Talk:3211: Amperage

Seems like this would be at least tangentially related to the Cursed Connectors series, although it's just the outlets and cords this time. Zakator (talk) 05:51, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I would assume that this is related to styropyro's latest video? 142.126.42.193 05:59, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I’ll second the comment about the new styropyro video; it seems very likely that it inspired Randall to make this comic and is probably worth a mention. 2607:FB91:829C:47BD:C826:B8DB:5A5E:913A 07:50, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I think that's very likely - in literally every single group of nerds (eg xkcd-adjacent) I've seen people talking about it. I'd be very, very surprised if he hasn't at all seen itR128 (talk) 17:28, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

200 amps is NOT "an amount of electricity power"; The amp is a unit of electrical current, from which power can be derived by multiplying by voltage.2001:8003:7087:E602:3CBE:B25:5BFC:61BD 07:41, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

The current explanation seems to assume that Cueball is aware in advance of some of the problems his scheme is likely to cause, and is trying to forestall them. That seems unlikely - it's Cueball after all. It's far more likely that he has already melted all his wiring (and ruined his carpet), but just considers that a new engineering challenge to overcome. 82.13.184.33 09:28, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

It is amusing or instructional to consider how residential wiring would be engineered if the equipment and circuits were designed with a system that supplied constant current rather than constant voltage. Long ago carbon-arc streetlights were all wired in series and run at perhaps 6 or 8 amps. The "failure" mode is not a short circuit but an open circuit. Protective devices close the offending open. Perhaps Cueball would like to explore such a system, running megavolts at 500 amps, unless he already has. 173.188.198.217 12:56, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I understand the theory of it, and it clearly doesn't cause any more electrical fires than home run circuits, but the UK's 32A ring circuits on 14 gauge wire will always make me raise an eyebrow. 64.135.140.145 13:36, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

The US's pathetically wimpy system always raises an eyebrow for me. No wonder Cueball felt the need to upgrade his house. I would also be frustrated by not being able to run a kettle and a toaster on the same circuit simultaneously. No tea and no toast?? Sacrilege! Martin (talk) 22:21, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

>"frustrated by not being able to run a kettle and a toaster on the same circuit simultaneously." Why must it be the same circuit? The US NEC code calls for TWO 20A circuits in kitchen/pantry. US market kettles are, in your opinion, underpowered, 1500 Watts (or less!), so as to run comfortably on even legacy 15A circuits. The toaster goes on the other kitchen circuit. --PRR (talk) 00:52, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Wow, two circuits are mandated?! That goes to show how dire the situation is with their limited available power. Martin (talk) 05:52, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Just use the stove for your Tea and Toast 66.210.7.66 16:01, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Just microwave the lot and be done with it. 176.138.186.7 21:31, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

This is why I never drink tea when I'm in the US.--2A00:23CC:D248:8901:C1C2:6444:7428:2D04 08:59, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

I've heard this before and do not understand the issue. Do you think we have the tea bag in the water while microwaving it? Or do you think the water remembers how it was heated? BaddDadd (talk) 22:19, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

No, they don't think that far. Although they believe themselves to be lovers of tea (because they grow up being told they are), Brits are mostly simply prolific consumers of truly execrable tea. But that religion/identity thing they've got going on with regards to tea consumption makes them believe the ceremony and performance of it has validity – superiority even. So a different performance is regarded as wrong. Sure, their belief that their ceremony is underpinned by reason makes them think their hatred of alternatives is similarly reasonable...but it's really just the condemnation of perceived heresy, nothing more. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 00:16, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Well, we've gone over this sort of thing before... See 3022: Making Tea for details. ;) (And also take care not to splice apart comments from their signatures!) 81.179.199.253 23:59, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure why no toaster means no toast. You don't need a toaster to make toast. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 21:53, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

2.5mm2 is actually more closer to a 13 gauge (which corresponds to 2.6mm2), and with it being in a ring so electricity has two ways to go it's more closer to what a 12 gauge (3.3mm2) would be able to hold. Sztupy (talk) 22:48, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

