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The linked video of how bridge rectifier works is enlightening, funny and terrifying. Makes me glad I'm a software developer and not an electrical engineer so I'm in no danger of killing myself if I miscalculate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI5Ftm1-jik&feature=youtu.be

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ElectroBOOM's videos are all like that. It's a comedy channel.

His videos are extremely entertaining, but his disregard for safety exaggerates the danger a little bit. My understanding is that most bridge rectifiers are put in a circuit after a step-down transformer, so they're operating on a much lower AC input voltage.

Also, don't wrap the safety ground pin on test equipment with kapton tape. Just don't.

They can be, and they are in certain linear PSUs. Linear PSUs generally make ripply DC with linear power transformer -> rectifier and then use active linear analog circuits to get clean DC power. Has very low efficiency but exceedingly low noise.

For most consumer things, you use a classic switch mode power supply design. You bridge rectify mains directly, and you switch that really fast to get the DC you need, and you filter it a lot.

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