2848: Breaker Box

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Breaker Box

Title text: Any electrician will warn you to first locate and flip the house's CAUSALITY circuit breaker before touching the CIRCUIT BREAKERS one.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a HIGH-PITCHED HUM GENERATOR THAT WAS LAST MENTIONED EXACTLY 1258 COMICS AGO - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

A Distribution board, referred to as a "breaker box" here and commonly referred to as a "fuse box", "breaker panel", "DB box", and many other names, is a metal box inside a building that is attached to a wall, usually in some maintenance area, containing several 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 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. In houses that have been rewired multiple times(or are poorly wired), this can quickly become overcomplicated with seemingly random connections. The comic satirizes this, with multiple breakers "controlling" arbitrary things that may be impossible to hook a breaker up to, getting progressively more absurd to the point of disabling certain laws of physics as the switches get lower.

The title text is about causality. Turning off the circuit breaker using the circuit breaker may lead to a loop, as the disabled breaker can no longer disable itself, leading to it turning back on, etc. Turning off causality would prevent this loop as causes would no longer have effects.

Table of the breakers labels

Label next to breaker	Explanation	Label next to breaker	Explanation
Kitchen Lights	The lights in the kitchen.	A whirring fan you didn't realize was on until now	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 fridges or home servers can have similar effects.
Living room lights	The lights in the living room.	Dishwasher	The dishwasher.
Porch lights	The lights on the porch.	Dishes	At a glance this could pass for a normal thing to be next to a breaker, despite dishes not requiring electricity. This might, however, actually be referring to an array of satellite dishes, but given how the switch for the dishwasher is immediately above this is most likely not the case.
Bathroom lights and one surprise mystery outlet somewhere	This controls the lights in the bathroom, but also a random outlet. This may be a reference to the unlikely possibility that an electrical engineer may make a mistake during construction and wire up an outlet to the wrong breaker, confusing the homeowner when maintenance needs to be done.	Hallway lights	The lights in the hallway or hallways.
North-facing appliances	Despite the impossibility of determining which way an appliance is facing, ignoring how you would even define that, without having a magnetic compass inside every appliance, and having all of those appliances be hooked up to one breaker, this apparently routes power to every appliance that faces north. It is unclear how strict this is as well - it could be as lax as northeast to northwest, or even as strict as north by east to north by west.	Hallway outlets	The outlets in the hallway or hallways.
Bathtub drain light	Bathtubs typically do not have drain lights, but this breaker provides power to that and only that.	Hallway floors	This could pass for a normal breaker at a glance, given the two above and in some buildings there are floor outlets. This could also potentially refer to turning off the power for all the hallways on a given floor. Floors in and of themselves do not typically require power, but if they act differently when not powered is unknown. A simpler explanation is this just electrifies the floors, which is not usually desirable,[citation needed] but may be barely noticeable in this case when considering this breaker has been on the entire time. Unless the hallway is equipped with electric underfloor heating.
Appliances whose names contain the letter "F"	Another breaker that could theoretically be done despite the tremendous difficulty in doing so. Electrical systems do not carry data about names, and it is unclear how it would even get this information, if it would change depending on locality, if it uses the common name for something or the full name, how it would work in different languages, and so on.	Social media	All of social media. This may be a reference to 'digital detoxes', where people turn off / delete / deny themselves access to all their social media apps, in the hopes that this will provide some improvement to their quality of life. It couls also be a callback to 908: The Cloud. Since most social media platforms are a 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(optional).
Hot water heater	The heater for hot water.	State law	It is unclear which state's laws this controls, but why they require power to operate is unknown. This may just be for enforcement of the laws, instead of nullifying every single one whenever it is turned off. Additionally, since Randall lives in Massachusetts, it's very likely this refers to the same state. Turning off the breaker could result in a state similar to martial law.
Regular water heater	The heater for regular water. Presumably, given the above switch, this is for heating lukewarm or cool water, while the above is for keeping it warm and acting as a storage medium. This could just be accomplished with a single water heater with the capacity of two, but it may be useful for getting a lot of adequately hot water quickly when only half a tank's worth is needed. Alternatively, this may imply that this heater is for heating water that is not yet hot, whereas the heater above is, unexpectedly and somewhat pointlessly, for heating water that is already hot.	Federal law	The ramifications of nullifying every federal law ever are immense, but this may still be for enforcement, like the above.
Outlets in rooms that it's normal to eat pizza in	This controls every outlet in rooms that it's normal to eat pizza in. This implies that the living room is not a room it's normal to eat pizza in, since those are on a different breaker. On the other hand, that breaker specifically specifies that it controls the living room lights, but disregarding this, it's very likely it may still include the living room, seeing as the other switches fail to have any sort of constraints. Other eligible rooms would probably include the dining room, kitchen, and/or bedroom, but would be dependent on the inhabitants / regular visitors of the house (for example, they may regularly eat their pizza in the bathroom).	Second law of thermodynamics	Turning off a physical law, especially the second law of thermodynamics, would be catastrophic, since the rest of the laws of physics would most likely follow suit once one collapsed unless they are held in place by other laws. This law of physics was also explored in the What If? article Fire From Moonlight. As explained by Randall in this article, the second law of thermodynamics states that you cannot transfer heat from one location A to make another location B any hotter than location A, unless you expend some form of energy in doing so.
High-pitched hum generator	Controls a high-pitched hum generator. This is a reference to 1590: The Source.	Friction	Again, turning off a physical law would be catastrophic, but turning off friction may not destroy reality. If it was turned off, however, many things would become incredibly unsafe or useless, while others would have increased efficiency. The benefits, however, would be negligible in comparison to how many systems would collapse instantly, such as ratchets, car tires, standing up, or just things staying still in general. Being in a frictionless environment (and a vacuum, as physicists love...) was the subject of 669: Experiment.
The solution to the cryptogram below:	A cryptogram is a puzzle where a sentence has been encoded using a cipher, usually very simple, and the goal is to determine the cipher used and recover the original sentence from the encoded one. This may be literal, as in the solution is "circuit breaker", but it also may be controlling the ability to know what the solution is or if it can be discovered.	Gravity	If this was turned off, the Earth would explode, along with all other celestial objects. Planets and stars have extremely high internal pressure that is constantly in conflict with gravity. Every part would be forced outward at incredibly high speeds, and any object that requires gravity would simply not be able to form. Of course, this might also just make everything in the house weightless, which has much less disastrous consequences and would probably actually be pretty cool.
Bugs	This could either refer to software bugs or actual bugs, both of which do not make much sense to be able to turn off. If this does refer to actual bugs, it may be a reference to 2753: Air Handler.	Circuit breakers	If this was turned off, it would presumably turn off 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, if this circuit breaker disables the ability to toggle circuit breakers, you would not be able to turn this circuit breaker back on.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[An open breaker box is shown. There are 26 labelled breakers, all of which are on, arranged in a 2 by 13 grid.]

