What Happens if You Stick a Fork in an Outlet?
Today's video is sponsoredby War Thunder.
Today, we're putting a commonhousehold hazard to the test.
We are going to see what happens if you stick a paperclipinto 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 beenextended from the wall outlet.
This is a normal outlet.
It has all the same insides and parts and workings and wiresas the outlets in your wall.
The only difference is it'sa lot easier to get to here on the desk.
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So let's take a look atwhat's inside an outlet.
And again, thisis the same thing that's going oninside your wall.
This is just kind ofa slick little packaging for it.
Other than that, it's exactly the same.
So you can see that the three wireshere actually connect with the three differentparts of the socket.
So you've actually gota ground, a neutral, and a hot, and they all connectwith the different wires.
In the United States, ground is either goingto be bare copper, or with a greencovering over it.
Neutral is white, and the hot wire, the one where electricitycomes in, is black.
Those connect onto our outlet.
Usually, in an outletin the United States, where you attach the hot wiresis going to have gold screws, and where you attachthe neutral wire is going to have silver screws.
In this case, they've also useda green screw to show where the ground attaches.
The ground isan emergency backup wire.
It's in casesomething goes wrong.
If too muchelectricity flows through, or if somethinggets physically broken, the ground is thereto make sure that any wire flowing through the hot get sentinto the safe ground spot, because it's not goingto be flowing correctly through the neutral wire.
So now, you've seenwhat's inside the outlet.
We have the three differentwires that each corresponds to the three holesin the plug face.
This bottom one that's shaped kindof like an archway, that's the ground wire.
All of the electricity is comingin through the hot wire.
That's the smallerhole on the right.
The other two holes arethe neutral and the ground, and that's wherethe electricity goes back out.
To get alternatingcurrent to work, it needs to becompleting this path, and it only comes from one sideand goes out the other side.
So now, we want to find outexactly what's going to happen if we start sticking bitsof 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 happenswhen they all meet.
We've got a voltmeter, and we can use itto test the voltage running through this outlet.
We'll attach one leadinto the hot and one lead into the neutral, and then, we can alsoattach to the ground, and we should getthe same result.
We're seeing about 122.
9, and we are in the United States, where usually that'sputting out about 120.
So that lines up pretty nicely.
If a person were to get 15 amps runningthrough them at 120 volts, that could stop your heart.
It's really, actually, a dangerous amountof electricity.
So, is this somethingthat can happen to you just by sticking a paperclipin the outlet? So, in the neutral, we get a reading of 123.
If we put the leadin the ground, the exact samereading, 123 volts.
Is a paperclip goingto complete a circuit? Well, it's possible.
Here's the thing youhave to keep in mind.
If the paper clip isin the hot side of the outlet, there is electricityflowing into it, but electricity isn'tgoing to flow unless it can go somewhere.
With a neutral and ground, that allows thecircuit to complete.
If the paperclipis touching nothing, then a circuitis not going anywhere.
It's not complete, and electricity is not goingto flow through it.
However, you could be grounded.
Currently, I'm wearingshoes with rubber soles and rubber gloves, but they are kind ofthin rubber gloves, and I don't know exactlyhow conductive my shoes are.
So it's possible that if I put thisinto the hot side of the outlet, it would zap me.
Although, I do feel fairly safeputting it into the neutral and the ground side, and I'm even gonna trythat right now.
It doesn't seem to bedoing anything to me.
I'm not feeling it.
Ground.
Neutral.
Nothing's reallyhappening there.
With the outlet unplugged, we've now fit this paper clipinto the hot side, and now, we're goingto 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 haveone connected to the neutral, and the other one, we're going to touchto our paper clip, which is now extended out.
So this paper clip is now hot.
And by hot, I don't meantemperature, it's warm.
I mean, that it has electricityready to flow right through it.
123 flowing throughthat paper cup right there.
Now, I'm not quite dumb enough to just grabstraight on to that, but we have some hot dogs, which have a similar moistureand sodium content to people.
And we're goingto see what happens if we connect hot dogsto both of these wires.
So, he's puttingon a much thicker, much more insulatedgloves for this.
Okay.
So now, we're going to seeif anything happens with this hot dog touchingto both of these paper clips.
Oh! That is sparkingand that is burning.
Yeah, I don't knowabout, you guys, but I like my fingersmore than that.
So that would, that would beyour fingers right there.
Yeah, it almost hasa smell of burning hair.
That's actually whatthis reminds of.
Probably the casingaround the hot dog.
So, you may see thisand think well, I mean, I get that it's shockingand it's burning a little bit, but that doesn't looklike that bad of an injury.
So, if you just lefta hot dog sitting on this for like 10 minutes, would you have a cooked hot dog? At least, partially.
Right now, we've gotthe lead so close together that they're not goingto cook most of the hot dog.
