Tripping Every Breaker in Italy

hi today we are going to italy well my wife told me not to film and enjoy the environment and the trip but i'm going to sneak in my multimeter anyway i mean imagine all the new outlets and breaker panels and everything i can't just we booked a flight for my daughter under the wrong last name so we can't board the flight end of the trip well we managed to cancel our old flight lost a bit of money there then we booked new flight for tomorrow at double the price so this video is sponsored by brilliant please sign up from the link below and start learning from the magnificent interactive courses hi today is the next day and we are going [Music] i like the style of our hotel [Applause] especially since the fuse panel is right at the entrance i have to see what we are dealing with here [Music] okay let's see what we have in terms of outlets here so three holes and it seems like they double drilled the top and bottom holes so that two different standards fit in the same plug let's see the voltage here 222 i thought it would be closer to 230 and the frequency 50 hertz that's some accurate 50 hertz and i assume the center one is earth let's see okay the bottom one seems to be the live wire yep top one is neutral and the center is ground and this is what i brought for my adapter and i came prepared with an extension cord that i can plug in multiple things at the same time i don't see any gfci or ground fault protection around here again ground fault protection triggers if current instead of flowing from life to neutral flows anywhere else say to ground through your body disconnects electricity and saves your ass not sure if these breakers have ground fault protection something to test this ancient door has buzzer on it and it's on the door too how did they wire this thing okay let's see what's going on in here okay eu so much dust these green wires should be all the earth connections and the black and blue must be the live one of them is neutral i assume interesting wire connectors though all the wires go in here and there is a screw on the side that tightens all of them together and we have them on live and everything let's see if i've learned anything from my hawaiian incident [Music] because i'll need to measure the voltage single-handedly holding the camera with the other hand yep 220 volt or something let's see if the black is in fact neutral yes black is neutral so just two basic breakers and interestingly they disconnect both live and neutral and i don't see any ground fault protection maybe it's somewhere else definitely i don't see any trace of ground fault protection in the washroom but i can't say for sure until i test i have a potentiometer here and i tune it to around 7.5 kilo ohms for around 30 milliamps of current and hopefully that will trigger any ground fault protection they might have if there is any okay let's plug in the potentiometer between earth and life wish me luck why can't i plug in why is that what's going on hmm seems like you have doors in there no door on ground but it seems like you can't plug in something just into neutral or live alone you have to connect them both at the same time which is annoying i'm just trying to connect between earth and life fine i'll plug in my probes into live and neutral first to open these tiny damn doors where am i i shouldn't have left the loose wires hanging down there pop the fuse hey where are the lights knocked back what happened damn it i think i popped the external breaker i have to call the hotel well let's screw it back on in case they want to check something i don't want them to figure out about my behavior moral of the story don't do experiments in the middle of the night because there is no one to help you till the next morning but on the bright side i was able to see where the fuses for each room are so if i should trip them again i can fix it myself let's see what the actual italian plug looks like oh nice so the ground is in the middle and live and neutral on the sides and you can plug it either way still better than the north american plugs because see it has like a centimeter of plastic here which means when you enter this here and you can still touch the plug there is no chance you get shocked and it has to go further in before it connects to the live and neutral in the north american one if you plug it halfway in you can still accidentally touch the live wire but this one you can't so it is good but still not as good as the united kingdom plugs as we know they have a fuse in every plug much protection what is that some sort of forbidden fruit [Music] okay trying again so first i plug my probes in to check the voltage and see i have closer to 230 volts ac change my meter to current measurement setting to see how much current i'm sending from live to ground use the long shaft of my old potentiometer to connect to earth connect my potentiometer to the other end of the meter and now we connect the other side of the potentiometer to earth to see if there is any ground fault protection oh there you go it popped damn it now i need to find my way okay [Music] let's try and find my breaker it was here there it is whatever it is it does have a ground fault protection [Music] well this is great as it is tradition with the european standard it seems like the whole apartment is protected by ground fault protection unlike the north american standards that if you have ground fault protection it is in the washroom now it did trip at 30 milliamps through but is it possible that the tripping current is different let's change the potentiometer okay now i set my potentiometer to maximum 100k for the minimum current i connect it up now i change the potentiometer just have to make sure i don't touch any live connections 5 milliamps 10 milliamps 20 25 oh yes i think it is 30 milliamps now we just have to reset the breaker good thing i found where it is oh there you go i guess i could turn off the entire hotel no no no let's go well i'm happy to confirm that this hotel has the proper electrical safety set up now we go to the next city [Applause] [Music] so we are in a new hotel and this one seems to have a proper gfci outlet with set and reset switches we can test what that this was a radio so i guess i can take any one of these plugs and see if the ground fault protection works and if somebody can tell me what in the world will plug into this outlet it would be great it seems like having outlet doors is a random thing this one doesn't have it these ones have it but this one doesn't support two different plugs so again i've set my potentiometer to around 30 milliamps and let's see if it protects oh there you go it's gone okay now we go find the main breaker and reset it where is it oh no oh no where is it oh no it is nowhere to be found which is how it should be but i'll have to face the reception again and tell them that i popped their breaker [Applause] [Music] [Music] very nice hotel room here except i again can't find the breaker box this is just our hotel too bad they are stuck with me what is in that room i hope it's a breaker box hey i found them well i hope they leave it unlocked [Music] we have closer to 230 here let's check its ground fault protection engaging my potentiometer to earth what hello hey this hotel is different see the lights are still on but the voltage is gone so the outlets are on a separate ground fault protection the good thing is that i know where the breakers are and i can reset it right here oh it's none of these breakers damn it i don't know where the breakers are i can't face them anymore run run [Music] [Applause] [Music] we are in very central trying to get a train to go to rome it's been delayed these trains run on this high voltage line i wish i could tell their voltage by just looking at them maybe i can throw a probe at them or maybe i could just search online [Music] [Music] ah they set the city on fire before i get the chance to do it myself we are now in our roman hotel and i'm happy to say that the breaker box is available to public and it seems like the main breaker with uh the ground fault protection is right here let's try there it is and it's not back on oh i have to press the switch there you go nice so i assume if i check the outlets now i can just reset it here and i won't have to face the reception anymore [Music] so now we shouldn't have any problem tripping the ground fault protect hello no we are all okay yeah no it was not yeah we are good thanks damn it i tripped the main breaker again so basically i tripped three breakers one two and one right above the reception's head in these boxes ah good thing i have more potentiometers i accidentally put it within live and neutral i have to put it between live and ground of course so here we go again there you go it popped and this time i get to reset the breaker myself oh the ground fault protection breaker does say here that it trips at 0.03 amps [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] well i was able to test all the ground fault protection and breakers in every hotel i went in and all of them are up to date and functional unlike the one hotel i went into hawaii and i had like multiple failures and the ground fault protection in europe protects the entire unit unlike the north american one that only protects the washroom if there is any installed but again in europe it trips at 30 milliamps compared to 5 milliamps of north america so you'll get a much more massive shock here but there is no more taking the extension cord or a toaster in the bathroom electrocution or talking on your phone while it's charging because of a faulty wall adapter electrocution or accidentally touching a frayed wire electrocution you are protected on every outlet everywhere my only concern is that on most of the outlets there is no keying mechanism to make sure you plugging the live and neutral direction correctly which might be important in some applications in important applications we're grounding the body of the device is important for safety you have these plugs and these outlets that make sure the ground is definitely connected to the plug but there is no stopping you from plugging this type of plug into this type of outlet and then you won't have any ground connection which could be hazardous which is the case in my hotel room so there's a bit of mismatch double standard around here that may end up shocking you but then there is ground fault protection on all the outlets that will save you eventually so i guess there is an eventual safety there we just have to pray that the ground fault protection doesn't fail it's just a matter of time and yet i rate it above the north american standard so good job europe [Music] well every travel must end i may edit the entire travel footage and put it in my meditation channel if you're interested but more importantly through my sponsor brilliant you can start learning about science technology engineering and math easily and interactively how do you think those ancient romance were able to build such massive structures and raise such roofs they took their stem very seriously and they didn't even have brilliant what you do and what's a better way to learn than interacting with your courses and quizzes and see the results you may need to learn something new or brush up on your knowledge for your work school or an interview with brilliant you can do it at your own pace and convenience especially for me in engineering work i often find myself in a new corner and realize i need to remember some complex math and i know i just have to watch a few brilliant courses to easily relearn and apply them and maybe this time they will stick so don't worry if you don't know or have forgotten some knowledge you can get started for free visiting brilliant.org electro bull and the first 200 viewers can also get 20 off brilliant annual premium subscription so do it and thank you for watching

Channel: ElectroBOOM

Views: 2,981,555

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, Italy, travel, breakers, GFCI, ground fault protection

Id: A3Dblph1fig

Length: 17min 41sec (1061 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 05 2022