Kitchen lights / A whirring fan you didn't realize was on until now

Living room lights / Dishwasher

Porch lights / Dishes

Bathroom lights and one surprise mystery outlet somewhere / Hallway lights

North-facing appliances / Hallway outlets

Bathtub drain light / Hallway floors

Appliances whose names contain the letter "F" / Social media

Hot water heater / State law

Regular water heater / Federal law

Outlets in rooms that it's normal to eat pizza in / Second law of thermodynamics

High-pitched hum generator / Friction

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

The solution to the cryptogram below: / Gravity

Bugs / Circuit breakers

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Discussion

added transcript and got to change the name of the thing that created the explanation incomplete tag WOHOOOOoO Me^{[citation needed]} 02:25, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

can't help but notice the 1590 reference someone, i guess^{(talk i guess|le edit list)} 02:43, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Added explanation! Simple, but it'll do. How do I sign? 172.69.34.159 03:42, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

four tildes (~~~~) someone, i guess^{(talk i guess|le edit list)} 03:08, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I thought that I had tried it earlier and it hadn't worked, but I guess I was wrong. 172.69.34.160 03:46, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Just added headers, but not good enough with this stuff to add descriptions. go nuts someone, i guess^{(talk i guess|le edit list)} 02:52, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Got a good laugh out of this one. Does anyone have a guess as to whether the "bugs" at the bottom of the second column refers to computer bugs or insects? Also, some self-referential humor going on at the end there. I guess the breaker box which contains all breakers would indeed contain itself. Jrfarah (talk) 04:31, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

I thought it was some sort of reference to 2753 someone, i guess^{(talk i guess|le edit list)} 04:58, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

It turns off the bunny. 172.69.194.194 11:27, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Computer bugs switches actually exist. It's a feature in some emulators to either run an unofficial patched version or to stay true to the original system, for example to allow bug-exploit speedruns. Shirluban 172.71.130.70 13:34, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

So... discussion about "Hot Water Heater" vs. "Regular Water Heater"... I was assuming this was a joke regarding the redundancy of the term "Hot Water Heater" since "Water Heater" is already making the water hot, so why would you need to heat water that's already hot? Similar to RAS Syndrome, I thought Randall was making fun of that, but the explanation has a different idea... which... kind of makes sense? But... I've never seen anything like what is being described. Admiral Memo (talk) 05:22, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