It's just going to travelthe shortest path from where it's touching.
But now, I'm goingto see what happens if I actually try and to stab itonto the paper clips.
[Music] >> I think–>> Yeah.
.
.
I don't think you wantthat on your skin.
I think you made it angry.
Oh, boy.
Did I ever? Oh, no.
That smells awful.
Okay, that's not the smellof burning meat, guys.
That smell of like meltingacrylic and burned hair.
That's terrible.
This like carved a holeinto the hot dog, and completely blackenedout that paper clip.
So with the hot dogs, it just takesa little bit of contact, and you can seeit starts burning.
However, there isa bigger concern with people.
When electricity flowsthrough muscles on a person, they actually are activated.
They seized up, and they contract.
Hot dogs don't have a lotof muscles going on in them.
In fact, I'd goahead and say no.
.
.
None muscle.
No connected, active musclesinside a hot dog.
People, however, are full of them, and it takes only as little as 0.
005 of a volt tomake the muscles start spasming.
This is much more than that.
This is 120, about 123, actually, volts running through this.
So, if you wereto accidentally touch this, then your muscles could seize up, grabthe paper clips even harder, and maybe pull you inso that you can't let go, and then the electricitykeeps flowing through you with no other path.
It's just going to gothrough you until something breaks that circuit.
So, we've seen what our finger analog doesif it comes in contact with both the hot and theneutral leads at the same time.
All right, so I want us to try and actually bend oneof these paper clips, and see if we can complete that circuitwithout using a second one.
When I say “we”, I meant I was goingto make Nate do it.
Now, I'm going to be wearinga thick rubber glove, I have rubber-soled shoes, and the paperclip should conductelectricity very well.
So this paper clip will bethe path of least resistance.
This should mean that electricity isn't flowinginto me, especially, because this is a pretty good, sturdy rubber glove, and I really thinkit's going to do a good job.
Let's plug this in, and see what a paperclip doesin the hot and neutral.
Well, definitely, got a lot of sparks out of that.
Well.
.
.
Got a lotmore 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 pluggedin all around the studio, and that second time therewhere it sparked, they all turned off.
So I'm pretty sure that meanswe've now tripped the breaker, which is what wewere hoping would happen.
That's what the breakeris 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 findthe circuit breaker.
Should be this switch.
You can see how this, for example, this doesn't movethat direction at all.
This one however, can click that way.
That means it's tripped.
So what we do iswe switch it back to off, and then the paper clip isnot 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 successfullytripping the breaker with our paper clipa couple of times.
The next thing we're goingto try is fitting our paper clip into the hot lead sideof the outlet, and then, touching itto the grounded screw in the middle of the outlet.
We're going to see if we getthe same reaction to that as we did with the neutralside of the outlet.
Yep.
That tripped the breaker again.
Whoo.
Wow.
Yep.
That zaps it pretty good.
There's just burn marks allaround the screw now.
Something that Ithink is important to note.
When we had the paperclipconnecting the circuit, it sparked a lot, but the breaker tripped, it turned off.
When we had the hot dogconnecting the two paper clips, it wasn't flowing enoughto trip the breaker.
That's probably the same thing that would happenwith your fingers.
The electricity would flow, it would burn, it would cause your musclesto contract and seize, but it probably isn't goingto 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 forkin the socket and gets shocked.
So we've got a paperclip stuckinto the neutral side, and we're going to dosome tests with a fork and a couple of knives, and see if we can completethat circuit using those.
Right now, it's not plugged in, but can a fork fit in thereenough to make contact with the leads? Or is it too big and broad? How about the twoknives we've got? We're going to tryit with all them.
Let's try butter knife first.
Well, first problem immediately, and I don't think there'sany way to wiggle or fine angled that into actually make it.
So let's try our fork next.
[Music] I don't thinkthat's going to go either.
I don't think there's any wayto touch that hot wire.
Last utensil we're going to try, I think we might havesome success with this one given the angle.
You do jump.
I told you.
Look at that.
So this where the papercliptouched our knife.
Zap.
So with this forkand table knife, it wouldn't fit into the outlet.
It would not.
So, I'm thinking that this butter knife wasjust 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 determinedand had a thinner fork, they could make it work.
This particular forkis just very sturdy.
We want to be clear that just because weweren't able to fit this fork and this knife in this outletdoes not mean it's safe.
It doesn't meanyou should try it.
You should not try to do it.
That's the whole pointwe're trying to make.
We're not puttingthis to the test for you to put this to the test.
We're showing youwhy not to do this.
Yeah.
So, what happens when you sticka paper clip in an outlet? Burns, shocks, sparks.
Tripping the breaker.
So overall, not a good plan, but it's funto show what happens because you always hear, and now, you can see whyyou don't want to do that.
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