I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)
jdstillwater.blogspot.com
jdstillwater.blogspot.com
What we wanted to do was cut the power, pump the water out of the bunker ASAP and immediately clean the whole lot with pure water.
What the (arse-covering) site manager did was nothing, not even cut the power, until a "risk-assessment" had been done. For the first few days we were able to peer into the bunker's hatch and watch der blinkenlights happily operating in the gloom underwater. That stopped after a few days. About a week later the risk had been assessed and a path of action determined: the power was turned off, the water was pumped out and everything was washed with pure water. By then electrolysis had dissolved just about every conductor in the system.
Electrical systems will happily cope with water in the short term, but the longer the exposure the less likely they are to survive. Time is part of the risk.
Some people are so terrified of having to say "I was wrong" that they either will do nothing, or just happily follow decisions that someone else makes. It's one thing when that's a line employee behaving that way, but there are managers so terrified of making a mistake that all they really are is scribes, tracking who said what and who decided what. These weasels don't lead. They don't contribute anything. They just have a quick answer when someone above them asks how this fuckup happened. Well that was Jameson. He decided to do X so clearly it's his fault things broke.
I was in a room once with a guy who was so caught up in the idea of catching me in a gotcha that he had no idea what to do when I said, "yep, that's wrong, and this is how we fix it." His face went through the same roller coaster of emotions that happens when you drop your ice cream cone. I got to say most of what I needed to say before he even recovered. I think I was proudest of keeping a straight face during the entire conversation.
Where has intellectual honesty gone that just being transparent verges on a superpower? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
I had your view until 7 years at Google. Showing this to 80% of people there would garner tsktsking and quips about delusions of grandeur and seeming unbalanced. In performance reviews, you could count on this person saying you collaborate poorly and don't take others concerns into account, because they felt humiliated and retconned a reason why it's your fault. (To be fair, given your vivid understanding of their face at the time, it sounds like you understand they wouldn't feel well after you did this)
In the higher rooms, I saw at least a couple times everyone living this worldview and it ending up in bickering and extreme insistence the other person was missing fundamentals while nothing got done for months: which in the more Machiavellian parlance, is still good if you're good, because most people won't do the work, just argue over the 20% of the problem they understand, and someone has to win eventually
I keep editing this comment because I get the vibe it disagrees with you, but it doesn't, at all. If anything, your framing helps sharpen why it felt like an odd place, in a bad way, to me from day 30.
Sadly, this culture must have deteriorated; my friends who are still at Google say that it's become literally the stuff of Dilbert comic strips :-(
But I'm not.
I did Aug 2016-2023. Of course it's a complicated story, and you've heard a lot already I'm sure, but when you mention blameless postmortems, it remind me of my pet peeve: promo committees done within teams (basically 2 levels up, i.e. skip is doling out promo, with no recourse or real outside input) was a horrible, wretched idea.
There was this odd obsession with saving time on perf, but they kinda just needed to tell people to chill and recognize that it really is important for management. With all promos being judged by people next to you, what we might call "being agreeable" became a necessity.
I distinctly remember in 2018 being told if things were how they had been, that I should just do a blameless postmortem, but with things as they are, that was a quick way to end up on the bench for the rest of my career.
Looking back, IMO the seeds of its downfall had already been planted by the time I was there, including the culture of blameless postmortems.
There was this idea that any problem—any outage or whatever —reflected not stupidity on the part of the perpetrator (Google hires the smartest people after all) but a process failure. Blameless postmortems avoided blame by ending with a process recommendation.
I’ve worked at startups since, and I do think that creating an environment where people are comfortable taking risks is just a fundamentally hard culture problem, and you don’t even have to be big to have it (though it doesn’t help). I’ve seen 15-person startups where engineers wouldn’t fix something because “I’m just an engineer and this is really a product decision” while the PM says “we need to get the engineers together in a meeting and come to a consensus on this.”
IMO Google’s hack of giving people space to take risks by letting them pass off failure as a process problem did sort of work, to their credit, until they got to where it sounds like they are now, where you can’t do anything without being accused of bypassing “good process,” which means going to endless lengths to get everyone’s opinions and placating everyone who disagrees with you.
It seems like at Meta they solved the problem by regarding failure as good and just. At my current company, to do something risky, you have to write a design doc and have a comment period, and then you’re free to do whatever the doc proposes. Idk what other approaches there are—I’d pay to read a book about it, though.
To make the problem worse, nobody dares to remove from a process as that would mean they would be accountable for the consequences of the "missing steps", and at the same time adding to a process is almost always safe - another step in a process to clarify or verify can't really fail and having contributed to the process work in a process driven organization looks fantastic on your yearly review. So we get more and more processes that are perpetually growing in scope.
The long term damage that heavy processes do, what I've seen first hand, is extreme stagnation. Even simple and straight forward improvements are avoided if it means that you need to produce ridiculous documentation that nobody will ever need, or seek approval from a (very busy) group of people who contribute nothing other than checking that you followed the processes.
Shorter processes in clock time matter more than step count, but it’s hard to do one without the other.
But the other one is that blameless doesn’t mean we don’t talk about the person who fucked up. The entire point of the NTSB’s version of the process is to get pilots and ground crew to be vulnerable. To explain how they pushed the wrong button or signed off on a maintenance deferment or whatever. I was tired, I got asked tangential questions during a critical moment. I misinterpreted the text, etc.
I’m neurodivergent. I spend way too much of my day analyzing my errors. But the way my brain works on a Tuesday is the way everyone else’s works in the middle of a high stress situation. For me it still feels like a bad Tuesday. The tools and steps I build for keeping me from looking stupid also work for the team, once they give them a chance. And during Five Why’s I just have to say the quiet parts out loud, and I can speculate rather well on whether other people had similar experiences.
Your average person doesn’t even take authority.
The next “level” per se (not that you have to take authority — only if you want to) is the person taking authority.
Then the next level above that is the person that takes authority but understands how it looks to other people, so they sure everyone else understands that they are taking authority to make things move along, not because they are entitled to it. They attack the problem head on.
My goal is to get good engineering done while also making sure everyone feels included and good about being at work.