The current will be about equal through the two paths if the outlet is half way around the ring. If it's, say, only 10 percent of the way around, 90% of the current will take the shorter path. BaddDadd (talk) 22:22, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

xkcd is a good distractor from everything that's going on with the world. Thanks, Randall! --DollarStoreBa'al^Converse (BLM) 13:57, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Retired electrical engineer from a power distribution manufacturer here... The resistance in the wires doesn't increase all that much with increasing current. The increase in heat generated is proportional to the amount of current flowing through the wires squared. Double the current and the heat generated quadruples. Go from 15 amps to 500 amps and the heat generated by the resistance in the wires increases about 1100 times. 2600:1702:7A0:8230:9DBF:A415:F8AF:7799 17:10, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Isn't heat generated proportional to current squared? or is that resistance. maybe im trippingR128 (talk) 17:28, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Power lost as heat is determined by voltage drop in the line times current [P=IV] and since voltage drop equals current times resistance [V=IR] then heat is determined by resistance times current-squared [P=I*(IR)], so half current makes one quarter of the heat.57.140.28.40 18:19, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

120V AC at 15A would not be 1800W. 120V DC would, but the AC power is a sine wave, so to get the overall average power you need to divide by the square root of two. 2600:1009:B1AC:BBBB:1D51:D689:1D5F:6A11 17:50, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

To commenter above: 120V in the US is RMS voltage, so it's already divided.

To original poster: "and inside his appliances and start a fire, even if there is no fault". Unless the appliance itself is drawing more than it's rated for (e.g. 15 or 20A (unlikely)) there's no reason the appliance's internal wiring would disintegrate because it's on a 500A circuit.

I'm assuming the "cords" cueball refers to are extension cords (which are themselves overloaded) vs. appliance cords which shouldn't have any problem unless the appliance was already suffering some kind of short. 74.76.64.197

Absolutely correct. Appliances are designed with appropriate internal wiring, so if the appliance is drawing 500A the appliance can handle 500A. The cord from outlet to appliance is the issue here, as Cueball has already mentioned. Martin (talk) 22:21, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Could this perhaps be a reference to 3198: Double-Pronged Extension Cord? Logalex8369 (talk) 21:06, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

There is nothing in the comic to suggest the internal wall wiring is melting or catching fire. I think we can assume Cueball has upgraded the internal wall wiring to match the breaker upgrades. Cueball is only enquiring about cords which don't catch fire, and "cords" are the external extension leads. Cueball doesn't say anything about internal wall issues. Martin (talk) 22:30, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

The outlet is a Type B (NEMA 5-15) outlet (note the two vertical slots in the comic), these are designed for 15 Amps. These simply cannot support 500 Amps (the wires to support 500 Amps are bigger than the entire outlet). Cuball hasn't even upgraded to a NEMA 5-20R outlet which can support 20 Amps. 2600:6C54:4E00:99C:67B7:D578:30ED:2471 06:07, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

You exclude the possibility of them being (deliberately or just by chance) over engineered, perhaps massively so. I don't believe that there's any reason to have an upper limit to capacity, just a hard lower limit below which they must not be expected to fail. Except in any actual fuse/RCD that is fitted for the protection of the nominally-rated hardware (where sockets have such things in them, rather than the lead-plugs, easily replacable/resettable or not), which I would expect to have been 'upgraded' as part of the whole scenario as a matter of course.

At some point, you can probably work out the physical limit of Type B (or semi-compatible Type A) prongs, which seem to me to be rather weedier than the pins that my national plug-standard uses, for any given material used (plotting the self-reinforcing resistance vs temperature problem, to check it doesn't go over the material's MP), but that's a cable issue anyway, and who knows how chunky the 'backplate' metalwork actually is, because there's not such an obvious upper limit to that (perhaps divide the backplate entirely into three distinct 'lumps', plus necessarily sufficient air/other-insulator gap, but that's going to far outperform the plug-pin limitations wihout even trying).

