Power Outlets in United Kingdom

hi today we are traveling to United Kingdom UK is the birthplace of many great science youtubers such as Tom Scott dr. Sally LePage Steve mould big Clive and boy in the band well boy in the band is not really a science youtuber but I've learned so many things watching his videos so and those are just a few I remember UK makes up around five-and-a-half percent of my viewers right after Germany and United States and I've heard a lot about how safe their plugs and outlets are I'm going to go there and test them a little bit I brought so many test equipment security was very suspicious so I went shopping to find a proper adapter to convert my North American plug that's earth live and neutral into the United Kingdom one but no matter how much I searched I didn't find one with a proper ground it's always plastic so what if you're traveling grounding doesn't matter and you can die I could hardly find this one that had a hole for my ground but that doesn't connect anywhere they provided a fancy bag and not a ground I guess I'll have to just go there shopping and find a proper extension cord or something the beautifully miserable weather of London had only heard about it what to experience it firsthand all the plugs are fused and all the outlets that have these on/off switches yes see all of them are these breakers or just switches even this ancient one [Music] yeah yeah it's a pretty nice city but where the hell is the breaker box in my hotel room I can't find it anywhere inside or outside the room maybe it's in some central electrical room somewhere I better not make any shorts one of the interesting things about these bulky British plugs is that unlike their North American counterparts that have metal completely exposed on the live prongs they have half of it plastic so if it is inserted halfway and makes contact to live wires only plastic is exposed so it's safer I mean it's something to be tested I bought this adapter here in UK with proper ground and fuse and everything and if you look here I shorted between the two prongs with a thin piece of wire now when I plug it in if this makes contact while these metals are exposed this thing will pop open and I'll know otherwise if I have to push it further in it will push this piece of wire back and nothing will happen and I'll know it's safe okay it's definitely shorted let's plug it in hopefully nothing will happen and I'll know oh jeez wow I better clean it up before they see it well I basically ran away the breaker for all the room outlets just popped and I can't reset it so hotel has to fix that for me [Music] it's funny these lights run on gas global warming man use LED well the hotel reset the breaker and one thing's for sure this suite is just a redundant Street and not a breaker and if you look here the plot has to go quite deep before making a contact I don't know why my test failed or why I did it like that while I could do it like this so maybe my wire here was pushed into the socket instead of sliding away so this is still safer for not exposing live wires also what I didn't calculate was that hey there are tiny doors on this outlet so you can't stick anything in there nice the ground prong has to go in first to unlock these doors safety anyway we have 240 volt AC 50 Hertz here in UK back in hundred 20 volt AC Canada my thin wire would pop first before any breaker would because any similar home all around the world draws around the same power like hundred watt lamp is hundred Watts anywhere so things are designed to draw half the current on 240 volt AC compared to 120 volts that puts much less stress on the power lines here and the breakers are set to trip at half the current compared to 120 volt AC also the surge current through a thin wire is double on 240 volt AC that's why I tripped the breaker in any case the UK outlets have these doors on their bigger holes so nobody can stick anything in there not much more safety features compared to North American outlets I would say [Music] I'm curious what's inside a UK plug and you know what that rhymes with curiosity stream the sponsor of this video curiosity stream the best source of over 2400 beautifully made knowledge and science documentaries including exclusive originals see if you use my link curiosity stream dot-com / electro boom and promo cause electro boom I check out you get a whole month of full access for free and with their current offer they give a 10 dollar Visa or MasterCard gift card on an annual membership which starts at like twenty dollars a year for the love of God don't lose this promotion here it's open and one thing's for sure if you step on these plugs facing up may God have mercy on your soul it's interesting first all these plugs have a fuse made in them a 13 amp in this case which if anything downstream in your device shorts this will pop open which makes for a much less interesting video and you see here the longest wire is the ground wire with some slack and the shortest is the live wire so if this thing gets pulled the first thing to disconnect is the live wire from your device which is much safer so these plugs have much more safety features compared to their North American counterparts I won't test their GFCI or RCD breakers in the hotel I'm already embarrassed to have popped their breaker once all wait until I get to my cousin's house