If you’re about good engineering and respect for other people, you can get things done however you want.
If you don’t act like a lead dev you’re not going to get much practice at being one. And I’m not talking about the bossing people around part, but the fostering teamwork and taking care of people parts.
I’m not saying own all the decisions. With a largish team you want at least three people who will stand by a decision even when it’s not a unanimous vote. (Don’t ever do four or six unless you have a good boss. Jesus Christ that was awful.) When I do say something will definitely work, I’m almost always right.
What I left out and thought of later is that it’s more important to own the cleanup than the decision. Once you do that people trust you more, and the trust leads to other opportunities. So it’s not really, “I was wrong” although that already filters out way too many people. It’s the “here let me help you fix it.” That makes it stick.
The handbook or SOP somewhere probably does call for a risk assessment.
So they have two choices. Choice A is to do what's obvious, cut power and get to work. That has two branches. One branch is saving the day and potentially millions of dollars. For what? A side mention at the next all hands, maybe. Branch 2 is something goes wrong, and the company says you didn't follow the handbook, and you're fired or worse, found liable.
Choice B is following the handbook, knowing everything will be ruined. But, you keep your job, and maybe the handbook gets updated.
Both choices provide no reward. Only one provides no risk.
Microchips, capacitors, PCB's and other stuff like manufactured for defence have much wider and higher tolerances. One won't find the cutting edge 2 nm processes (depending on the specific area of defence, 200-300 µm would still be cutting edge today for them), materials used are different, plus all sorts of chemical and physical hardening is employed. Most of the time, the chips can't use the consumer grade cutting edge designs and processes as they have to withstand not just abuse but also stronger EM fields (in radar equipment) or EM pulses (e.g. a nuclear explosion).
After electronics have been manufactured, they proceed onto the QA phase where chips are literally baked in ovens for a day or a few, then retrieved and tested. They may get irradiated, soaked for periods of time etc. Most people would call it abuse – from a civilian perspective. The surviving ones are deemed to have passed the QA and are used to make the actual equipment.
Sorry, I think you're off by a few orders of magnitude, do you mean 200-300nm?
Smaller processes result in chips either becoming very unstable or plainly kicking the bucket when exposed to strong electromagnetic fields and electromagnetic radiation. Radar equipment generates such strong EM radiation that is lethal to humans and to microelectronics no matter how well shielded the chips are. Then there are highly charged particles released during a nuclear explosion, so the electronics have to survive at least for some time at the battlefield.
Chips produced for defence and military use some of the most conservative design and manufacturing processes, and even the analogue processes may still be used somewhere (I have not checked recently though).
Reminds me of a friend of mine who somehow blew a shift in his car and did something bad to his engine. Instead of pulling over and stopping, he just drove it home and ended up destroying the engine.
So he got a whole new engine instead of having insurance pay to dismantle the engine and replace a few valves. It might even have been a similar price, but a much more robust solution.
Unless an attack was underway that the radar was tracking, the right course of action was to power it off immediately, and start cleaning it. After the cleaning, it would go online promptly, and then parts of it could be assessed for damage, taken offline when the replacement is ready, and replaced, likely without even stopping the operation.
This kind of paralysis and fear of making decisions, especially when time is of essence, would be exactly what I'd like to instill in my enemies.
His friend got the better outcome by not stopping immediately is what he was implying.
Except four days later network connection failed in the building. Tracing the cabling eventually lead us to the basement; some under-stairs / slightly below floor level comms cabinet, empty other than the building's outbound router. 48V Telco, no mains connect, had sat under"water" (well some rather murky stuff) for almost a week and done well. Once we got it washed (with clear water) and dried, it continued fine (till replacement a few weeks after). We were a little amazed, to be honest, physicists or no. Brave device, that.
I’m a hobby jeweler and I use an ordinary household microwave to melt copper and silver to cast my projects.[1] At the same time “everybody knows” that you can’t put metal in a microwave.
What gives? Is everybody wrong? Of course not. It is just that the statement “don’t put metal in a microwave” is a simplified form of the true statement which would go something like this “don’t put metal in a microwave, unless you follow these safety precautions, and wear these safety gear, and your crucible is made of the appropriate materials, and your moulds are bone dry and …”. Aint nobody has the time to think about all the caveats and dangers when all they want is to warm their meals. So it is simpler, easier, and safer to tell people the abbreviated form of the rule.
1: here is a video https://youtu.be/Oim2QsDp0rY?si=CZrhg6ux1GfiDWqd
You should also put something (eg. a cup of water) in the oven to absorb some of the microwave energy. The metal doesn't absorb much energy so without an additional absorber the microwaves can get reflected back into the magnetron and overheat the oven.
My microwave oven comes with a metal stand that you're supposed to put into it when doing certain kinds of baking. Likely it's engineered to be massive enough, it has rounded edges everywhere, and is supposedly sized so that there are no pieces that would resonate at 2.4 GHz and thus consume a lot of energy and overheat.
Mehdi Sadaghdar has a great video on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyTmJX_TC84
Kudos to anyone who does actual experiments to test “common knowledge.”
The visceral negative response you get from, "Wait, I don't think that's right, it's more complicated than that", helps prevent speaking up the next time, unless you have an inherently disagreeable personality (which I cherish working with). I see it all the time with kids. They'll see some fundamental truth that takes a sideways perspective to see, and be told they're wrong, hacking off an interesting way of perceiving the world. It's unfortunate, but it's also something most adults are bad at, including myself.
And, I very often microwave my spoons, forks, even metal bowls, without them heating up at all. But I also have a basic understanding of resonance, absorption, insulation, apertures, and the wavelengths involved. I don't do it at work, because it's not worth the effort responding to "you're going to break the microwave", even if you show them that the food is hot and the fork is cool.
That said, I wouldn't melt metal in an expensive microwave. The metal has poor absorption relative to the magnetron antenna itself, so both will heat. I wouldn't be surprised if the antenna is also glowing a bit (at least early on)!
You don't make the metal absorb the microwaves. Either your crucible or the inner lining of your insulator will be designed to do the absorbing.
That is exactly the case with our setup.
