Comments by "ke6gwf - Ben Blackburn" (@ke6gwf) on "Technology Connections" channel.

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  4.  @factsarefactsanddonotlie8397  if you have an electric water pump, you measure the amount of kwh of electricity it takes to pump 100 gallons of water from one location to another. You are not creating water, only moving it from one location to another. With an Air Conditioner, you are using electricity to move heat from inside the house and sending that heat outside the house, which is why the condenser coil outside gets so hot. A heat pump reverses this cycle and puts the evaporator coil outside, and the condenser coil inside, and takes heat from the outside air and sends it inside. Now, just like the water pump uses electricity to move water from one place to another, the heat pump uses electricity to move heat from one place to another. If you run electricity through a heating coil, all the energy in the electricity gets converted to heat, so if you use one kwh of electricity, you get one kwh of heat. However if you use that 1 kwh of electricity to run a heat pump, you can now MOVE 5 kwh of heat into the house, most of it coming not from the electricity, but being transfered from the outside air into the inside air. This is why it gets what you think is impossible efficiency, because it's moving existing heat rather than only turning electricity into heat. And if you say that this is impossible, then please explain how an AC can magically make heat energy dissappear from inside the house! I doubt that you will understand any of this and will just flame me too because ego is more powerful than intellect, but maybe this will help you understand the subject a little better.
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  9.  @factsarefactsanddonotlie8397  now I don't know what you are thinking about. I am talking about residential heat pumps for heating and cooling a house, the most common type being the mini split design, which is exactly an AC, because it IS an AC with a reverser valve that flips the flow depending on whether you need heating or cooling. So in the summer time it works like every other AC, using the same refrigeration cycle to transfer heat from inside the house to outside the house, and then in cold weather one valve flips and now it moves heat from outside the house into the house. You could literally take a window air conditioner and put it in backwards and it would pump heat into the house. Yes, there are also industrial heat pumps that look just like industrial refrigeration equipment, but no one is talking about them here, but even then, the only difference between an industrial refrigeration unit and a heat pump is that the heat pump has an extra valve that reverses the condenser and the evaporator coils so the heat moves the opposite direction. I also agree that insulation etc will save you more money than switching to a heat pump, but that's a separate issue. A heat pump, properly designed and sized for the application, under most conditions, will produce a certain amount of heat cheaper than gas heat or resistive electric heat. In some situations it will be much cheaper, in others only slightly cheaper, but in nearly all cases it is simply a more efficient source of heat since it is moving existing heat rather than creating it.
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  10. The problem with aftermarket led headlights is that many of them don't get the leds in the right position to simulate the original filament, and so the reflector doesn't get it focused into a nice beam. The led design needs to be different between a projector headlight and a reflector headlight, and each headlight housing has a slightly different design. If you don't get the correct match then you will blind everyone. I needed to upgrade my semi truck to leds (halogen was too dim for safety, and I got tired of paying for the short lived and expensive High Brightness Krypton ones, so I decided to go with led). It took me quite a while looking at articles and reviews and YouTube video reviews showing the beam patterns of different brand leds in different headlight housings before I finally settled on a couple of brands that looked like they might work, and then I pulled my truck up to a white dock wall and used a sharpie to mark the outline of the beam pattern with the halogen bulb. Then I put an led in one side and compared the beam pattern etc, and then tried the other brand. I found one of them matched every point on my markings EXACTLY, while the other one was a bit wonky. So I put the good one in the low beams, and put the one with poor beam control in the high beams where it won't effect anyone, and I am happy with the results. I also carefully re aimed the headlights afterwards, and parked on a level street and walked to the other end of the block to check for glare, etc, and I never have anyone flash me in complaint lol But most people don't go to that much work, and don't even know there is a difference, and so blind everyone.
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  70.  @takix2007  if I lived in a metric country, obviously I would need to use their system lol And if I use a system for a while, it would become natural for me, and I would find ways to make it easier, and I totally don't expect you to understand the work flow when you are in a different environment where it's not really an option for you anyway. When I am working off of blueprints, I need to use the system they use, but when I have been doing personal projects, I have tried doing it in metric to see the benefits (since the math is easier basically), and while there are some benefits, I missed the shortcuts and better sized units that inches and fractions come with. If there were a unit somewhere between CM and Metre, it would make things a little easier, but that's why everyone just uses mm generally. One thing that I really appreciate about USC (United States Customary, which shares some units, but is different from Imperial in several ways) is that we have options about what units to use for the work we are doing. For instance, carpentry is normally in feet and inches, but grading and earthworks usually use feet and tenths of a foot. Since when you are setting grades you are having to do lots of math, and you don't need accuracy less than an inch, tenths just make it fit the needs. And if I am doing metal working, I will probably be using either decimal inches or thousandths, depending on what the tolerances are. Wood by nature is imprecise, so using a more flexible fractions system matches the job. And yes, it is more complicated to learn multiple units and systems, but when a system is tailored to a specific task, if you are doing that task frequently, it saves you time in the long run. And metric is just less flexible in that regard. You have to apply the same set of units to everything. It's kind of like the difference between English, and a native language. In English, we take words from whatever language has a useful word, and add it to English, sometimes modifying it to work best for us. In other languages, sometimes things are a lot more clumsy to express, because you are confined to that language. USC was specifically designed using the logical units, as needed by various users, refined from the old units, and modified as needed. Metric was designed by white lab coats, and then everyone has to figure out how to fit their needs to the old system, because it's perfect, therefore you can't change anything to make it more versatile lol But, since you are in a metric country, you really don't have any choice, so it's just theory to you, although, since lumber generally is still based on US standard sizes, I suppose that you could do carpentry the same way I do, once you got it home from the lumber yard lol And I know that in some metric countries, the carpenters use a mix of USC and metric, depending on what works easiest for a particular situation.
