Michael Brown

[Michael Brown]

So in an AC circuit, it doesn’t matter the relative position of the load to the actual shunt. So, only in a DC circuit would the load need to be “downstream” of the shunt?

[Michael Brown]

Domo Arigato Sensei
It is true that we may have been seeing ghost voltage when testing receptacles 4 and 5. To verify, we plug in a heater to receptacle 4, which promptly turns on. We go to receptacle 5 and again plug in the heater where again it turns right on. We look closer at receptacle 3 and notice it looks different from the way the others are wired. Yes, this receptacle seems to have pigtails connected to the brass and silver terminals. Those pigtails attach to L1 and neutral in the wall. It is these pigtails which create the parallel circuit that is added to the original series circuit.
Am I on the right track?

[Michael Brown]

So a shunt requires just one load in the circuit and it doesn’t matter whether that load is upstream or downstream from the shunt?

[Michael Brown]

So after testing we learn that the ground is not valid. We go to plug in our washer and the same thing happens, a bit of copper wire connects the hot prong and the neutral prong. The fact that the ground is not valid has no bearing on the interaction between hot and neutral right? And so the copper bit falls but it hits hot and ground. Current wouldn’t even flow because, since ground isn’t bonded to neutral at the breaker box, there would be no complete circuit back to the source right? Finally, the copper bit falls and lands on neutral and ground. Again, nothing happens right?

[Michael Brown]

Arigato gozaimasu Keymaster
Pg. 91 of the Kleinert textbook, figure 6-19 depicts a series-parallel circuit with a shunt. However, what is labeled as a shunt appears to be instead a short to me. This is because there is no subsequent load in the circuit and so the resistance would be zero, which describes a short circuit. What am I missing?

[Michael Brown]

🤯
Arigato gozaimasu keymaster. You said my imagined outcomes would most likely occur IF the ground is valid, meaning ground is bonded to neutral at the breaker box. To verify that the ground is valid, I could first set my multimeter to VAC and check the voltage across the receptacle to verify incoming power (120 V). Then, to verify the ground, insert one meter lead into hot and the other into ground on the receptacle. If the ground is valid, the multimeter should read 120 V. If the multimeter does not read 120 V, then the ground is invalid. Would that be right?

[Michael Brown]

Arigato gozaimasu Keymaster,
So power can be expressed as either watts or joules per second the same way current can be expressed as either amps or coulombs per second?

[Michael Brown]

I’m leaning toward the idea that wattage means power here. That is because although Power wasn’t specifically defined in the written portion of Module 4 Unit 1 Basic Electrical Terms, it was specifically mentioned in the video portion of the unit. If wattage does indeed mean power in this case, then I am going to replace the word wattage with power in my list of electrical terms to define. Does that sound fair?

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