the London Museum [Music] Wow look at this these things air-conditioned so I don't know what they used to pull this now it might be some healthier devices or something like these loading lamps oops how do you put it back and the LEDs are wirelessly power to power dammit welcome to Cambridge [Applause] [Music] now in my cousin's house and what I found in there they actually have a breaker box down here two sets for some reason and each set has one RCD or what's called a residual current detector which is the equivalent to GFCI we have in North America but the difference here is that the RCD is for the entire house rather than the North American GFCI that is only in the bathroom the GFCI and RCD are both to detect the livewire current going into earth instead of neutral and they pop open and the funny thing is that their socket has different shape here so that you can't plug the normal household stuff here and it's only for shavers and of course you don't need GFCI here because the whole house is protected by our CD well they may have protected themselves against plugging the wrong stuff into this socket but the North American plugs fit these sockets which means that tourists like me can plug anything here and probably blow something up although I've heard that these outlets have their own internal fuse rated at much less current inside the walls so it will pop much easier see any device draws current from life and returns to neutral so if the current goes from life to earth it's unexpected and the RCD or GFCI will pop open and the usual case is that a user in contact with ground accidentally touches the live wire and gets shocked so these things usually trip at much less current to protect the person well first things first what does it take to keep the RCD I connected my North American wires to the adapter and let's measure ooh interesting the live and neutral connections are flipped here so now white is live wire I brought a bunch of different resistor values to put between live on Earth and see which one will trip the RCD North American GFCI trips at around 5 milliamps so let's try a 47 kilo ohm and see if it trips the RCD never use your bare hands what did I pop let's just be careful okay 47 K between live and Earth let's didn't pop anything 10 K well there you go we popped the our CDs popped how do you unpop this thing oh there you go you just need extra force 14.7 k nope 12 K there you go this means that the RCD trips at around 20 milliamps which is a much stronger shock compared to the five mini amp of the GFCI but on the bright side the whole house is protected by the RCD now what will happen if we plug things that are meant for 120 volt AC into 240 volt things like resistive loads such as incandescent lightbulbs or inductive loads like motors will draw double the current so quadruple the power so those will blow up but switching power supplies such as a battery charger or a laptop wall adapter are designed to work on hundred volt to 240 volt AC so nothing will happen to these and they will draw half the current from the power lines compared to 120 volts but on transformer based wall adapters such as this one the output of the transformer is not regulated so on 240 volt AC it outputs double the voltage so if you use this to power your devices they will blow up although nothing should happen to the transformer itself of course these wall adapters have components that might not be rated for double the voltage [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah I'm back so UK plugs are fused live wire disconnects first when pulled and no exposed live voltage on prongs the outlets can be turned off and have doors on their holes and the whole house is protected by our CD things we don't have in North America I know some people that could have been saved by just the RCD the rest of the protection sound kind of redundant which is pretty important in safety critical systems but hey in North America who cares about redundancy so thanks to curiosity stream for sponsoring this video so I could go to UK and test their electronics and for providing great knowledge because you know when a system is missing redundancy you rely on your knowledge to save you if you're a fan of documentaries as much as I am then you will love what curiosity stream has to offer from nature science history technology lifestyle and society they are the world's first streaming service with great nonfiction knowledge and science documentaries including exclusive originals made by some of the world's best filmmakers featuring some of the world's greatest scientists available on all sort of platforms so definitely it's a treasure box go to curiosity stream comm / electro boom to get unlimited access and use promo code electro boom during signup and your membership will be free for the first 31 days and thanks for watching

Channel: ElectroBOOM

Views: 6,005,326

Keywords: educational, electrical, ElectroBOOM, science, electronics, engineering, entertainment, equipment, measurement, experiment, mehdi, mehdi sadaghdar, arc, mishap, physics, Sadaghdar, test, tools, circuit, funny, learn, shock, spark, discharge, plug, outlet, power outlet, socket, power socket, united kingdom, RCD, Residual Current Device, GFCI, protection, fuse

Id: abqMLqHwqpo

Length: 12min 29sec (749 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 30 2019