After reading "Regular Water Heater", I assumed it was implying that the "Hot Water Heater" was somehow more physically attractive and thus "hotter". --Galeindfal (talk) 14:41, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Regarding the "one surprise mystery outlet", I don't think it's necessary to assume it was wired that way by mistake. When extending the wiring in an existing house, it's not always easy to wire up an extra breaker, or use the most logically labelled one, and there may not be a compelling safety reason to do so. For instance, in my parents house, the original sockets are all wired from the floor, and when an extra one was needed for a boiler control, it was easier to run a conduit down from the floor above; so that particular socket is on the ring marked "Upstairs Sockets" on the consumer unit. - IMSoP (talk) 09:18, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

I read the "state/federal law" switches as required by said laws. i.e. respective building codes require a "foo switch" always to be installed, whether or not a foo is required, reasonable or even practicable. The switches may be left unlinked to anything that is serviced, or run to the household outlet/power-switch with the label plastered over it saying "don't use for anything but the quarter-inch hoojamaflip grinder" (or whatever it is, in the same sort of manner as "Refrigerator, do not unplug/turn off!" in a communal kitchen.... 141.101.99.166 10:09, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Some laws contain "circuit breaker" provisions, where some action is triggered when a condition reaches a threshold. Maybe that's what state/federal law refers to. Barmar (talk) 14:25, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

You guys are way too serious. It's a joke, so pick the funniest interpretation possible. Don't try to make it realistic. A circuit breaker turns off the electricity so you can work on the wiring without getting shocked. By analogy, you should be able to use a circuit breaker to turn off the laws when you want to avoid getting fined or arrested. Now that's funny. Rtanenbaum (talk) 12:43, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

...in a separate comment, I have a fuse/switch labelled "Do not turn on!" in my house. It was turned on when I moved in, and (barring actually any reason to mess with anything/’get a man in' for any other purpose) I've left it on. Ditto, for these last six or seven years I've remained ignorant of the purpose of various wall switches (floor-height, one in living room, one at top of stairs, another in a bedroom) that are unlabelled and off (though I have switched them on... no obvious difference to lighting, alarm system, any other system I can imagine they're wired up into and left it pending some future time when I actually have to do something like strip plaster back and discover which (if any?) run of cable leads from/to them. 141.101.99.166 10:11, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Regarding wall switches that don't have any apparent purpose. Many houses or apartments were not built with lights in the ceiling. So all your lighting came from lamps plugged into wall outlets. They would wire one of the wall outlets to a wall switch, usually near the door. This way you would leave the lamp turned on and use the wall switch to turn it off and on. It takes a little investigation to figure out which wall outlet is being controlled by the switch. Rtanenbaum (talk) 12:43, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Not applicable, in my case (above 'owner' of the floor switches) because all my sockets(/outlets) in my house have switches on them. One of the mysterious floor switches is indeed very close to a wall-socket, but that wall-socket is a double already with two independent switches (example image). And is of a very similar vintage to the 'mystery switch', by both actual appearance and the how the wallpaper/etc looks. (The house itself is 1930s vintage, but clearly fully updated and rewired to essentially modern standards some time in the last 50 years, and probably far far more recent. No reason for a 'leftover' separate socket switch to have remained/been kept instated.)

The two main possibilities of purpose that I still imagine they controlled are: 1) The burglar alarm, and 2) The storage heater. Originally. Assuming you'd even want multiple different control-switches. But completely bypassed by a later reinstallation. The newer central heating (replacing the storage system) is entirely controlled from a kitchen wall switch, and its own fusebox breaker. And the alarm system has a hallway pad and if it was ever connected to the "Do not turn on" switch (that was actually on), it hasn't suffered at all from the experimental instances of it being turned off (when I thought I'd check).

...it'll all have to wait until I have the next major overhaul, I think. I'll get the next electrician I need (perhaps when replacing the current boiler, or needing more sockets in the workroom) to try and work it out using their usual tricks and tools. 172.70.85.29 15:29, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

LoadingReadyRun did a very funny sketch on a "mystery switch" in their office. [1] Admiral Memo (talk) 03:14, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

In my last house, there was a switch that we couldn't figure out for anything. Finally, we asked the previous owner: they had damaged the wall there during construction, and it was cheaper to put in a dummy switch than to repair the hole! L-Space Traveler (talk) 15:06, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I believe that the cryptogram may be an attempt to pun on a "code breaker" as a reference to people who solve ciphers. Aberdasher (talk) 13:48, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Depending on interpretation, "North-facing appliances" could make sense. In my house, I have two main breakers, East and West, each covering (almost) everything in one side of the house. EHusmark (talk) 14:52, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