For a rant about that, it turned out pretty neat. I put the beach sand in a thin layer on a dinner plate that was a half wavelength above the bottom of the microwave, turntable removed. The beach sand would start to melt where the standing waves were, but then quickly grow into a wire structure, with the growth of the tips driven by where absorption would be maximized, allowing the thing to heat more, and grow more. I tried to model the resulting "antenna", but none of the open source tools at the time could handle the complexity.
Even scientific models that we regard as describing fundamental laws of nature will stop describing reality accurately once you hit extreme conditions -- Newtonian physics breaks once you're dealing with relativistic contexts, for example.
The human mind has tendency to generalize its heuristics, and hold certain rules to be either absolutely true or absolutely untrue, which unfortunately hobbles our ability to use our rationality to its fullest potential. People will often dismiss an entire model as being universally "false" as soon as they see a single data point that it doesn't work for, and then try to formulate a new model that's still trying to encompass everything, everywhere. Maybe we'd do better to interpret falsifying data points as helping to map the outer boundaries of the model's applicability, and formulate multiple models, each optimized for different contexts, and each regarded as valid within its bounds.
Layer1 is thermally insulating. Keeps the heat in the brick. It is still 300ish celsius at the end of the melt, and it increases further as the whole structure "cools".
Layer2 "captures" the microwave radiation and is the thing the microwave oven heats. All that energy is captured inside the brick and layer1 doesn't let it out so it heats up very quickly.
And then layer2 heats up the crucible via mainly heat conduction (so the interface has to be neat between them) and only to a lesser extent via heat radiation.
The main dangers of the operation is the same as with any other process which results in tens of grams of molten metal. Those would be not new to anyone who casts metal. (But entirely outside of the experience of someone who never worked with molten metal before.) Everyone with normal household experience would know that molten metal is hot, what might surprise someone without specific training or very good intuitive grasp of physics is that if it contacts water the water immediately turns into steam and that will make the molten metal fly everywhere. [1] So that would be the first unexpected turn of events. Hopefully you have a bucket of sand ready to put out the resulting fire, because water is not your friend in this situation.
It is also important as you pack the crucible to not form a "bridge" between the walls with the metal. Because before the metal melts it expands. And if you pack the to-be-melted metal too tight it will crack the graphite crucible. Which would ruin the brick.
Then the other surprise is that the layer1 keeps heating up even after you have removed the brick from the microwave. (because layer2 is very hot, and that heat is slowly dissipating through layer1) And if you use the brick too much without letting it cool down between melts it might crack, or it might crack the glass plate of the microwave.
1: this is how that looks on a much bigger scale https://youtu.be/oWSHEC1N770?si=lc1ZKXxQ9kOsuhz0
He concludes that this specific instance is not unsafe (if you have a turntable, the mass of the staple is low, etc). But then, I've put grapes in a microwave and produced plasma.
[0] Microwaves also contain transformers.
This is an important takeaway for me, maybe even more than “electirc devices are washable”.
World is filled with conventional wisdom that limits us in countless directions. Knowing how things work empower us to break these “rules”.
The article author got lucky this time - when electronics die from water contact, it's usually the minerals bridging connections and creating shorts. Letting the device dry does not remove those shorts. Some places have such hard water (lots of minerals) that evaporated water leaves calcium, limestone and other deposits on the surface of everything it's touched.
Does that mean doing it once will always cause an issue? Of course not... but repeatedly doing this, and/or becoming used to washing electronics in the dishwasher is a recipe to ruin them in the long term.
I would not personally want to play games with a toaster that can be replaced for $20 at your local Walmart...
(edit: i said 'calcium chloride' which is of course both wrong and irrelevant)
i think the bigger issue with electronics is overheating their electrolytic capacitors
things that are really good conductors like the copper wires in the toaster don't heat up (much) because they don't drop much voltage, and things that are really bad conductors, like the panels that support the nichrome wires and like calcium carbonate, don't heat up at all, because they don't carry any current. it's the things that are in between that cause fires: they can carry enough current to be a problem, while also dropping enough voltage to be a problem
this has been introductory electrical engineering 101. i'll be here all week, don't forget to tip your server, and read chapters 1 of horowitz & hill by monday
yes, there are places that don't heat up because the current doesn't go through them, but only because they have easier paths. if the electricity wanted to go through them, they would heat up hotter than anything else.
the point is, things can corrode, electricity goes in places it wasn't intended or through resistances it wasn't intended, and becomes a fire hazard.
They would probably represent nothing more than minor stray resistance/capacitance.
Assuming it was conductive enough, a scales bridge between higher voltage parts would just represent a path of material a few microns thick that would vaporize as soon as the toaster would be plugged in.
For other electronic devices, any component with a hole, like a microphone, barometric, humidity sensor, or mechanical (HDD), is more likely to suffer a more permanent fate. If water gets inside a relay housing, chemicals from the washing liquid may damage or gunk the contacts and reduce their life. LCD screens, glued parts and thin plastics don't fare well in dishwashers either...
> They would probably represent nothing more than minor stray resistance/capacitance.
Spoken like someone who has never maintained any electronic devices. Skepticism should err on the side of risk management.
A good proportion of water-damaged cellphones can be revived just by washing the logic board thoroughly in isopropyl alcohol. It's possible that this is due to small amounts of water trapped in crevices, but I've seen it work on boards that looked bone-dry under the microscope.
Once electronics gets wet (like stuff you plug into a wall), it usually should be discarded for safety's sake.
edit: its not just that, the water causes the copper to oxidise and swell, touching places it shouldnt
Also, many dishwashers have a garbage disposal which isn’t inside the water and may fail if the cord gets into it. Not likely to happen, but enough people try it and someone may directly get an electrical fire while the dishwasher is running.
I would think going through dishwasher would significantly reduce the fire risk.
Except now the toaster may or may not be compromised in some way. There’s no amount of benefit here worth even a minuscule risk of a house fire.
I'm a statistic of one, though. I don't know if I just got lucky.
