Editing 2848: Breaker Box

A {{w|distribution board}}, referred to as a "breaker box" here and also commonly referred to as a "fuse box", "breaker panel", "DB box", and many other names, is a metal box attached to a wall inside a building, usually in some maintenance area, containing several {{w|circuit breakers}} that let power through to various parts of the building. A circuit breaker is an electrical switch, usually in the form of a small lever, that will physically open if too much power is flowing through, as might be the case if a fault occurs, in order to prevent fires and protect appliances.

In most breaker boxes, each individual breaker is labeled to let the operator know what that specific breaker controls. A breaker will usually control something like the outlets or lights in a certain room, or some large appliance.  

However, in houses that have been rewired multiple times (or are poorly wired), this can quickly become overcomplicated with seemingly random connections. Randall lives in Boston where much of the housing stock is from the late 1800s or early 1900s, and he is likely to live in a house with non-ideal wiring, which may have inspired this comic.

The comic satirizes these complex wiring setups, with multiple breakers "controlling" arbitrary things, including some that -- in the classic style of XKCD -- may be impossible to hook a breaker up to, getting progressively more absurd to the point of disabling certain laws of physics.

===Table of the breakers labels===

! Label next to breaker !! Explanation

| Kitchen Lights || The lights in the kitchen.

This kind of situation can occur if an electrician – while adding wiring – chooses to wire seemingly logically unrelated things to the same circuit because it's convient/sensible for her to do so. This can mystify future homeowners who don't know the wiring history.

| North-facing appliances || colspan="2"|Difficult, but not theoretically impossible. Presumably this house has:

#a smart wiring system that knows which outlets control which appliances, and can toggle all outlets,

#all appliances with magnetic compasses that report their orientation to the smart home controler, and

#this breaker is not a simple power on/off but can selectively disable only north-facing appliances.

* The switch may be physically wired only to outlets installed on a southern wall in the property (or ''all'' southern walls, for each room that requires them), with the presumption that everything connected to these exclusively north-facing outlets also faces directly away from the wall(s).

* It could mean the appliances on the north-facing walls of the house.  

Note: "North-facing" has broad interpretation, as lax as northeast to northwest or as strict as {{w|Points of the compass#32-wind compass rose|north by east to north by west}}.

| Bathtub drain light || colspan="2"|Bathtub drains typically do not have lights, but this breaker provides power to that and only that. Why it isn't already considered a "bathroom light" is unexplained (unless it's for the bit of the pipe that is ''external'' to that room).

| Appliances whose names contain the letter "F" || colspan="2"|Also difficult but not theoretically impossible. Similar to "North-facing appliances," this would require a smart wiring system that can detect the official names of appliances plugged into each outlet, and the ability of this breaker switch to selectively toggle certain outlets. (Typical electrical systems do not carry data about names, for starters.)

Some common household appliances that this switch might control:

| Hot water heater || Usually just a heater that creates (and typically stores) hot water. But given that the next breaker controls the "Regular water heater", this breaker might actually control a water heater that pointlessly heats water that is ''already'' hot.  

<br/>This is probably a joke about the fact that the common phrase "hot water heater" is [[technically]] redundant or misleading:

* Redundant because the simpler term "water heater" is enough to describe a device that produces hot water

* Misleading because it's not the purpose of residential water heaters to heat water that is ''already'' hot).

| Regular water heater || The heater for regular water. Together with the switch above, this presumes it's for a heater for heating water that is not yet hot (usually called a "hot water heater", hence the joke).

| Outlets in rooms that it's normal to eat pizza in || colspan="2"|This controls every outlet in rooms that it's normal to eat pizza in, such as the dining room and kitchen and – depending on the "normal" habits of the inhabitants – other rooms such as the bedroom, bathroom, or living room (if not already covered by the "living room lights" switch above).

| High-pitched hum generator || colspan="2"|Controls a high-pitched hum generator. This is a call-back to [[1590: The Source]].

| The solution to the cryptogram below: || colspan="2"|Likely a pun on "breaking" or solving a cryptogram, which is a puzzle where a sentence has been encoded using a cipher, usually simple, and the goal is to determine the cipher and recover the original sentence from the encoded one.