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  72.  @ArniVidar  I said that most outlets in the US (in newer houses anyway) are on 20 amp CIRCUITS. In other words on a 20 amp breaker with minimum 12 gauge wire to the outlet. The wall outlets themselves are generally 15 amp style outlets, but you can upgrade the outlet itself to a 15/20 amp combo outlet and still be legal, since the circuit is a 20 amp circuit. We can't even use 14 gauge romex over here anymore, 12 is the minimum. It is true that 1500 watts is the most common maximum current for small household appliances, but it's easy to find 1800 watt heaters (which you can use on a 15 amp outlet if that's the only load). They usually go with 1500 watts, because that's generally plenty of power, and because it's common for outlets to have other loads on them, and if you pushed right to the maximum, you would have more tripped breakers and issues. Also, a lot of our older houses still have 14 gauge wire and 15 amp circuits, and you don't want to load them with the maximum on older installations. But generally on a newer house you can get 20 amps from the wall outlet LEGALLY, by only swapping the outlet itself out and not putting anything else on that circuit. New single family residential homes in the US, at least in many states, are required to have a Minimum of a 200 amp service and main breaker. Older homes generally have at least a 100 amp service and breaker, with the oldest tiny houses with the original actual fuse box still installed might be 60 amp, or really old ones down to 40 amp fuses. A standard electric dryer or stove for us runs on a 30 amp circuit and outlet, while a big electric stove and oven may have a 50 amp outlet. 50 amp outlets are also often used to plug in a "caravan" or rv. So most laundry rooms or garages in the US will have a large 30 amp 110/220 volt outlet to run a dryer as standard equipment, unless it's designed to only use a gas dryer. I suspect that the difference is that we label things at 110, and you label them at 220, so they would be 15 amp and 25 amp circuits to you at 220 volts. I believe that you only have a single wire that goes through your main breaker for instance, so a 50 amp main breaker for you is the same amount of watts as a 100 amp 2 pole breaker for us, since we use split phase with each leg of 110 getting its own breaker, though the handles are tied together so they trip together.
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  77. Major error at 6:55. You state that the center wire is Ground, which is simply wrong lol Ground will be bare or green marked. Neutral is white marked. Technically in official language it would be a GroundED Conductor, whereas the green or bare wire would be the GroundING Conductor. And while both are connected to the earth ground rod, neither have any function requiring it under normal circumstances. Earth ground is exclusively there to drain off static charge and lightning, and has nothing to do otherwise with the operation of the electrical system (thus why you can operate off a generator or inverter with no ground rod) So that center wire is a bonded neutral, meaning that it's bonded to the Grounding Conductor, and having nothing to do with the ground rod, because you wire rvs, boats, planes, ships etc the same way, no ground rod needed. Also, other than the mentioned static buildup or lightning, no current will ever flow to the ground rod. As a matter of fact, the resistance of the ground rod is so high, that you could take a hot wire from a 15 or 20 amp breaker and attach it to the ground rod, and not enough current will flow to trip the breaker! And while none of this may seem important, I think that you would agree that using the correct name for things is important, especially when trying to do an instructional video. It's also important since many people think that current flows to the ground rod lol Oh, and the purpose of bonding the neutral and ground wire is simply to give a path back to the power plant via the neutral for any current on the ground wire from a shirt circuit, allowing the breaker to trip. If the ground wire was only connected to the ground rod, the breaker would never trip because almost no current would flow.