Someone having incorrect reasoning doesn't mean they are wrong, just that they do not know (in the sense of knowing something for the right reasons)
Case in point: OP decided to wash the toaster in the dishwasher. Their story about walking through water assuming that their hair dryer experiment validated them walking through water with a bunch of sockets.... they are applying super hand-wavy reasoning in the same way as the critics are!
The funny thing about the whole piece is that while "an unplugged toaster through the washing machine is probably fine" is not a huge leap, so much in the PS is indicative of how I would not really trust this person much for their decision making
That escalated fast.
If he is this reckless with toasters - imagine the dangers he poses to his students!
OTOH I find few people trustworthy in decision making of any kind.
Yes, electricians often have plenty of experience with getting shocked. But all it takes is one dumb mistake and you quickly die a horrible death, with muscles locked up unable to self-rescue in a location where immediate bystanders will risk their own lives to rescue.
What kind of dumbass proudly tells about wading into electrified flooding in front of colleagues when there wasn’t even any urgent reason to do so? What would it have cost to simply wait and cut the power first, calling the power company if necessary if a breaker box could not be safely reached for some reason (unlikely)?
And many/most circuits outside code-compliant kitchens and baths aren’t GFCI, and GFCI doesn’t protect against all electrocutions (you can be electrocuted in a short without a ground fault). Now consider electrical fires from getting sloppy with damaged wiring and electrical devices, which are a leading cause of deaths from fire.
Sparked it up, it worked fine. I use it as a repo/build server to this day.
The distilled water is mostly needed to avoid deposits from water spots after the rinse water evaporates. This can be mitigated with a vacuum drying system, which you can buy for between $25 and $500.
In this case the wiring was over-stripped and copper was exposed at the shower head. I used it but I was very, very careful not to splash…
It's not that people die every day from these devices, it's that in general this isn't a great way to heat water if you have alternatives available.
I don't know about you, but I would prefer not to receive a shock, no matter how minor it might be, when I step into the shower...
I can count on zero hands the number of times my shower has given me a jolt, even a minor one.
We mostly see these types of devices in relatively poor countries without the means to install more modern and safer alternatives, such as whole house water heaters.
i mean it's the same reason most people in the usa don't have a bidet in their house; it's not because they're too poor to afford one. technology adoption is path-dependent and mostly random, and fear makes people conservative. yes, there are a few people who are familiar with the actual risks and rewards of the different technologies, but they're vastly outnumbered by the pre-galilean minds who are entirely guided by conventional wisdom
most people in the usa can count on zero hands the number of times they've sprayed water on the bathroom ceiling from their bidet, too
It's not debatable these electric showerheads are objectively better, just because some poorer communities around the world use them.
(bidets aren't an alternative to a regular toilet, and the fact that you think they are is a minor indicator of why it's difficult for even widespread, highly beneficial innovations to become universal even after centuries)
not only is it debatable whether or not electric showers are better in that sense, i have in fact debated it; i refer you to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41250642 and eagerly await your opinion
The fact that they are only common in poor and impoverished areas, tells you everything you need to know.
This argument is a lot like asserting instant-coffee is better than fresh brewed coffee because some people have no alternative choice.
humans are not automatically strategic. one reason is that they're subject to many kinds of irrationality; the particular species you are currently exhibiting is known as 'the fallacy of affirming the consequent'
a pretty large fraction would continue using electric showers just because they're familiar with them—but that is at best only a very weak argument. we can do better than that by debating their actual advantages and disadvantages, as i did in the linked comment, rather than mindlessly subscribing to vox populi, vox dei
if given the option, free of charge, to install a bidet in your house, would you take it? evidently not, because you don't know what a bidet is or how to use it. the same could be said of most people installing a computer in their house 50 years ago. or many modern innovations today, like a gfci, corningware, and borosilicate oven dishes, some of which have fallen out of use because consumers didn't understand them
using a cellphone instead of a landline was only common in impoverished areas 30 years ago, and even today, having front-door locks that are hard to pick are still only common in impoverished areas. also, speaking lingala is only common in impoverished areas. that's not because there's anything wrong with lingala
finally, as it happens, my wife prefers instant coffee to fresh-brewed coffee
electric showerheads, by contrast, provide instant heat, and they provide it for as long as you care to shower. what they don't provide is hot water in the sink for washing dishes, unless you take the dishpan to the shower to fill it. and if they're incorrectly installed they can be deadly, but that's a pretty rare problem both with hot-water tanks and with electric showers. i've never talked to anybody who knew anyone killed by an electric shower, and the nature of electrocution is that it's unlikely to injure you without killing you
(tankless hot-water heaters, called calefones, are common here in argentina, and they also solve one of those two problems—the other one. rooftop evacuated-tube hot-water thermosiphon hot-water heaters are also somewhat popular here)
i think that, aside from dishwashing, the main advantage hot-water tanks have over electric showers is that historically natural gas has been much cheaper than electricity. since chinese solar panel producers have driven the cost of solar panels down by a factor of 20, that's not necessarily true anymore—but the intermittency of solar-energy production favors hot-water tanks, if anything, even more strongly
apparently electric showers are common in the uk, which is not a poor country: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41250251 but with much better safety measures than i'm used to seeing in latin american countries
the entire house is on a single anemic 25-amp circuit breaker. at a low-flow 6 liters per minute (100g/s) heating from 15° to 40° (Δ temp = 25 kelvin) at 4.2 joules/°/gram, you need 10.5 kilowatts, which is 44 amps at 240 volts. at 120 volts just forget about it
i have had a super cheap non-tankless electric shower in a couple of places i've lived in argentina, which sucked. you would fill it up with water, plug it in to start heating the water, unplug it half an hour later to stop heating the water (hopefully before it overheated), and then open the valve at the bottom to run the shower. dangerous, inconvenient, and uncomfortable
on the other hand, if you're building an apartment building in brazil or a hotel in costa rica, there's nothing stopping you from including an 80-amp circuit in every bathroom for the electric shower. it's definitely cheaper than a hot-water tank or a tankless heater, and it might be safer too, since it might allow you to avoid running gas to the room
Do these countries not have any limit on the current in a circuit? Over here we're not allowed more than 16A in residential use and that's over 2.5 mm^2 wires. What kind of conductors do they use in Brasil for 80A circuits?