Another explanation is that this switch enables or disables the solution somehow, perhaps toggling its knowability or solvability.

* Disable all insect bugs in the house – as an efficient form of pest control – perhaps using ultrasonic emitters that drive away bugs. May be a reference to [[2753: Air Handler]].

* Disable the whole global category of bugs (insects, arachnids, and other small arthropods), in which case we'd have no more pests and we'd reduce disease likes malaria and {{w|Lyme disease}}. Food webs would also collapse, and our world would be overrun with waste.

<br />Though it's unlikely that it's what Randall is referring to, computer bugs switches actually exist. It's a feature in some video game emulators to either run an unofficial patched version or to stay true to the original system, for example to allow bug-exploit speedruns of a video game.

| A whirring fan you didn't realize was on until now || colspan="2"|The AC in a building usually creates quiet white noise from fans, which people usually do not hear until they become aware that there is a sound. Other appliances, such as refrigerators or home servers, can have similar effects.

| Dishwasher || colspan="2"|The dishwasher.

| Dishes || colspan="2"|Traditionally, dishes cannot be turned off, as they do not normally require electricity. "Dishes" could be the label for a dishwasher on another house's breaker box, but this one already used that label. Another, unlikely explanation is that this switch controls two or more satellite dishes.

| Hallway lights || The lights in the hallway or hallways.

| Hallway outlets || The outlets in the hallway or hallways.

| Hallway floors || This breaker has several potential interpretations:

#A master switch for all floors (storeys) in the building which include hallways, e.g. the guestroom areas in a hotel, whilst possibly excluding the lobby and service levels

#Electrification of the floors -- not common outside of horror and heist movies.

#Disabling all floors entirely, so everything resting on the floors falls through.

| Social media || colspan="2"|This breaker also has several potential interpretations of "turning off social media":

#'Digital detoxes', where someone says "I'm going to turn off my social media" and intends to deny themselves access to all their social media apps.

#A callback to [[908: The Cloud]]. Since most social media platforms are centralized services, it would be theoretically possible to hook up a switch to the main power supply of every server building at once, given some extremely long wires, a breaker capable of handling the abhorrently massive electric load, and agreement from every social media provider^{<i>([[1439|optional]])</i>}.

| State law || Likely a pun on "State Law Breaker."

Taken literally, it would either disable enforcement of State Law or nullify every single one, creating a state of martial law similar to the premise of the popular movie, "The Purge". It's unclear if this refers to Randall's state of Massachusetts or State Law as a general concept.

| Federal law || Likely a pun on "Federal Law Breaker," though it could also be taken literally, as above. The ramifications of nullifying every US Federal law are immense. Disabling Federal Law while keeping State Law would theoretically fulfill the goals of the "States Rights" advocates, groups of conservatives across US history aiming to return Federal power to the States.

| Second law of thermodynamics || The Second Law of Thermodynamics, in simple terms, states that the total entropy (or disorder) of an isolated system can only increase over time. It's a fundamental principle that dictates the direction of energy flow and the feasibility of many processes, and provides an arrow of time.

*'''Perpetual Motion Machines''': Machines that can do work indefinitely without an energy source would become possible, defying our current understanding of energy conservation.

*'''Reversibility of Processes''': Many natural processes that are irreversible under current laws could be reversed. For instance, melted ice could spontaneously turn back into a solid without energy removal.

*'''Recycling Energy''': We could theoretically use the same quantum of energy over and over again, leading to ultra-efficient systems and potentially solving many of the world's energy problems.

*'''End Life as We Know It:''' All living organisms rely on the second law for crucial processes, including metabolism and reproduction. If the second law were negated, life, at least as we understand it, might not be possible.

*'''No Heat Engines:''' Engines rely on the flow of heat from hotter to colder bodies. Without the Second Law, our cars, power plants, refrigerators, and many other devices would not function.

*'''Breakdown of Molecular Processes:''' Molecules spontaneously move from areas of higher to lower concentration due to entropy. Without this, diffusion, osmosis, and many biochemical reactions wouldn't occur as they currently do.

