speaker 1: An early paragraph in the patent states quote, A specific
Speaker 1: object of the invention is to provide apparatus for automatically
Speaker 1: changing from a condition where a given source of electrical
Speaker 1: energy is supplying an external circuit to a condition where
Speaker 1: another source of electrical energy supplies the external circuit with
Speaker 1: no interruption of electron flow in the external circuit end quote,
Speaker 1: and I think it really drives home how bizarre the
Speaker 1: language of patents can be. Now, the intended goal of
Speaker 1: patent language is to provide a precise explanation of whatever
Speaker 1: the proposed invention is intended to do. But it can
Speaker 1: come across as very unnatural to me, kind of like
Speaker 1: a robot wrote the whole ding ding durned thing. Now
Speaker 1: you can read that patent if you like. It does
Speaker 1: describe in rather obtuse terms, the general approach Hanley was proposing.
Speaker 1: I've talked about Hanley's described invention would switch automatically from
Speaker 1: a primary power source to a reserve power source in
Speaker 1: the event of a loss of power. The patent number,
Speaker 1: in case you are curious, is US one nine five
Speaker 1: three six zero to A and that patent expired way
Speaker 1: back in nineteen one. Patent expiration is important stuff, Like
Speaker 1: when you patent an idea, you have protection for that idea.
Speaker 1: Really it's it's more of an invention. You have protection
Speaker 1: for that particular design of the invention and for the
Speaker 1: life of the patent. You have intellectual property ownership rights
Speaker 1: to that particular design, and if anyone wants to use
Speaker 1: your design, they have to get your permission. Typically they
Speaker 1: do that by licensing it, and then once the patent expires,
Speaker 1: anyone is free to build a device that uses that
Speaker 1: particular design or improve upon that design. It's fair game.
Speaker 1: You don't have to pay licensing fees or anything once
Speaker 1: that expires. So and it's an important component toward innovation. Well, Nick,
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that episode. It was kind of
Speaker 1: fun to dive into all things electricity once more. And
Speaker 1: like I said, there's still a whole lot I didn't cover.
Speaker 1: I really didn't want to go too deeply into the
Speaker 1: way home circuits work and those two hot wires that
Speaker 1: come into us homes. Uh, it is a little bit
Speaker 1: more complicated, It requires a lot more discussion, and I
Speaker 1: figured that that was probably a little much for an
Speaker 1: episode about, you know, surge protectors and uninterruptible power supplies.
Speaker 1: But if you are interested in learning more about that,
Speaker 1: let me know. Or if there's some other topic that
Speaker 1: you would like to know more about in the tech world,
Speaker 1: whether it's a company, a specific technology, a trend in tech,
Speaker 1: away that technology is affecting our lives, anything like that,
Speaker 1: let me know. You can reach out via Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle is tech Stuff H. S W and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I
Speaker 1: heart Radio product auction. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. H