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Check your email – we need to work on these questions privately.
Hi Jim,
Question #11 is “In which circuit will the heating element be getting power and heating?”
Question 12 is “In which circuit will the light bulb glow brighter?”
Which one are you wanting help on?
The thing to notice is the effect that the closed switch has on the circuit. Do you know what it’s function is?
Got it. I’ll be able to go over these this weekend and will email you back – so keep an eye out
Hi Everardo,
No, I haven’t gotten an email from you since Sunday. Please send them again. The best way is to reply to the email thread that we had going – the one where I gave you the questions I wanted new answers to.You’ve raised a more interesting question than you probably realize!
First of all, pure water is not a good conductor. It is actually the impurities (ions) in water that carry the current. A biggish drop of dirty water might create a low-resistance connection that might carry enough current to cause the breaker to pop before it just boiled away, but it’s far from a given. Also, note that it would not be a short, as the drop of water would have some resistance. But it could be a low-resistance connection.
I think the point of your question was to imagine something creating an accidental, highly conductive connection between the various spades/posts of the plug. So, let’s instead imagine a bit of copper wire that somehow contacted the prongs in the 3 ways you described.
In that case, your imagined outcomes would most likely occur, with a big IF.
And that is IF the ground is valid – that it is bonded to neutral at the breaker box. That’s how it’s supposed to be, but you don’t want to take that for granted.
Lemme know if you have any followup questions.
We usually refer to the shunt as being just the branch with no resistance.
That’s correct!
You are correct that voltage/volts is similar to wattage/watts.
Wattage is the most common way to talk about Power in the electrical world, and watts is the unit of measurement that we commonly use.
We also use the term “work” to describe the output of power from loads.
Power can also be expressed in other ways, such as motion (horsepower), Btu/h (another unit of measurement for heat), etc.
You want to get to comfortable with which terms are interchangeable and/or related, because you’ll hear different ones used in various places.
Hi Michael,
I never noticed that before. We didn’t create this chart, so I’m not 100% sure. But it could be because Power can be expressed as either “watts” or “joules/second”. They are the same thing, and it depends which world you are working in as to which one you use. Academic types would tend to use J/s and those of us in the repair world use watts.
How to use voltage measurements to locate the fault in an electric dryer that is not heating
That’s referring to the scenario that we show at the end of Basic Electricity, unit 6, “Circuit Breaker Panels and Power Outlets”
No worries! I’m about to send you feedback on the ones you did answer, and then you can retake the exam.
Hi Mark,
Good question! Power can describe both input and output.After all, we talk about the “power supply” for a circuit.
And loads need power to do their work. They basically take power (in the form of voltage and current) and change it to another kind of power (heat, motion, etc.).
One of the Ohm’s Law equations is P = I x E. So the power supplied to a load is voltage AND current.
You can have a closed circuit with a resistance/load in it, but it will just sit there until you apply power.
Although many of the other answers are somewhat correct (we designed the question this way to really make you think about it), from a troubleshooting mindset it is Power that we focus on.
Does that make sense? Let me know!
Yes!
Always glad to help – that’s what we’re here for! 🙂
Exactly.
Do you have any other questions, or has this helped it all to click for you? Let me know.
FYI, I’ll need to hide parts of this discussion (so we don’t just give it away to other students), so make note of all of this!
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