And, contrary to the "how would the system know?", regarding north-facingness, if you had a ring-main/set of sockets servicing one particular wall (to just one side), there'd be a good chance that anything plugged in there (at least bulky "white goods", even if not smaller things that you might move and turn, like irons and fans) faces away from that particular wall. 172.70.91.236 16:54, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Definite Borges vibes from the "appliances that face north", "appliances whose names begin with the letter 'F'", "outlets in rooms that it's normal to eat pizza in" section. 172.70.85.50 17:31, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Amongst other things, there are problems under the "no friction" section. e.g. You might have a perpetual motion machine that would go forever, but without something else (e.g. the anullment of 3LoT) it couldn't also do external work. And of course you can still hold something with zero friction, if you can sufficiently surround, support and/or impale the thing. 172.70.90.230 19:24, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree. Edited. --Hddqsb (talk) 05:01, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

So.... em if you turn off causality, would the switch that turned off causality actually reliably turn off causality, given that causality has been disabled? (added something like this as a note about the title text). (Wowitschris (talk) 19:32, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Worse than that, if you need to have Causality turned off (for a 'legitimate' reason), there is now no way of preventing anything (including the Causality switch) to be actively toggled. Causaulity could become active again even without any intervention, as well as any number of other effects (of any spontaneous kind whatsoever) for which no cause is now required. 172.69.195.103 19:53, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

"A circuit breaker ...to... protect appliances." --- A pedant would say the breaker protects the wires. When the box is specced and installed, the appliances may not have arrived, and are sure subject to replacement. In both the US and GB Codes the breaker size relates to the wire diameter. If an appliance needs greater protection it should have its own fuse/breaker. Some do, though the trend is to appliances which will fail without flame, smoke, or loud noise.

It's a chicken-and-egg. If you've got a high-current device to install (e.g. electric cooker) then you'll ...hopefully... make sure it has thick copper cables to its outlet, and also sit it behind a fuse/breaker that will take the power throughput. But you still want your breaker to 'break' if something shortcircuity goes on in the cooker. Even/especially if the supply cables are happily feeding the power to it, or its own local fusepoint, because they're not so tightly toleranced that you end up with a long 'heating element' passing through the kitchen wall as well as on your cooker's hobtop (or in its grill/oven compartment(s)).

Overspec the wires, try to tightly spec the current limits on the switches as much as you can anticipate will not ever false-trip. (With the switch from incandescent to LED lighting, many a lighting circuit will now be much further from failure, than designed, but actual ground-faulting will still likely trigger the RCD/whatever.) The aim is to never get so far as a breaking more circuitry than an intrinsic fault has already broken. e.g. motors may burn out, if something jams them, but ideally not spark across to the casing that houses them if they don't suffer direct physical damage. 172.69.195.103 21:29, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

"Bathtub drain light" My bathtub drain is plastic pipe. If the lights are off in the bathroom, but on in the cellar, there's a "light in the drain". No, I don't have a dedicated breaker but that's an idea.....

"Hallway floors" My last house was 1830, so all the electrics were hacked-on. We had a floor outlet in the hall. This used to be more common above a wireable cellar, it avoided snaking the wall. PRR (talk) 20:14, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Floor outlets are pretty common in large rooms. I mean rooms larger than you'd find a house, say a large classroom. They're used for things like floor polishers or vacuum cleaners, that need to be plugged in near the middle of the space, because the walls are too far away. Also, meeting rooms often have floor jacks under the central table, so people can plug in laptops. Nitpicking (talk) 15:12, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Wait, what's the joke? I'm pretty sure my (multiple?) circuit boxes are wired exactly like this. 172.71.222.93 (talk) 17:50, 1 November 2023 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Would a Fujitsu laptop be turned off by "F" in the name. Sure its a laptop (no f), but perhaps the brand makes its name change. What about if it has an "f" in one language but not another. 172.70.127.158 (talk) 14:03, 2 November 2023 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

It would depend entirely upon the language/terminology used by the switch-switcher. (Though not what the switch-switcher wants to be the case, e.g. "on this occasion, the 'fridge' is just a 'cooler', but the 'ventillation' is the 'fans'..." 'Cos that'd be silly!) 172.69.194.70 14:31, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

One minor issue: Sound doesn't depend on the friction in air. (minor nerdage alert) The inviscid Euler equations can totally support pressure (acoustic) waves. In fact, without viscosity, they'll damp out somewhat slower, so sound would travel slightly further! 172.70.131.6 00:33, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

I feel like “one niner” and “bad” were overlooked. 172.68.174.233 22:18, 12 November 2023 (UTC)