You can only heat water so much for the available wattage and when it was cold the water was so cold that only a thin trickle could be heated to a comfortable showering temperature.
The heating element has three layers - innermost, a wire that gets hot. Around that, a ceramic insulator. And outermost, a metal cover to protect the ceramic insulator. Then the heating element is mounted in a small water tank. And that, along with some other components, is put into a suitably waterproof outer plastic box. The insulation is of course all tested at the factory.
The tank, heating element outer, and all the pipework in the general vicinity is then grounded, and the power supply passes through an RCD (our equivalent to a GFCI). There are also two or three temperature sensors, and a water pressure sensor.
Installers also have to have an up-to-date electrical safety license - so for they know better than to (for example) compromise the waterproofing of the enclosure by adding extra holes to make the wiring simpler.
i do agree that the measures you're describing would make them much safer
In the case of a toaster with a grounded frame, the most likely route for a short is straight to earth which will trip the RCD on that set of plugs.
While you can have a separate RCD for each circuit, and the newest installations do, it's more common to have two RCDs in the panel/fuse box/consumer unit, with each circuit on one or the other. This arrangement is known as a 'split load consumer unit'. The intention of having two instead of one is that plugging in faulty electronics at night not plunge the entire house into darkness. These RCDs usually have a trip current of 30mA, making them less sensitive than American GFCIs which trip around 5mA.
As far as I understand, the main reason people don’t get electrocuted even with improperly grounded shower head heaters is that (as noted in the post), tap water is generally not very conductive in the first place, so you’ve effectively got a gigantic resistor between you and the wires (assuming there’s a continuous path through the water at all). So even if the least resistance path is through you, the amount of current will be tiny due to Ohm’s law.
so you’ve effectively got a gigantic resistor between you and the wires (assuming there’s a continuous path through the water at all). So even if the least resistance path is through you, the amount of current will be tiny due to Ohm’s law.
That is, by definition, NOT the "least resistance path".
Yes it is. A tip: if someone tells you something is a myth, your next step should be to google it. This is intro level parallel circuit stuff.
Hell, just think about the circuitry in your house. If you have your phone charging on one outlet, and you plug a hair dryer into the adjacent outlet, does the phone stop charging? Does the hair dryer not run? Do you think those things have exactly equal resistance? Of course not. Current flows to both of them, but more current flows to the hair dryer.
> That is, by definition, NOT the "least resistance path".
I don’t think you know what “by definition” means. You could be the only path for the electricity to flow, and if there’s high enough resistance, it won’t hurt you.
Please stop repeating this nonsensical folk wisdom. It can get people killed.
I don't know if the circuit was through the running water or if it was the metal tap handles, but it was quite a jolt.
edit: Now that I try to remember it, it was definitely either the tap handle or the metal pipes. ZAP.
i don't remember ever seeing one here in argentina (perhaps they're illegal), but they're common in many countries
For those who don't know, the sinks and bathtubs in UK homes and businesses often have two completely separate taps: one for hot, one for cold. You're supposed to fill the sink with water from both and "wash" your hands (or your dishes) in it. No, you don't rinse them afterwards. It's just soap, it's good for you.
Sorry, but I really can't tell - was that sarcasm?
I wash up like a normal person: I fill a sink with hot water and washing-up liquid, and scrub the dishes in order of what needs the least attention. Glasses need a quick wipe and then they’re put aside, while the cutlery has a nice little soak at the bottom. You finish with the pans. If at any point the bubbles are not sparkling white, the water is dirty and needs to be refilled. I then move the dishes to the drying rack, without rinsing them off. In my opinion, this is the cleanest, most hygienic way of doing things, because everything has a little bath in the sink.
https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/may/06/you-be-...
To be fair, dish washing turns out to be a very controversial thing. When I was doing my degree I lived in a shared student house with a British girl who was muslim, a Chinese girl and a British girl of unknown religion. The Chinese girl and I always insisted on re-doing the dishes after the second British girl did them the "normal" way as above. Then the muslim girl did them all over again with her own sponge to make sure they hadn't touched pork. But nobody picked up the used loo roll tubes from the bathroom. They piled up like abstract art :D
Maybe a little, if the soap somehow stuck to it and didn't slide off while it was drying. But never enough to notice (at least, I never heard of anyone noticing - even foreigners who are horrified at British washing up have always talked about being grossed out by it rather than actually tasting anything).
The real risk isn't really to the toaster (who cares, it's just a toaster, and even if it starts on fire when you plug it in, you're probably watching it pretty closely).
No, it's that you leach lead or other such nasties (sealing rubbers, PCB epoxies, what-have-you) into your dishwasher and start eating them when they get redeposited onto your dishes. Lead isn't that harmful... except when you eat it. Don't eat lead.
In fact, if you have a dedicated dishwasher for this (or ultrasonic cleaner! those are pretty awesome, most of the time, for most things!), I'd say it's perfectly reasonable to do this! You know what we call those kinds of things where I work? Parts washers. You know what we wash in them... circuit boards! It's fine! Circuit boards are cleaned with aqueous solutions all the time as part of normal manufacturing! If you don't have a dedicated dishwasher... well, I wouldn't do it then, but if you must, you'll want to run the dishwasher a few more times, empty, with a strong detergent, preferably a lead-chelating one. (You might also make one of those runs with dishwasher cleaner, and strike the whole "yearly dishwasher cleaning" task off your to-do list for the first time this... uh, decade?)
You will, of course, want to dry things well. This is both easier and harder with a toaster. Easier because, well, toasters get hot, and this will get any nooks and crannies dry. Harder because one of the tricks to get things dry faster after they come out of a parts washer is to rinse them in alcohol, because alcohol dries very fast. You, uh, don't want to do that with a toaster. At least not one you intend to run any time soon.
there are also some electronic components that won't deal well with water, especially strong streams of water. microphones and speakers come to mind, because they commonly include exposed paper, thin membranes, and sponges. i'm thinking an ocxo would also be a problem both because overheating it can cause rapid aging and hysteresis and because drying out the fibrous insulation is going to be hard
And also right about not washing speakers and microphones, I'd never put those through a water or solvent wash once their protective taping was removed. Surprisingly XOs are not really known for wash issues, at least these days (I think they're all hermetically sealed now), but they are notoriously sensitive to ultrasonic cleaners. So be careful there.
