Today's video is sponsored by War Thunder.
Today, we're putting a common household hazard to the test.
We are going to see what happens
if you stick a paperclip into a live outlet.
[Music]
Here, we have an outlet,
and of course, normally, outlets aren't just sitting
in the middle of desk.
But this outlet has been extended from the wall outlet.
This is a normal outlet.
It has all the same insides
and parts and workings and wires as the outlets in your wall.
The only difference is it's a lot easier to get
to here on the desk.
As you can see,
Calli has plugged in this lamp,
and it is functioning.
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So let's take a look at what's inside an outlet.
And again, this is the same thing
that's going on inside your wall.
This is just kind of a slick little packaging for it.
Other than that, it's exactly the same.
So you can see
that the three wires here actually connect
with the three different parts of the socket.
So you've actually got a ground, a neutral,
and a hot,
and they all connect with the different wires.
In the United States,
ground is either going to be bare copper,
or with a green covering over it.
Neutral is white, and the hot wire,
the one where electricity comes in, is black.
Those connect onto our outlet.
Usually, in an outlet in the United States,
where you attach the hot wires is going to have gold screws,
and where you attach the neutral wire is going
to have silver screws.
In this case,
they've also used a green screw to show
where the ground attaches.
The ground is an emergency backup wire.
It's in case something goes wrong.
If too much electricity flows through,
or if something gets physically broken,
the ground is there to make sure that
any wire flowing
through the hot get sent into the safe ground spot,
because it's not going to be flowing correctly
through the neutral wire.
So now, you've seen what's inside the outlet.
We have the three different wires that each corresponds
to the three holes in the plug face.
This bottom one
that's shaped kind of like an archway,
that's the ground wire.
All of the electricity is coming in through the hot wire.
That's the smaller hole on the right.
The other two holes are the neutral and the ground,
and that's where the electricity goes back out.
To get alternating current to work,
it needs to be completing this path,
and it only comes from one side and goes out the other side.
So now, we want to find out exactly what's going to happen
if we start sticking bits of metal into our outlet.
Here's the basic idea.
We have got paper clips,
we've got knives, and we've got electricity.
Let's see what happens when they all meet.
We've got a voltmeter,
and we can use it to test the voltage
running through this outlet.
We'll attach one lead into the hot and one lead
into the neutral,
and then, we can also attach to the ground,
and we should get the same result.
We're seeing about 122.9, and we are in the United States,
where usually that's putting out about 120.
So that lines up pretty nicely.
If a person were
to get 15 amps running through them at 120 volts,
that could stop your heart.
It's really, actually,
a dangerous amount of electricity.
So, is this something that can happen to you just
by sticking a paperclip in the outlet?
So, in the neutral, we get a reading of 123.
If we put the lead in the ground,
the exact same reading, 123 volts.
Is a paperclip going to complete a circuit?
Well, it's possible.
Here's the thing you have to keep in mind.
If the paper clip is in the hot side of the outlet,
there is electricity flowing into it,
but electricity isn't going to flow
unless it can go somewhere.
With a neutral and ground,
that allows the circuit to complete.
If the paperclip is touching nothing,
then a circuit is not going anywhere.
It's not complete,
and electricity is not going to flow through it.
However, you could be grounded.
Currently, I'm wearing shoes with rubber soles
and rubber gloves,
but they are kind of thin rubber gloves,
and I don't know exactly how conductive my shoes are.
So it's possible
that if I put this into the hot side of the outlet,
it would zap me.
Although, I do feel fairly safe putting it into the neutral
and the ground side,
and I'm even gonna try that right now.
It doesn't seem to be doing anything to me.
I'm not feeling it.
Ground.
Neutral.
Nothing's really happening there.
With the outlet unplugged,
we've now fit this paper clip into the hot side,
and now, we're going to plug it back in,
and do some more testing on it.
Not by grabbing it though.
Let's take our voltmeter, and check this again.
So again, we're going to have one connected to the neutral,
and the other one,
we're going to touch to our paper clip,
which is now extended out.
So this paper clip is now hot.
And by hot, I don't mean temperature, it's warm.
I mean, that it has electricity ready to flow right through it.
123 flowing through that paper cup right there.
Now, I'm not quite dumb
enough to just grab straight on to that,
but we have some hot dogs,
which have a similar moisture and sodium content to people.
And we're going to see what happens
if we connect hot dogs to both of these wires.
So, he's putting on a much thicker,
much more insulated gloves for this.
Okay.
So now, we're going to see if anything happens
with this hot dog touching to both of these paper clips.
Oh!
That is sparking and that is burning.
Yeah, I don't know about, you guys,
but I like my fingers more than that.
So that would,
that would be your fingers right there.
Yeah, it almost has a smell of burning hair.
That's actually what this reminds of.
Probably the casing around the hot dog.
So, you may see this and think well, I mean,
I get that it's shocking and it's burning a little bit,
but that doesn't look like that bad of an injury.
So, if you just left a hot dog sitting
on this for like 10 minutes, would you have a cooked hot dog?
At least, partially.
Right now, we've got the lead so close together
that they're not going to cook most of the hot dog.
It's just going to travel the shortest path from
where it's touching.
But now, I'm going to see what happens
if I actually try and to stab it onto the paper clips.
[Music]
>> I think-- >> Yeah...
