6 ms·
Having moved to the UK a few years ago, I have to say that, bulky though they may be, I've grown quite fond of the British plugs. Switches on the sockets, fuses
by pdpi 11y ago
Having moved to the UK a few years ago, I have to say that, bulky though they may be, I've grown quite fond of the British plugs. Switches on the sockets, fuses on the plugs, sockets that mechanically require the ground pin to make contact (in theory, anyway. You can have a plastic ground pin...) before the live pins enter the socket. There's actually a fairly large amount of security built into them!
- lisper 11y agoSure, but the cost in terms of wasted space is enormous. In the U.S. I can fit a USB power adapter in my pocket. In the U.K. such an adapter will often be larger than the device it's powering.
- icebraining 11y agoThey're not so bad: http://www.ebellking.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/a/p/apple-adapter-100-240v-1000ma-uk-plug-usb-power-charger-for-apple-ipod-iphone2g-3g-white-6342854713702182982.jpg http://www.ebellking.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image...
- pdpi 11y agoThey can even get a bit cleverer: http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MGRL2B/A/apple-5w-usb-power-adapter-folding-pins http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MGRL2B/A/apple-5w-usb-p...
- Freaky 11y agoFor USB there's always a MU - very compact folded up: http://www.themu.co.uk/ http://www.themu.co.uk/
- to3m 11y agoI don't feel safe plugging things in anywhere else. Those funny little plugs that don't say in the sockets - I hate them. Last time I went to America, the illusion of boundless wealth was rapidly shattered when I went to plug something in and was confronted by a little bit of plastic with two thing on the end, and couple of slots in the wall. I plugged the thing in, and it fell out. There were sparks. This is how I imagine things to be in North Korea.
- lisper 11y agoYou must simply have encountered a defective socket. The experience you describe is not typical.
- alextgordon 11y agoI have also experienced sparks in a US socket. How glad I was to come back to the civilisation of semi-insulated prongs and switches.
- iSnow 11y agoI think you can have sparks in any system while plugging in a large enough load. My 85W Macbook adapter sparks in honest-to-god German engineering sockets.
- alextgordon 11y agoSure, but in the UK the live and neutral prongs are half insulated[0] so the sparks stay inside the socket. And if a socket or device is known to be iffy, just switch it off at the wall before plugging anything in. [0] http://i01.i.aliimg.com/img/pb/149/635/934/934635149_988.jpg http://i01.i.aliimg.com/img/pb/149/635/934/934635149_988.jpg
- mixmastamyk 11y agoIn the article, it mentions why the UK plugs have more features, not to mention being designed 50-100 years later, and also why other plugs aren't being replaced. I don't have any problems with American or Euro plugs, however I may have learned how to avoid them. Still I think there is room for improvement, perhaps something like a larger lightning/usbc plug with some of those safety features.
- dfox 11y agoIn my opinion the European CEE 7 plugs and sockets are about as much safe as British plugs and achieve that essentially only by mechanical construction of the socket (while on the British plug the isolated sections on live pins are required for safety). Fuses in British plugs do not have much of a purpose. The idea is that the wiring in a wall has higher power rating than the cord itself and thus there is fuse on the boundary, but same effect can be achieved by placing the fuse inside the appliance (as is done everywhere else).
- hwstar 11y agoThat fuse is absolutely required. Plugs are daisy-chained in a loop with a 32A breaker (The so-called "ring-main"). Removing the fuse will cause lead burn up if there's a short circuit in the device. If you look at the leads on some UK plugs the sizes of the wires can be very small. They can get away with this due to the fuses in the plugs.
- dfox 11y agoMy point is that the same thing holds for appliance leads anywhere else. Only difference is in the use of 32A circuit breakers for the rings which then necessitates lower fault impedance to reliably trip the breaker. There is essentially no technical reason why the breaker has so large current rating as in Europe one 16A breaker for all sockets in whole flat typically suffices. While the article suggests that preferred practice in continental Europe is to have one (typically 16A) breaker per socket, it's not required and usually considered redundant. Another reason (and probably more relevant) for the fuses in the plug I can see is that when wire that is part of the ring circuit gets broken, the safe current handling capacity of the circuit gets halved and the fuses then offer at least some protection from over-current. It seems to me that whoever come up with the ring circuit idea understood that it's fundamentally unsafe and thus designed in additional protection measures so the thing at least looks safer.
- hwstar 11y agoI'm not familiar with continental Europe's wiring practices, but here in the states, we use 15A and 20A breakers. The maximum number of outlets per circuit depends on what the circuit is servicing. The electrical code has gotten stricter in this area over time. The smallest appliance wiring gauge is typically 18 AWG (about 0.8230mm^2). Given the size of our breakers, I suppose if the 18 AWG cable were overloaded with a constant current greater than 7A, the insulation may melt and cause a fire. I haven't seen it happen personally. I do know (from when I was a kid), that a dead short on an 18 AWG appliance lead will cause the circuit breaker to trip.
- 6t6t6 11y agoThat's the difference between regulations made to protect companies and regulations made to protect citizens. Plugs in Japan are like the american ones and they look really scary to me. Specially because here most of the houses are made of wood.