Maybe I'm slow, but what goes wrong if you rinse a toaster with alcohol?
At one point I was involved in cleaning out a large system with alcohol to actually get the thing clean and dry. We went through I think it was three 55-gallon drums of absolute alcohol. By the time we were done, the air in the shop (not a small space!) was noticeably... alcoholic... and we were, uh... sensitive to it. So alcohol vapors in the air are a real thing.
So, do you reeeeeeally want to run this risk with your food? The one thing you should not do with most of the actual nasty chemicals is eat them. Bottom line: please do rinse your dishwasher if you try this.
In fact, had OP found this[2] article, they would have seen that
> Practice has demonstrated that immersion generally does not harm most equipment if allowed three days to dry out.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tevilat_Kelim
[2] https://oukosher.org/blog/consumer-kosher/tevilas-keilim-a-p...
https://www.amazon.fr/raclette-electrique/s?k=raclette+elect...
Kitchen Utensil appears to be defined as `A kitchen utensil is a small hand-held tool used for food preparation.`[1]. Perhaps you don't actually need to submerge electronic appliances in water...
I'm reading through the requirements and this is a serious piece of plumbing, expensive to install at home.
But it has such a purifying ritual function that I think showing up at a communal mikva'ot with a toaster would be awkward.
Does everybody expect that some people will have toasters? You take out your dental bridge and your earrings, trim your nails and your calluses, pick up the toaster and walk on in?
These facilities mostly resemble nice spas.
I'm not mocking the belief here, just curious what it's like as a human participating. If I were trying to purify a toaster I'd pour deionized water into a rubber tub but I gather that doesn't count.
Edit:
To answer my own question, it looks like communal mikva'ots are built with separate sections similar to a sink just for the immersion of things like dishes and toasters and don't require as much personal cleaning, so that's simple and human. As these things usually are.
- "Is it okay to wash a toaster in a dishwasher?"
- "Is it okay to put an electric hair drier in a fish tank when it is plugged in?"
And I am hoping he gets a very productive year of science for the effort.
Not all parts will survive this. Microphones and MEMS devices tend not to do well. Motors and transformers with paper insulation don't do well. Most modern electronics goes through a dishwasher-like process after assembly, to remove any excess solder and paste. A few parts have to be added past that point.
("All gunked up" usually means the wrong lubricant was used at some point. Usually something that has heavy fractions. The short, light hydrocarbon molecules in the oil evaporate, leaving behind the long chains that are basically asphalt.
The original Teletype oil was whale oil. I lubricate Teletypes with 0-20W fully synthetic motor oil, which is supposed to be a consistent length of hydrocarbon. So when it evaporates over a few years, it just leaves dry metal. Especially avoid WD-40. All wrong for this.)
I would never walk over to a live, submerged power bar to unplug it. Especially with your feet in the water. Very risky.
Fwiw I wouldn't do it either... But I guess if there's a valid reason, it's good to know the risk is apparently (as this article says...) exaggerated..
If you purchase an edible “power bar” anywhere (not just America) you can be sure it has and can provide no power. It might have a little energy stored as a carbohydrate though.
The rest of the time don’t ever pull the plug out by the cord, even though NEMA requires some appliances to use a power cord with a special bar in it to defend against such mistreatment.
From his PPS:
> until I planted my bare foot on that bare concrete floor a few inches from the submerged power strip, at which point I felt a mild but discernable tingle in that one foot.
I'll give up a clean toaster in exchange for not getting myself into those kind of situations.
There is no amount of letting it dry out or adding rice that will solve if things are apart.
Having done that, I do recommend taking them apart and just washing the upper keycap board, and the elastic membrane underneath it.
The reason I recommend that is that the drying time takes long before all the water is gone from between the contact layers and all the keystrokes are reliable.
If it's okay for the keyboard not to be ready for use for a bunch of days, then you can just wash it as-is.
It interrupts the circuit in response to a current imbalance between hot and neutral. Kirchoff’s laws… if the current is imbalanced, it must be going somewhere else.
I just had a fun time debugging why some of my outlets weren't working. Turns out there was a GFCI tripped in the garage, a few rooms down from the outlet.
This is annoying when the outlets are in different rooms and it's not clear what's connected to what, but can save money when wiring up a bunch of outlets in a kitchen, for example, since a GFCI outlet can be $20 or more, while regular outlets usually only cost a couple bucks.
Newer panels and breakers are plug-on-neutral, older breakers have a pigtail to the neutral bar.
Never the less, I would still argue to kill the power before stepping into water with an active mains line running through it.
Just a question. How about doing this experiment in 240 land? I would assume the result would be different?
Edit: replaced rated power with amp-age
What about Europe's 230V ? Would he still have gone in the water to unplug the piano if he was in Europe ?
Assume that the water has a fixed resistance of R. You have increased the Voltage V about double.
As a result of V=IR, the I, or current flow, will be doubled. Which in this case is probably a moderate tingle since R is so high.
For reference, the heart muscles start getting involuntary twitches around 100mA, and at 200mA causes cardiac arrest. And the standard units of Voltage, Amp, and Ohm will serve you well here for any conversions.
240v will give you more distance to react between the tingle radius and the kill radius
Given that they did feel tingling, honestly I am not convinced one should follow that example anywhere on earth.
The post also describes that the breaker thing trips when the electricity takes an "some other route than expected" (their words), which I'd say tingling is indicative of: some electricity was being conducted away via the water and, at some point, their foot. Yet the breaker no trip, so either it wasn't a protected circuit or they drew another wrong conclusion based on that aquarium observation which they expected to go differently based on a previously wrong conclusion.