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  90. To clarify a key point, all current flowing from the outlet will end up returning to the neutral wire at the power pole, whether through the proper path, or through your stupid butter knife poking self! If it flows through you, it will end up going to a water pipe, a safety ground circuit, wet concrete etc, but will end up back at the ground rod or pipe bonding wire, etc, and flow back to the main panel where the Neutral wire is Bonded to the Grounding system, and thus return to the neutral wire on the pole. Remember that all current requires a complete circuit in order to flow, so in order to have a ground fault, the electrons still need a path to return to the Source, be it the power plant, generator, solar panel, battery, etc. The soil doesn't magically soak electricity up, and it's a horribly high resistance if you try to use it as one side of the circuit to source. In fact, you can drive a long ground rod, and connect it directly to a 15 amp circuit breaker, and the breaker won't trip, because the resistance is so high very little current will flow, but what DOES flow is simply going to the nearest bonded ground rod to get back to the Source. The key purpose for ground rods is to bleed off static and lightning, and to reference the Neutral wire to be the same potential as the soil, water pipes etc. Think of standing barefoot on a metal plate, with a car battery sitting on the plate. If you touch either terminal of the battery, no current will flow, because there is no connection between the battery and the metal plate. If you now connect a wire from one terminal of the battery to the plate, that plate now carries the potential of that terminal, and is Bonded to it. Now if you touch the bonded terminal, nothing happens, because you are already at the same potential. And it doesn't matter if it's the positive or negative terminal bonded. That becomes the reference voltage. If you are getting power from a generator, you can bond either the hot or the neutral to the ground rod if you want, and that becomes the Earth Reference. So if you bonded the Hot to Earth, you can touch the hot wire while standing in the pool, and get no shock because they are the same potential. Sadly, if you touch the frame of the generator, you will die painfully, so don't ever do this! Lol This becomes important when dealing with transformers, because you have to pick which leg is bonded, what you want to reference to Earth. I was working in an industrial facility once, and in the evenings, the neutral wire would become 110v to ground, and the hot wire would be zero volts to ground. Then in the daytime it would be normal again. I started looking at the Big Picture™ (© 2018 HVACR Videos) and discovered that that mechanical room was being fed by a single 3 phase circuit to the main 3 phase panel on in it, and then there was a buck boost transformer feeding the 110/220v panel which ran all the lights and outlets etc. After some testing, I discovered there was an outside light with a photocell, that had a shorted out ballast, and that the electrician who installed the system had not bonded the center tap on the transformer to Earth ground, and so it was a floating system. So when the photocell turned on, it bonded one of the 110 v transformer legs to earth ground, driving the center tap neutral to 110v away from ground, and since the shorted out light was the only place the transformer was connected to ground, there was no fault current to trip a breaker....
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  92. Truck driver here. I notice that the lane divider markers are much less visible, and tend to only reflect for a short window of distance in a truck. When you think about the angles involved with them being so low, compared to a roadside sign etc, it makes sense. But also, different styles and companies reflect differently, so some roads I can see the Morse code for miles, and others just a few feet in front of the truck where my eyes and headlight align with the reflector, but before it cuts off at the edge of the corner cube. You may think that we may have a harder time seeing signs because our eyes are higher, but you have to remember that our headlights are higher also, and I don't think the angle is really much greater between the outgoing and reflected light for a roadside sign, as compared to a car, where both lights and driver are lower. And we are higher into the sweat spot for overhead signs. It's just surface reflectors that suck lol I have noticed the red reverse side to freeway reflectors, sometimes on new road work you will see where one got out on backwards! One time I was driving down this road, and they ALL were on backwards! It was quite odd... All the other drivers seemed to be confused by it too, all driving the wrong way... (/joke) It's always cool when I am driving away from the setting sun under just the right conditions, and all the red side reflectors on the opposite side of the road are on fire from the sunlight. Speaking of corner cubes, in your surveyor stock footage, not a single corner cube appeared lol They were using GPS units... APOLOGIZE!!
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  112. You need to do a video on cold air intakes on engines and why it helps, because you clearly don't understand the principles lol. It is to get more air into the cylinder by reducing volume. A cold air intake, or an intercooler on a turbo charged engine, is there to increase the density of the air, thus making it possible to fit more air into the cylinder, because the engine works by heating the air up and making it expand. So if you put hot air in, it's already partly expanded and so you get less power. Think about how a turbo is trying to squeeze more air in by increasing the pressure, doesn't it make sense to decrease the temperature as well? This is also one of the reasons water injection is used in some performance engines, because it cools and densifies the charge air. Nitrous injection also does this. So on an ICE, cooling the intake air is entirely to increase density, and the amount of air that will fit in the cylinder, thus having more air that can expand a greater amount when it's heated. Remember that an ICE is still a heat differential engine and so the greater the heat differential, the greater the potential power. For clean combustion however, preheating the air is very helpful and important, because if you preheat the combustion air, it allows the flame temperature to be higher, leading to a more efficient combustion. Industrial oil burners often preheat the air with exhaust heat for this purpose. Google "preheating air for combustion" etc. So if your end result needed is expansion (ICE, turbine engines, rockets, etc), then you want to have your intake air as cold and dense as possible, (see SpaceX superchilling their propellant), but if you are just going for heat production, preheating is important. I will also mention carb heat on planes and the old engines that had heat stoves or the intake manifold heated by the exhaust manifold. That is very in-ideal, but to solve a problem with gasoline not evaporating properly, either due to the use of carberators that didn't evaporate the fuel well, or due to the cold temperatures in high altitude air. But generally the cars with those features were not high performance cars, or they had thermostatic dampers on the heat stove, so it only helped while the engine was cold and then shut off the heat.
