Electricity takes the easiest path

Some time ago, a nearby lightning strike blew out my ADSL modem

https://heyrick.eu/blog/index.php?diary=20120905

Will check back tomorrow

https://heyrick.eu/blog/files/vonets_pre001.zip

Your Deadbox seems to have retained the components on the board. My router was a neat plastic box with some loose bits inside and the remnants of a PCB, the PVR was dead too but looked fine if you ignored the rattling sound due to the PSU components that shattered around the innards.
Oh, and the Iyonix ethernet interface joined other devices on the other side of the Styx, while I merely had a bit of a twinge in my arm and mouse hand.

Your Deadbox seems to have retained the components on the board.

Quote from linked article:

The girl on the phone told me I had to plug in the Livebox to tell her what indicators were on and/or off. I said I can’t, it doesn’t work. She told me I must. I told her I am a programmer so I have some technical knowledge, and I can assure that it does not work. She told me to plug it in anyway. I said “listen please” and shook it. There’s a component (looks like a capacitor, I didn’t open the box) rattling around inside.
Ah.
Je comprende.

The Livephone’s transmitter (USB) was an expanded mass (popped caps?) and the telephone was also toast. The rotary dial phone just shrugged it off. ;)

No computers were injured. None were active and on at the time, and for good reason (as this amply demonstrates), I don’t have anything hooked up using wired Ethernet (except the Pi 1 nowadays but that’s because it’s in the same room or outdoors).

Thankfully the thunderstorms that have passed in the last couple of years have been mostly angry clouds and not so many ground strikes
I say this because on the incoming side, that cannot be turned off, and is before the spark arrestor in the master trip switch, is a smart meter. A computerised circuit board. I would be very surprised if that could withstand a nearby strike.
The old 1968 spinning disc meter? Kept on marching through a direct strike to the overhead bare conductors ¹ that fed the house. To put this into context, it exploded several lightbulbs and the thunder cracked one of the panes of glass in the front window.

¹ Part of the smart meter rollout ² has been to tear down all those bare wires that were thrown up in a hurry in the sixties. Why? They’re absolute lighting magnets and they leak like crazy. I had only half a kilometre or so and when running the fridge and the kettle my 230V would be more like 195V.
Now it’s a bundle of four insulted wires twisted around each other. I have about the same length, but hooked up to the top of the road now instead of to an ex farm in the next town over, and I’ve just measured 232V. The lights no longer dim dramatically when I turn the kettle on!

² Unlike in the UK, this was not optional and, with the exception of some very specific circumstances, you couldn’t opt out. My meter reports use at the end of the day. I have refused consent for periodic (hourly?) reporting. By and large it’s “just a box on the wall”. I no longer have to wait around (or take a day off) for the meter reader, and my billing is accurate and not based upon inflated estimates. I am billed every two months and the meter reader used to come twice a year (summer and winter). It also means I can get a fairly accurate VA reading to see what’s on. There’s the standard TIC port on the meter, one of these days I might hook an ESP8266 up to it…some details in English (but like Minitel’s serial port, they don’t make it easy!).

Now it’s a bundle of four insulted wires twisted around each other.

:)
I hate you, twisted little stringy bar stewards….

Oh, <sigh> automangle strikes again…

automangle strikes again

I have a different label, starts with auto but then bol…

Automew, you mean…

Yup. You can rely upon swipe-type to mew it up…

automangle strikes again…

My tablet now freely offers up “auto-miscorrect” from its dictionary, saving me much effort apologising over WhatsApp, which I use on the tablet despite it being “linked” to my ’phone!

Should point out, having just read the topic text, that electricity actually takes every path. It’s just that the primary current flow takes the path of least resistance.

For instance, two wires hooked between the mains and a lightbulb. Plug it in, turn it on, the bulb lights up. An incandescent bulb, if you can still find one, is about 10 ohms.

Now are you willing to take yourself, stand barefoot on the floor, hold one end of a 1000 ohm resistor and touch the other end to the live wire?

The only answer is no. Best case scenario, you’ll get a shock. Other scenario, you’ll no longer care what nincompoop is mismanaging the country.

[in case anybody missed the obvious sarcasm – DO NOT TRY THIS]

Because even though the bulb is a lower resistance and all the current is going there, adding yourself to the circuit – even with a higher resistance – will still dump some of that current through your soft biological bits, that don’t tend to appreciate such things happening.