If you can assume the water has a similar conductivity as the tap water in the aquarium (not sure that's a safe assumption after it flooded a room with all sorts of dust and objects in it), and you can assume that your body can handle more electricity than the breaker needs to trip, then a fairly short distance ought to indeed insulate you well enough, but the objective was to get close and turn it off. The post sounded like they based this "I'll do it" opinion basically on the hairdryer-in-aquarium thing which we already know didn't go as expected. To me, the situations "hairdryer runs by itself in water" and "I, standing on a ground, stick my hand near the device's off switch in the water" are two very different things. There could easily have been further unknowns -- and apparently there were since the breaker didn't function in the way that this very post describes it should.
Since moving to Germany I've often noticed wariness around "Halbwissen" (loaning the word since it carries extra connotation), meaning half-knowledge but not in the sense of "you know something about it!"; rather, you kinda know but you don't know the details and that causes overconfidence. That works out until it doesn't
I don't honestly subscribe to that a whole lot: you can't know everything about everything and we use partial knowledge all day long for nearly every topic. Also electricity, I've noticed before a lot of mysticism and fear goes around unnecessarily. So I like the part where experimenting, when done carefully (letting it dry, using a protected circuit, being aware that it might fail and you should observe it first), is encouraged. However, this particular bit about going into the water and "I felt the electricity but everyone cheered me on!" is not what and how you're supposed to do these experiments
[1] https://www.rnd.de/panorama/67-jaehriger-will-keller-leer-pu...
Toasters and hair dryers (depends on the kind of course) are as low tech as it gets. Getting them wet is indeed not a big issue, when unplugged. But as a physics teacher he probably has heard about galvanization, oxidation and similar chemical things.. I hope. Corroded electrical contacts have a higher electrical resistance. Higher electrical resistances produce more heat. More heat produces higher resistance..
As the post says
> I learned two things [...] (2) GFIs only trip off when in bodies of water that are grounded. They won’t work in an aquarium sitting on a lab table, or in a plastic laundry sink with plastic drainpipes, or in a plastic shower with plastic drainpipes.
I'm neither an electrician nor a physics teacher but I knew that these devices looking for ground leakage work only when the electricity leaks to ground (I guess that's what GFI refers to; I know them as aardlekschakelaar, literally: earth leak switch).
That's also why I find it so weird that this teacher describes the functioning as "detects that current is leaking out some other route than expected": it's not like electrons have routing labels you can match against an itinerary. It can very well flow through your body before returning via the normal return wire. Rather, the device detects electricity coming through the ground wire, and so it stands to reason that you need to close the circuit into that ground for it to observe the fault...
Why else do all electrical devices with a metal case or a metal structure have these metal bits connected to ground, if not so that most shorts will lead to the circuit being closed towards ground? Anyone who ever took anything electrical apart has seen these extra cables -- I did last week while cleaning the dehumidifier for example.
I applaud careful experimentation as they did with the hairdryer and, presumably, the toaster (using it on a protected circuit, observing if it works correctly, etc.). But there are also quite a few sentences in this post where my eyebrows moved
GFCIs measure the difference in current between the hot and neutral lines, and trip if the difference is above some threshold. This way, they can detect current flowing from hot to ground through _any_ path, not just the ground terminal on the same outlet. If they only measured current through the outlet's ground terminal, they wouldn't be able to detect e.g. a (usually 2-prong) hair dryer falling into a bathtub (which would typically be grounded through the metal plumbing of the building.)
That predates GFCI, it's to ensure that in the event of a short the metal case/structure will always remain safe to touch by a (presumably grounded) person. Tripping GFCI is just a bonus.
I did this in 1994 personally. It was fine. I am not a scientist and did not overanalyze it. It seemed obvious to me it would be fine. For whatever reason, since that one time I have never had the need to run any other toaster through the dishwasher again.
This was a super simple basic toaster. I wouldn't do it with a modern one with all the various encoders and soft buttons and microelectroncs. Not for any scientific reason, just for similar reason as I wouldn't run my phone through the dishwasher.
Any caked-on grease would still be there.
The outside is easy to clean in any case, and the inside doesn't need to be sparkling (it won't be if you ever actually use the toaster in any case).
There's a door on the bottom of the toaster to get the crumbs out; that's necessary maintenance, and it's far easier done if the toaster is dry. Adding water to crumbs will cause them to stick, so the dishwasher shouldn't be the first thing in any case.
Parts of my BBQ grill would fit into the dishwasher too, but that's not how I clean them either - dishwasher isn't a replacement for scrubbing.
Oh, and there's absolutely a higher risk of getting rust on metals in a dishwasher. And cheap-ass toasters aren't made to be rust-proof throughout.
The conventional ignorance of "don't put the toaster into the dishwasher" is based on at least some truth... and the toaster's instruction manual :)
Also, as I assume others have pointed out, modern toasters are both electrical and electronic devices; I expect they wouldn't handle the dishwasher quite as well as older ones did.
Generally though, 100% on board with the author's point about strident repetition of common "wisdom".
But curious, how did you dry the keyboard ?
We spent a few weeks using the other end of a paint brush to hit the keys whose caps melted off until we could get a new one.
That's the single best conclusion I've read.
Similarly, the pivotal moment at the end of The Astronaut's Wife (1999) had me groaning.
See e.g. https://www.electricshockdrowning.org/esd--faq.html
Capacitors can keep their charge for a long time, especially big ones. But you can discharge them by trying to run the device when it’s not plugged in or waiting a few minutes/hours/days.
The other thing is that the capacitor would need to somehow be shorted to a component it wasn’t supposed to… instead of just itself. Shorting to itself is relatively safe (although might result in a pop and some arcing).
For something like a toaster (especially the old school ones with just a dial to control toast degree) they’re all mechanical contrivances. No electronics to speak of.
This is science. Theory says one thing, but what does the evidence show?
I have a Tommee Tippee prep machine for baby formula milk. The part it has water coming out got so dirty after months of use. Due to lack of sleep like any father of newborn does, I flip it upside down and clean it with running water, and then I found out all the water finds its way into the machine.
Then I completely disassemble it, I use a dehumidifier to blow dry air directly to the screen that water made its way between the glasses.
Then after it is completely dried, I put it back, it continued to work.
So happens I’m a physicist too.
Now I should find an electronics to throw into the dish washer. Unfortunately I already get rid of my toaster because it got so dirty, I should have kept it.
I highly doubt that a dishwasher run would change that.