*'''Loss of Directionality:''' One interpretation of the Second Law provides a directionality to time (the so-called "arrow of time"). Without it, causality and our understanding of past, present, and future could be fundamentally altered.

<br />This law of physics was also explored in the What If? article [https://what-if.xkcd.com/145/ Fire From Moonlight].

| Friction || Friction is the resistive force that opposes the relative motion or tendency of such motion of two surfaces in contact. Turning it off has some upsides and downsides.

*'''Perpetual Motion Machines:''' Without friction, once an object starts moving, it would continue indefinitely unless acted upon by another force. This could lead to perpetual motion machines that could generate energy.

*'''No Manual Dexterity:''' Holding, grabbing, or manipulating objects would be impossible. Even simple tasks like holding a glass or writing with a pen would be out of reach.

*'''Catastrophic Mechanical Failures:''' Many machines rely on friction to function. Brakes in cars, for instance, use friction to slow down and stop the vehicle. Without it, uncontrollable accidents would occur.

*'''No Sound:''' Friction between air molecules creates sound waves. Without friction, the world would be silent.

*'''No Fire:''' Fire relies on friction for its creation, such as when striking a match. The absence of friction would mean no traditional methods of starting a fire.

*'''Collisions:''' Objects, once set in motion, would continue to move until they hit something, leading to a myriad of unpredictable and uncontrollable collisions.

<br />Being in a frictionless environment (and a vacuum, as physicists love...) was the subject of [[669: Experiment]].

| Gravity || Gravity is a natural force that attracts two bodies toward each other, proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.

Turning off gravity would have some advantages and disadvantages.

* '''Flight''': Without gravity, every leap could turn into a flight. We could push off surfaces and float effortlessly through the air.

* '''Loss of Atmosphere and Oceans''': Without gravity, Earth's atmosphere would dissipate into space, and water from oceans, rivers, and lakes would float away, making life as we know it impossible.

* '''Unanchored Chaos''': Everything not fixed to the ground, including people, animals, vehicles, <!--trees, *ummm... anchored, surely!*-->and foundationless structures, could become airborne, causing massive destruction and chaos.

* '''Disruption of Celestial Order''': Earth would no longer orbit the Sun, the Moon would drift away rather quickly, and the structural integrity of the universe, including galaxies and solar systems, would be jeopardized.

* '''Aggregation Absence''': Stars, galaxies, and basically anything in space requires gravity to form. Without gravity, no stars, planets, or meteors would form ever again.

Of course, if this switch is turned off, it may simply mean that objects within the house itself are no longer subject to gravity. This would be '''''far''''' less cataclysmic, and as a bonus, this would make it much, much easier to move around the house, get to higher areas, and move objects, but could prove to cause some problems once the breaker is turned back on, especially for the floor.

| Circuit breakers || colspan="2"|If this was turned off, it would presumably turn off the functionality of the circuit breaker itself. Practically, it would turn of all power in the house since no breaker is supplied or supplying power any more. (Most houses have a main circuit breaker that provides this functionality.) However, because this specifically is a switch for literally circuit breakers and it itself is a circuit breaker, given the other surreal things this breaker box controls, turning it off will possibly make it impossible to turn it on ever again as the switch will no longer function once switched off.

| colspan="2"|The title text is about causality. Turning off the circuit breaker using the CIRCUIT BREAKER switch may lead to a loop, as the disabled breaker can no longer disable itself, leading to it turning back on, etc. Alternatively, turning off the CIRCUIT BREAKER switch might be a one-way street: turning the CAUSALITY switch from OFF back to ON would be unlikely to do anything if circuit breakers have been fully deactivated. The separation of cause and effect would ostensibly take precedence over the current switch setting. Turning off CAUSALITY first would prevent either the loop or the permanent disabling of circuit breakers (but would also have many other side effects; whether or not turning off causality would actually turn off causality if causality is turned off is an exercise for the reader).  

:[There are words that are too small to read on the left breaker's label.]

:The solution to the cryptogram below: / Gravity