Or, by sacrificing some slight cross-section, what if it was riddled/jacketed with microchannels through which liquid helium (or other sufficiently cold gas/liquid) flowed, in order to maintain supercondunctivity and/or just soak up the excess resistive heat... hardly something allowed by a standard off-the-shelf socket, I know, but maybe Beret Guy was his (original, or upgrading) electrician. One can then imagine such a coolant household system being extended on demand through specially-designed power leads (hollow-tipped prongs, and open-on-contact 'cup' valves at the bottom of the socket holes, and some clever flexible-yet-insulating way of conveying the house-supply of coolant through any such plugged in lead, all without causing cold-induced brittleness of course!) to 'solve' the problem he's now asking about, caused by him 'solving' his original current-limitation issues. ;) 82.132.239.97 12:53, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

I agree with you that if you are actively cooling the outlet you could get a lot more power through it. If you are constantly actively cooling it there would probably be significant frost buildup issues, but in this hypothetical situation, you could just dehumidify the entire room, or just use your active cooling when something is actually drawing power. 2600:6C54:4E00:99C:67B7:D578:30ED:2471 15:53, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

TL;DR this is a setup that would make Tim Taylor (from the sitcom Home Improvement) jealous. 2603:6011:853A:4DDA:3F9A:6297:AF9E:2340 04:43, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I think 1000 MCM copper wire would be sufficient for the cords: https://www.cerrowire.com/products/resources/tables-calculators/ampacity-charts/ https://nassaunationalcable.com/products/1000-mcm-thhn-thwn-2-stranded-copper-building-wire 2600:6C54:4E00:99C:67B7:D578:30ED:2471 04:42, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Yet another example of the absolutely heinous overexplanation problem on modern exkcd. A comic whose joke boils down to "guy gets rid of electrical safety equipment and is surprised by the creation of serious electrical hazards as a result of this" has exploded to nearly 1400 words across 7 gigantic paragraphs with long extraneous tangents, in just two DAYS after the comic went up. This entire comic could be explained in 4 sentences for the main joke and an extra sentence for the title text. Pie Guy (talk) 04:58, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

More than that, an overwhelming majority 'exploded' into being within half a day. The 1.5 days since then has been mostly tweaking.

Also, he didn't get rid of safety equipment. He actually put more in, but made it more relaxed safety equipment, and made sure that the greater relaxation is as exploitable as possible so that it still might get tripped, but only in a worse way. (Simultaneously more forgiving and less forgiving, depending upon whether you prioritise continuity of service or personal safety.) 82.132.236.204 11:15, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Using the standard 15 amp outlets (as shown in the picture) with a 500 amp breaker is definitely a code violation. He needs to replace them with NEC 500 amp rated outlets (if those exist). Then buy extension cords with the corresponding 500 amp plugs. BaddDadd (talk) 22:26, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

The highest (US-'standard') rating I've found, on a quick search is the NEMA 14-60-type plug/socket... Of course, if you're dealing with industrial-level currents you probably would be engineering your own conecting units to fit your particular power-transfer needs, subject only to basic common sense^{[citation needed]} and a more widely encompassing general set of federal power-regulations.^{[actual citation needed]} 81.179.199.253 00:19, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

What could possibly be unfinished about this explanation, please enlighten me RG (talk) 04:50, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

No big mystery. The thing that could yet be incomplete about the Explanatuon is that it has just not yet had its {{incomplete}} removed.

A potted history of the Incomplete tag:

• When this site was still 'catching up' on xkcd, pages for more historic comics were added in as more stubs/barebones, and the Incomplete tag was useful to get people to randomly dive in and flesh out these.
• Then gradually that need waned, as 'early comics' were deemed Explained enough (not that it stops anyone finding some reason to re-edit anything now without an Incomplete box), and it became more an indicator of new comic pages.
• The auto-uploading BOT (the current one, based off what its long time predecessor did) adds Incomplete "CREATED BY A BOT" text automatically. And obviously this is tied in with it being truly Incomplete, because we don't (yet!) have an AGI-powered BOT that can perfectly explain the page immediately without the interventions of us humble bags of meat. (And, frankly, I expect and hope that this never happens, at least not before Randall makes an AI draw his comics from its own imagination.)
• For a long time now, though, the site's community has been editing the "CREATED BY A BOT" to be a "CREATED BY <SOMETHING RELEVENT TO THE COMIC>" joke, in the early stages of editing (when things probably remain Incomplete). But regular visitors, who are likely to relish 'completing' missing bits of Explanation, probably have their own way of keeping track of what comics they might need to review the pages for, so it's really not a 'nevessary' tag.
• Then again, some may bounce around the site and find a genuine mystery in a page (that they can't deal with immediately, at least) and choose to either re-add the tag (hopefully with their genuine reason for considering it needing editing) or edit the still existing one (to replace/add to the BOT(/REPLACEMENT) baseline text). That's still doable.

So, as a general rule of thumb:

1. If it says "CREATED BY A BOT", almost certainly you're looking at the latest published comic and are reading it before someone has saved a "CREATED BY SOMETHING FUNNY" joke over it.
2. If it has a "CREATED BY SOMETHING FUNNY" on it, it has been 'tagged' by someone. There's no official reason why you can't tweak (or replace) the joke text to your own idea of what it could be, of course, but it's not like it matters enough (and you can't erase the page history's original attempt(s), anyway) for such a transient in-joke.
3. Because of viewing habits varying (from jumping on all new comics (and edits to this site) within perhaps mere minutes, to perhaps checking out onoy what has appared once a week, I've seen it suggested that a good cut-off, for 'new' comics having been definitely updated enough to (nominally) being 'Complete', is around a week. i.e. you can let the joke-CREATED BY stand on the latest three comics (maybe more, but assuming just Monday-Wednesday-Friday cycle as baseline). Then the joke has been appreciated by people and if you really think there's no more to it then... remove the tag.
4. However, if someone has some actual query as to completeness (or accuracy, or formatting, or...), then they may add that query/etc to the tag. Or add the tag (when currently absent) with the query. So if it sayscsomething like "that list needs to be in a table" or "please explain about 'mesoscopic granulation'", then it's a genuine call to complete something. (I'd personally prefer it if people who add these to a CREATED BY didn't replace that CREATED BY, as it's like prematurely removing something that needn't be removed, better to append their genuine concern... But YMMV.) Should be self-explanatory, or go in there and append your own query about their query, maybe... ;)
5. There are those who will also just add the bare {{incomplete}} without any explanation included. Unless they hid that away in their edit-Summary (or you can spot something yourself, which you probably want to edit in or at least add your own 'reason' text if you can't) then probably safe enough to just remove. If someone feels strongly enough about it, then they can add it back in with their reasoning.

...by my reading, in this case, we're at stage 3, above. This has (inexplicably?) been CREATED BY AN IN-JOKEd and then just left for way more than a month. (Though checking the page history may confirm/deny this.) There's no further incompleteness reason given, so... It can be removed. It was fun seeing it, and it's still going to be there in the Page History anyway.

And looking at the Page History for various comics (back a very long way now, in both comic numbers and times of editing) will reveal the kinds of use we have put towards the Incomplete tags, ever since they were first implemented, and how they have picked up this not-so-literal method of usage that might be a little confusing to more recent readers of this site, at least until they see what's what... ;)

However, {{incomplete transcript}} is played straight. At least in part because a transcript (usually!) is fairly obviously either absent or complete (barring minor tweaks/corrections, which of course were left there by someone who had thought they'd properly completed it when they shaved off the tag for it), and also because it doesn't use a 'reason'-type parameter (which isn't to say that one can't add one, but it just wouldn't show the same way). ...so, apart from a slight editing caution on the very latest comic or three, you really shouldn't be seeing Incomplete Template hanging around much.

TL;DR;: you could remove that tag, as I'm betting the page is now Complete (barring minor edits). But only because it's also a non-recent one, because this community also tends to subvert more recent tags for humorous purposes. 82.132.236.190 10:56, 28 April 2026 (UTC)