The real reasons not to use the dishwasher are:
— dishwasher isn't a replacement from scrubbing
— caked-on grease will still be there
— you'd need to clean your dishwasher afterwards (more work)
— it's far easier to shake the bread crumbs out when they're dry (and there's a convenient latch on the bottom for that) than if they're wet and stuck to the insides
— There's a potential for rust to form somewhere inside the toaster, which will not make it work (or look) any better. That's not specific to toasters.
Crumpled aluminum foil does wonders for cleaning metallic surfaces from rust and burned grease though. And chemical solutions like 409 can make everything else sparkling clean.
https://jdstillwater.blogspot.com/2019/12/eleven-senses.html
I really like this article because it shows someone who keeps pushing their 'when to exit loop' training and the positive and negative implications of that.
> They are intellectually secure in the center of a vast mob; their wisdom was received, not crafted.
In my past experiences, most stuff that got unusable was because water got inside the LCD display, and left some debris that was impossible to remove.
I decided to put my toaster in the dishwasher after that.
In the real world, like a job site or auto shop, the hammer and flathead screwdriver are the two top tools. Generally abused and rarely mentioned in service manuals.
In the "online" world, every tool has strict boundaries and restrictions.
> All that day, kids got to see Mr. Stillwater’s hair dryer running under water in a fish tank. I thought I knew about electricity and water, but what I possessed was Conventional Ignorance posing as Conventional Wisdom. Humbling.
Should I put the wifes running hairdryer into our fishtank to entertain our child?
"""Underwriters Laboratories modified its marking requirements for hair dryers after the CPSC brought to UL's attention reports of injuries and deaths attributed to consumer misuse of hair dryers. Under the modified requirements, hair dryers must be permanently. marked "Danqer-- Electrocution possible if used or dropped in tub. Unplug after using." A tag with warning instructions also is required by UL to be attached to the power supply cord."""
TL;DR insurance underwriters observed enough deaths that they believed it was wise to change a product's markings to avoid having to pay out as much money.
Assuming that the dryer continues to run, it is perfectly safe to keep it running indefinitely in a fish tanks (without fish, of course). You just have to unplug it before removing it.
If I change my mind I will let you know.
I wonder how much the fraction of toasters that contain electronic components has increased since then.
Ah, but your question is what % of toasters is now non-basic...
* Cloud services like AWS actually take more time, resources, and headache to maintain than baremetal servers, whether at the scale of a few backoffice users or millions of consumers. Related: the vast majority (95%+) of apps could run on a single baremetal server and be more reliable than whatever cloud shit you use.
* Most SPAs are garbage. Unless you are building something like Figma, write backend code only, don't use a frontend framework like React, and when reactivity is needed, tie it to the backend with something like Livewire. Actually even Figma uses WASM.
* Using a framework like Laravel that makes the business logic easy is far more important than choice of a language based on its technical characteristics.
* People who are outwardly racist are often the easiest to work with, as a minority. And vice-versa, people who outwardly appear anti-racist are often masking a deeply inbred superiority complex and patronizing attitude (hello Democrats), and are the most difficult to work with unless you submit to their authority. Allowing open racism actually makes it easier for a minority to live, and I say that as a minority.
Oh I could go on but I'll stop here.
The real risk isn't really to the toaster (who cares, it's just a toaster, and even if it starts on fire when you plug it in, you're probably watching it pretty closely).
No, it's that you leach lead or other such nasties (sealing rubbers, PCB epoxies, what-have-you) into your dishwasher and start eating them when they get redeposited onto your dishes. Lead isn't that harmful... except when you eat it. Don't eat lead.
Wouldn't feel so great about the dishes you put into the dishwasher afterwards.
Ain't no getting fine metal dust out of porcelain, and idk what else got washed off of those boards.
Curious to hear about non-food uses of those.
So far, I've used a dehydrator machine to dry 3D printing filament, and was going to use a slow cooker for acetone vapor bath smoothing of ABS prints, but never got to it.
Not entirely true. Most modern toasters have some sort of electronics in them
<goes to skim the article>
Yeah, sounds about right.
Welcome to the internet. First time here?
They don't. EVER. Want to talk to me again if they don't have to. #ConventionalIgnorance
For reference, I touched 10k volts with microcurrents. It hurts! I touched 240 volts wire and felt the vibrations run up to my elbow before realizing what happened. It terrifies. And I touched 120v electricity leaking through a brick wall in vicinity of a lighting fixture. That hurts too much but doesn't kill.
It is possible to learn from others. In fact, our society's entire foundation of knowledge comes from building on the knowledge of past generations and others in our current generation. Not everything needs to be verified from scratch by every user of the knowledge, and if it did we'd never make it past roman tech levels.
Looks like it takes a while to kill.
It didn't kill once. Not enough of a sample to draw a firm conclusion from.
We have the ability to learn from others' mistakes, that's one of the main reasons we've gone so far as species. Not every child needs to get serious burns to learn that fire is hot and can be dangerous.
Sent by you: Can I put a toaster in the dishwasher?
Sent by Copilot: It’s not a good idea to put a toaster in the dishwasher. Toasters have electrical components that can be damaged by water, and it could be dangerous if water gets into the electrical parts. Instead, you can clean the exterior with a damp cloth and use a brush to remove crumbs from the inside.
Is there anything else you need help with?
Sent by you: I'm feeling adventurous and plan to let it dry out real well
Sent by Copilot: I admire your adventurous spirit! However, even if you let it dry out thoroughly, there could still be hidden moisture that might cause electrical issues or even pose a fire hazard when you use the toaster again. It’s really best to avoid putting any electrical appliances in the dishwasher.
If you’re looking for a safer way to clean your toaster, I can share some tips! Would you like that?
Sent by you: I did it anyway.
Sent by Copilot: Oh no! I hope everything turns out okay. Just to be safe, I recommend not using the toaster until you’re absolutely sure it’s completely dry, inside and out. You might want to leave it in a warm, dry place for several days.
If you notice any unusual smells or sounds when you do try to use it, it’s best to unplug it immediately and consider getting a new one. Safety first!
Is there anything else I can help you with?