Sadly, outside of the quantum world, there’s no magical mystery of “how” electricity is able to determine the best path. It doesn’t. Think of it like interconnected sewer pipes. The current begins flowing through all of the pipes, but some are clogged so very little or practically no current passes there. Instead, it all flows where there’s no impediment. But everywhere else is still energised.

An incandescent bulb, if you can still find one, is about 10 ohms.

Errrmmm… 10 ohms across the mains? That’ll draw 23 amps, that is, it’s a 5kW incandescent bulb you’ve got there…

(Your incandescent bulb might be 10 ohms cold, as measured with an ohmmeter pushing a couple of volts at it. Put 240V on it and it gets hot, and UP goes its resistance.)

(An incandescent bulb for a 12V system might be 10 ohms when hot. That would be a more reasonable 14W, maybe a tail light.)

it’s a 5kW incandescent bulb you’ve got there…

;)

Yup, measured cold.

Point still stands though – electricity takes every path, but current flows through the easiest.

Point still stands though

Very Definitely!

Unfortunately, with an open circuit discharge resistor, I was the only significant path to earth from a big colour CRT at MicroVitec once. A story you may have heard before…

Fortunately, I survived – although whether it (among other events) has anything to do with my cardiac arrhythmia & bradycardia, that I’ve had as long as I can remember & for which I’m going to get a pacemaker NEXT TUESDAY (wish me luck…) who knows?

but current flows through the easiest

but more current flows through the easiest

Sadly, outside of the quantum world, there’s no magical mystery of “how” electricity is able to determine the best path. It doesn’t. Think of it like interconnected sewer pipes. The current begins flowing through all of the pipes, but some are clogged so very little or practically no current passes there. Instead, it all flows where there’s no impediment. But everywhere else is still energised.

As a former Physics teacher I can tell you that is a really bad analogy. It really pains me. ;-(

that is a really bad analogy.

True. Poop moves down the pipes. Electrons don’t move down the wire. Some would have it that “electricity” actually travels round the outside of the wire, but we’re back to mindscrewey quantum stuff again. ;)

It really pains me. ;-(

Feel free to supply an analogy that is less sh<cough>…

A very easy to follow full “lesson” here maybe? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHIhgxav9LY

A very easy to follow full “lesson” here maybe? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHIhgxav9LY

That’s a very interesting “lesson” indeed, but easy to follow? The good thing is that I now know that the way I always thought that current flows, is completely wrong. The bad thing is that I now no longer understand a bit of it.

Try teaching that to a group of bored 13-year olds on a Friday afternoon!

But the relevant thing to take from it for this topic is that the charge carriers (electrons) hardly move. Flowing fluid models of circuits fail pretty quickly as soon as you try to extend them.

The bad thing is that I now no longer understand a bit of it.

Wait until you get into the edges of the quantum world. Current doesn’t flow, reality bends itself around the wire. ;)
But don’t dive too deep. It’s a one way route where you’ll rapidly release you’re messing with Cthulhu.

Flowing fluid models of circuits fail pretty quickly as soon as you try to extend them.

Yup, I did acknowledge that. But “poop-in-a-pipe” works as an easy (if deeply flawed) analogy of current flowing in every path, not just the easy one.

a group of bored 13-year olds on a Friday afternoon!

How the hell can physics be boring? Granted, you don’t get to blow stuff up like in chemistry, but on the other hand you don’t have to remember a load of crap like molecular weights that you’ll never ever use again in your life.
Physics gives you lots of useful practical things to remember. And iron fillings on a piece of paper over top of a speaker coil. Plug that into Nightwish, crank the volume up, and watch those babies dance…. 😎
(plus, come on, Van de Graff, and it’s not the wiggly hair, it’s getting a good charge and then discharging it into the person you like least, preferably a sensitive area, if you catch my drift)

But don’t dive too deep. It’s a one way route where you’ll

end up writing RO keyboard code?

I don’t appear to have a “spits tea across the room” emoji…

But that does suggest that the keyboard handler may contain quantum uncertainty. Is that why it can’t tell the difference between Shift-Up and PageUp?

The easiest path for electricity in my house is through the meter!!!

The easiest path for electricity in my house is through the meter!!!

That’s what you’d like the electricity board to believe anyway. Methinks the Tank do protest suspiciously much…

I’m going to get a pacemaker NEXT TUESDAY

Good luck Clive, and remember you’ll have to stay away from electricity and strong magnets afterwards.

for which I’m going to get a pacemaker NEXT TUESDAY (wish me luck…) who knows?

Best of luck Clive!