Why are so many electrical plugs designed in such a way that they cover adjacent sockets?
In: Engineering
Ease and durability, mostly. The part that generally covers adjacent sockets is the *rectifier* and *transformer,* the generally blocky bit that converts AC power into DC power at the proper voltage and amperage. It’s better for the cable to have the mass at the end that generally doesn’t move.
It’s a common problem when using devices that run off a low voltage direct current, as your house is wired to supply alternating current at a higher voltage.
That 115/230 volt alternating current has to be converted to a lower voltage and rectified into direct current. The electronics that do this take up a bit of space.
That space can be built into the device (making it larger and outputting more heat), somewhere along the middle of the cable (typically expensive and annoying to deal with sometimes), or at the wall plug end (cheap and very practical, but can block adjacent slots).
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Plug in power bricks are built that size for two reasons. One is that they often need the space for the circuitry inside.
Another is that they all produce some heat. Many people have places where multiple of these power bricks are needed, and they are tempted to connect them to the same power board. If they all packed together, all of them as wide as they can be, with no space between them – they would overheat, maybe enough to cause a fire.
So building them so that they take up more than one socket forces some space between them, so they can cool properly.
Because the makers of the low-voltage “wall wart” type power supplies want to keep it as cheap as possible on their end. Good ones have 6″ or so of cord between the transformer/switch mode power supple and the plug.
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In product development there are engineers and there are designers. Engineers make sure a product works and designers make sure people enjoy using the product. Charging cables are usually bought “off the shelf” to accompany products since they are regulated and not considered necessary to redesign with every new product design. Since power cables are often overlooked as contributing to a user experience they are often not designed in a user friendly manner.
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