Poll of the Day > Fire vs. Electricity

(+) Yeah! (+)

PikachuMaxwell posted...

I'm a Fire Tiger according to the Chinese Zodiac

I'm a Fire Dragon, but I'd still probably go with Lightning.

If you're a fictional character with magic, lightning tends to give you more fine control than fire does, and with lightning you can usually blast your enemies without having to worry about setting everything else on fire. With lightning you can also theoretically go low-power and stun rather than kill, whereas fire really doesn't have much of a stun setting.

Plus, I know which of these two I'm relating to more:

https://youtu.be/-vLCzkaSStk?t=34
https://youtu.be/PqaiKmm8gsY?t=85

electricity is just different fire

i am apparently a metal goat

do i get to choose the metal

can i be mercury

ConfusedTorchic posted...

i am apparently a metal goat

do i get to choose the metal

can i be mercury

Based on anime, that probably means you have laser powers.

Or axe powers.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'm a Fire Dragon, but I'd still probably go with Lightning.

If you're a fictional character with magic, lightning tends to give you more fine control than fire does, and with lightning you can usually blast your enemies without having to worry about setting everything else on fire. With lightning you can also theoretically go low-power and stun rather than kill, whereas fire really doesn't have much of a stun setting.

Plus, I know which of these two I'm relating to more:

https://youtu.be/-vLCzkaSStk?t=34
https://youtu.be/PqaiKmm8gsY?t=85

Ah, interesting analysis and response! Good reasoning!

Electricity can easily create fire.

Fire can also create electricity, but it requires a lot more equipment.

Jupiter was always better than Mars

zhangliao1 posted...

Jupiter was always better than Mars

This is an excellent and accurate point.

(Fun Fact: Jupiter's element is actually Wood. Anime doesn't always interpret Asian elements literally.)

liquid metal laser axe goat

Electricity creates fire, so...

electricity fucking terrifies me, even after i've taken multiple college classes on how it works (in fact i think welding made my fear WORSE)

fire's pretty bad too but electricity is like, ohko

agesboy posted...

electricity fucking terrifies me, even after i've taken multiple college classes on how it works (in fact i think welding made my fear WORSE)

fire's pretty bad too but electricity is like, ohko

Not a bad phobia. Better than being afraid of something stupid or made up, like tripophobia.

On the back of one of the machines at my work is a big fat capacitor that could just kill you even if you unplug it. Your average person would think it's safe to touch.

Fire, just for its raw, chaotic damage even when it does offer no other secondary effect.

Lightning is cooler then fire.

Yellow posted...

On the back of one of the machines at my work is a big fat capacitor that could just kill you even if you unplug it. Your average person would think it's safe to touch.

Heck, the same is true of home microwaves. I had one die recently in a way that made me suspect a fuse blew, so I looked up how/if it was possible to change a microwave fuse. The first step was "This is super dangerous seriously just call an electrician but if you insist on doing it anyway here's how," followed by like 90% of the procedure being everything you have to set up to be able to safely discharge the capacitor. Needless to say, I opted to just get the landlord to replace it.

adjl posted...

Heck, the same is true of home microwaves. I had one die recently in a way that made me suspect a fuse blew, so I looked up how/if it was possible to change a microwave fuse. The first step was "This is super dangerous seriously just call an electrician but if you insist on doing it anyway here's how," followed by like 90% of the procedure being everything you have to set up to be able to safely discharge the capacitor. Needless to say, I opted to just get the landlord to replace it.

Oh yeah microwave transformers are used often in DIY projects and get people killed all the time. It's pretty irresponsible to promote using them to the general population.

I find it kind of badly designed? Capacitors should discharge themselves on shutting off?

Yellow posted...

I find it kind of badly designed? Capacitors should discharge themselves on shutting off?

I think they do, it just takes a long time for a capacitor of that size to fully discharge, and that means there's a dangerous amount of energy left in it. It's not a design flaw so much as an inherent limitation of how the physics of electricity work. I expect that to discharge it faster than that (without going through the process of connecting a dozen heavily insulated things to various grounds before shorting it), the microwave would have to have a process you could activate to block it from charging while still being plugged in, then have the microwave run until it mostly drained. You'd have to do that before unplugging the microwave, but theoretically it would be safer.

In practice, though, I don't know that you could guarantee that such a process would actually discharge the capacitor enough to eliminate the risk, so for liability reasons it's probably better and definitely easier for manufacturers to just not offer the option and instead give a blanket advisory to have an electrician service your microwave instead of DIYing it. As it stands now, they say not to do it, so that puts the onus on anyone who does want to do it to research it themselves and figure out how to do it safely and absolves the manufacturer of the responsibility.