How does an electrical post or a wire post didn’t explode when it touch by the water, but whenever you’re in the household and put a water in any outlet it may explode, how does it happen?
In: Engineering
Physical space
If you get water on an outlet it only needs to bridge about an inch to connect hot to neutral and create a short
Electrical poles have insulators that keep the wires spaced several inches off the pole and are designed so you really can’t get a path of water across the surface. On high voltage poles the insulators can be a couple feet long.
In the event that something does bridge the gap like a tree branch it will generate an arc and will probably be burned away by it. If it doesn’t quickly burn away then the breakers trip and shut off power to those lines.
We don’t actually insulate power lines on poles, it’d be really thick and add a lot of weight. It’s more useful just to have physical spacing on the poles
The electrical posts and wires are insulated – covered in plastic or rubber wrapping so that the water doesn’t actually touch the wiring that the electricity is traveling over.
Electrical outlets, though, only have some basic protection (the face plate). Otherwise, it’s just a direct connection to a charged wire – that way when you plug something in, the plug makes contact with the wire and the electricity can freely flow between them. That *also* means though that if you dump water on there… it can cause electricity to spread to *other* areas (like the walls) where it’s not supposed to go, and cause sparks and fire.
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