The clueless people are out there among us
The clueless people are out there among us
Regardless of where you are, can we all agree that no one’s really perfected the electrical outlet yet?
NA plugs make contact without being fully seated, and can leave their live and neutral pins exposed. Worn outlets just let plugs fall out of them (I have 3 or so outlets in my apartment that are borderline unusable because of this).
British plugs are bulky and turn into caltrops when dropped on the floor.
European plugs have the same problem. And you only get like, one outlet per receptacle? Guess you’re shit out of luck if you wanna plug anything else in the same spot.
Most of the rest of the world just copied Europe or the UK.
I like Denmark’s plug though. Cute lil smiley face.
I think the Swiss have the best Europlug-based system. Their three-conductor plugs have the same footprint as basic Europlugs, which makes for very dense plug arrangements. Unlike e.g. the German Schuko plug they only fit in one orientation so you get no polarity issues.
It’s pretty neat.
That’s quite how AC outlets work. Line and neutral can intentionally have different potentials relative to ground depending on how the house’s electrical system is designed. This can become relevant in certain situations like very simple devices (think “lamp socket with a power plug”).
A plug that can’t be inverted makes this a non-issue.
polarity issues
Not an issue, you can swap line and neutral freely. It becomes an issue if you want to use three phases and a three phase motor (because the order of phases is important) but that is covered by other sockets. Plain old Schuko is one phase, LNG.