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  114. I really don't like your revisionist history, talking about all the other brands and models currently using CCS, and ignoring the fact that for most of the existence of Tesla, they WERE the defacto industry standard, simply because they had almost no competition. Not to mention that the BetaChademo standard was competing against the VHSccs until just recently, so getting bitter against Tesla is well misplaced. Also you left out that Tesla attempted to get the other manufacturers to sign on and use the much superior Tesla standard, but the other manufacturers wanted to pretend that Tesla didn't exist, and so they created a second design. Plus, Tesla built out most of its supercharger network before CCS really took off or there WERE any other options for Tesla drivers. So while you have valid concerns about the situation for Tesla drivers, the way you go about bitching about the industry leader is pretty petty. Remember that without Tesla having built out such a large proprietary network, we wouldn't HAVE a robust EV market today, because Tesla literally had to create the infrastructure before people would buy the cars, and so the giant proprietary network was not an option, but the only way to do it. Now that the company is stable with plenty of cash flow, and they are able to install chargers faster than they can build cars, and there are just beginning to be 3rd party alternative charging networks that actually work, they are starting to move towards making it so Tesla's can at other networks easily, and also opening up the Supercharger network to other brands, but only as they are able to expand the network so that the Tesla owners don't have to wait for a line of Ioniqs at a Tesla facility. If you were a Tesla owner, you would be happy that you don't have to deal with all the other EVs on the road charging at "your" station, kind of like how only Costco members can get gas at Costco. As I see Tesla building chargers in every shopping center and restaurant district and random farm fields along the freeway in the middle of nowhere, some with hundreds of stalls, just a few miles down the road from others with hundreds of stalls, I see them getting to the point where they can start opening up to other brands, and just continue rolling them out as fast as they can get permits. It's kind of like how they aren't rushing to introduce more car models until they get production ramped on the existing models and have headroom to take on a new challenge, they had to get their network expansion ramped up fast enough to be able to handle outside customers, rather than just serving the Tesla fleet. And since all the early Model S cars that were built before CCS even was spawned from the pits of committee hell are STILL on the road, they couldn't just stop installing new Tesla connecters, because they would have had to retrofit all the older cars, as well as all the existing chargers, home chargers, etc. You treat it like it's saying that Apple should sell new phones with USB C, when really it's more like Apple having to upgrade the last 5 years of phones to work with USB C, and send out new chargers and battery packs to all their customers. Oh, and most Tesla owners would not WANT to "downgrade" from Tesla to CCS! Lol So I look forward to the adapter coming out to give Teslas charging options, and a slow rollout of CCS capabilities at Supercharger stations to allow 3rd party charging. Probably only a few stalls with CCS, and the rest are still reserved for the only currently large fleet of EVs in the US! (I have seen just 2 Ioniq5s in California so far, one of them today. I like the looks of it as much as I want to wear your brown tweed jacket.... Smirk)
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  118. The thing that you failed to mention as you repeatedly complained that the world leader in EV innovation hadn't invested millions of dollars in upgrading every existing car to a new charging port, is that Tesla uses a "proprietary" connector, BECAUSE THEY WERE FIRST, and nd they attempted to get the industry to use the same connector as the standard, but certain other car companies hated Tesla, and so refused to use the standard, and developed their own competing standard. By this time however, Tesla had lots of customers using the Tesla connector, and had invested billions into building out their Supercharger network, which is what has made worldwide EV adoption possible, because people see that it works if you build the infrastructure, which no car company wanted to do. So now in order to change to the late comer standard, they would have to invest billions in upgrading the existing US Tesla fleet charge ports, home chargers, destination chargers and Superchargers to the new port, and do it all at once so that no customer with free lifetime charging got stranded at a Supercharger with the wrong port. And if you think that someone with a $100k car is going to be happy having to use an adapter, you are wrong! Also, most Tesla owners don't want the change, because one of the value added benefits of owning a Tesla is that you don't have to compete with all the other makes at a charging station. You are part of a dedicated ecosystem that is expanded as needed as more Tesla's are sold, rather than having to fight for space with cars that don't contribute to the build out of more chargers. It's kind of similar to why it's not likely the US will convert to metric, because it would cost billions of dollars to do, with very little benefit for the average person.
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