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)

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. Double the current and the heat generated doubles. Go from 15 amps to 500 amps and the heat generated by the resistance in the wires increases about 33 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)

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)