93
What is the best style electrical outlet?
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
93 points (92.7% liked)
Asklemmy
44004 readers
498 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
I'm biased, from the UK. But it's pretty much the order I'd do it too. UK first, the round Europe ones only very slightly behind (maybe even on par, I have just a slight issue with the fact that polarity isn't assured).
With single phase AC there is no polarity, when you plug something in you don't need to know which plug is live, it will work either way.
It will work either way, there is no polarity when a circuit is made.
There is polarity before a circuit is made. One wire is live, one wire is a neutral return.
For a basic heater, plugged in one way will have the heating element always live, and the other way it will only be live when it is switched on and a circuit is made.
One is definitely safer than the other.
Almost all devices that switch mains power, have both the live and neutral connected to the switch.
Almost...
One wire is live in that it moves between โx and +x volts in a sine wave. The neutral is often connected to earth/ground somewhere upstream and should be 0v. So if you just pop that power into a transformer and then regulate and only use the DC then it's completely irrelevant which way you plug it in.
However there's plenty of cheaper ways to get a lower voltage, or to power a device from mains power that when done badly can reference what is thought to be neutral (and this ground) but could easily become live and make something metallic become live either without fault, or with fault to a minor component.