I don't think you want that on your skin.
I think you made it angry.
Oh, boy.
Did I ever?
Oh, no.
That smells awful.
Okay, that's not the smell of burning meat, guys.
That smell of like melting acrylic and burned hair.
That's terrible.
This like carved a hole into the hot dog,
and completely blackened out that paper clip.
So with the hot dogs,
it just takes a little bit of contact,
and you can see it starts burning.
However, there is a bigger concern with people.
When electricity flows through muscles on a person,
they actually are activated.
They seized up, and they contract.
Hot dogs don't have a lot of muscles going on in them.
In fact, I'd go ahead and say no...
None muscle.
No connected, active muscles inside a hot dog.
People, however, are full of them,
and it takes only as
little as 0.005 of a volt to make the muscles start spasming.
This is much more than that.
This is 120,
about 123, actually, volts running through this.
So, if you were to accidentally touch this,
then your muscles
could seize up, grab the paper clips even harder,
and maybe pull you in so that you can't let go,
and then the electricity keeps flowing through you
with no other path.
It's just going to go through you until something
breaks that circuit.
So, we've seen
what our finger analog does if it comes in contact
with both the hot and the neutral leads at the same time.
All right, so I want us to try
and actually bend one of these paper clips,
and see if we
can complete that circuit without using a second one.
When I say "we",
I meant I was going to make Nate do it.
Now, I'm going to be wearing a thick rubber glove,
I have rubber-soled shoes,
and the paperclip should conduct electricity very well.
So this paper clip will be the path of least resistance.
This should mean
that electricity isn't flowing into me, especially,
because this is a pretty good, sturdy rubber glove,
and I really think it's going to do a good job.
Let's plug this in,
and see what a paperclip does in the hot and neutral.
Well, definitely, got a lot of sparks out of that.
Well...
Got a lot more sparks out of that.
You were making...
Wow!
>> That went-- >> Staying very connected.
Oh, did the light turn off?
Oh, the light just turned off.
Okay, so we had lights plugged in all around the studio,
and that second time there where it sparked,
they all turned off.
So I'm pretty sure that means we've now tripped the breaker,
which is what we were hoping would happen.
That's what the breaker is designed for.
And you can see now, this is still in there,
and nothing's happening, no more sparks, it's not hot,
and all the lights are off.
So, we need to find the circuit breaker.
Should be this switch.
You can see how this,
for example, this doesn't move that direction at all.
This one however, can click that way.
That means it's tripped.
So what we do is we switch it back to off,
and then the paper clip is not in there anymore, is it?
Nope.
I'm checking.
You're good.
That should have fixed it.
We've got our outlet unplugged
again after successfully tripping the breaker
with our paper clip a couple of times.
The next thing we're going to try is fitting our paper clip
into the hot lead side of the outlet,
and then, touching it to the grounded screw
in the middle of the outlet.
We're going to see if we get the same reaction to that
as we did with the neutral side of the outlet.
Yep.
That tripped the breaker again.
Whoo.
Wow.
Yep.
That zaps it pretty good.
There's just burn marks all around the screw now.
Something that I think is important to note.
When we had the paperclip connecting the circuit,
it sparked a lot,
but the breaker tripped, it turned off.
When we had the hot dog connecting the two paper clips,
it wasn't flowing enough to trip the breaker.
That's probably the same thing
that would happen with your fingers.
The electricity would flow, it would burn,
it would cause your muscles to contract and seize,
but it probably isn't going to trip the breaker,
which means...
>> It's gonna keep hurting. >> You're in trouble.
Yeah, it's gonna keep going.
You've heard the story
of the kid who puts a fork in the socket and gets shocked.
So we've got a paperclip stuck into the neutral side,
and we're going to do some tests with a fork
and a couple of knives, and see
if we can complete that circuit using those.
Right now, it's not plugged in,
but can a fork fit in there enough to make contact
with the leads?
Or is it too big and broad?
How about the two knives we've got?
We're going to try it with all them.
Let's try butter knife first.
Well, first problem immediately,
and I don't think there's any way to wiggle or fine angled
that into actually make it.
So let's try our fork next.
[Music]
I don't think that's going to go either.
I don't think there's any way to touch that hot wire.
Last utensil we're going to try,
I think we might have some success with this one
given the angle.
You do jump.
I told you.
Look at that.
So this where the paperclip touched our knife.
Zap.
So with this fork and table knife,
it wouldn't fit into the outlet.
It would not.
So, I'm thinking
that this butter knife was just too rounded to actually
touch the hot wire,
and for this fork, those tines are just too thick.
I'm sure if somebody
was very determined and had a thinner fork,
they could make it work.
This particular fork is just very sturdy.
We want to be clear
that just because we weren't able to fit this fork
and this knife in this outlet does not mean it's safe.
It doesn't mean you should try it.
You should not try to do it.
That's the whole point we're trying to make.
We're not putting this to the test
for you to put this to the test.
We're showing you why not to do this.
Yeah.
So, what happens when you stick a paper clip in an outlet?
Burns, shocks, sparks.
Tripping the breaker.
So overall, not a good plan,
but it's fun to show what happens
because you always hear,
and now, you can see why you don't want to do that.
Instead, if you want to see something explode,
download War Thunder using our link in the description below.
Remember that you can receive a free bonus for registering,
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