Author Topic: did you ever see a plasma ball fly out of a power strip?  (Read 4013 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Cyberdragon

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2676
  • Country: us
Re: did you ever see a plasma ball fly out of a power strip?
« Reply #25 on: March 16, 2021, 07:35:54 am »
If you take a welder to pure silicon you get a ball lightning like fireball (there are theories that ball lightning comes in several forms, combustion + ions and pure ions with the "shells" as mentioned above, so the term has not been officially applied to any specific plasma formation).

Given that MOVs are silicon, did it look anything like these?





*BZZZZZZAAAAAP*
Voltamort strikes again!
Explodingus - someone who frequently causes accidental explosions
 

Online coppercone2Topic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11335
  • Country: us
  • $
Re: did you ever see a plasma ball fly out of a power strip?
« Reply #26 on: March 16, 2021, 07:51:22 am »
I think it was less aggressive and more red orange colored, it is not as bright.

But maybe it traveled a little bit and cooled off ? if it was the right size, because I did not catch it for the very first part of its travel, but I think if it was ultra bright i would have noticed shadows, then again it was like 3pm

But it was not as dim as a rubidium oscillator that I was comparing it to. I don't know how to explain the ethereal property I am describing, that part makes it different. Ok psychologically when I saw it I thought 'what the fuck is that' "i better look where this lands' but I did not think "OH SHIT ITS SPLATTERING METAL' (which is what I thought when my microwave oven malfunctioned). There was something about it that made me  ??? instead of  :scared: (because in a microwave its like a lightning storm when the magnetron shorts out)

Could it have like a gas cloud around it as it travels maybe?

But also the question is, if it go out of the ground hole, how did it get past everything without scorching the brass?

Those videos show the correct travel path though I think and how bouncy it is explains how it got out from between the wall and the table maybe.
« Last Edit: March 16, 2021, 07:57:48 am by coppercone2 »
 

Online Berni

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 5050
  • Country: si
Re: did you ever see a plasma ball fly out of a power strip?
« Reply #27 on: March 16, 2021, 09:04:36 am »
Yep that looks like the the usual burning ball of molten metal. But it does look rather pretty.

Not sure why they behave like that, but i am guessing that the burning is so vigorous that it creates a expanding pocket of gas around it that makes it float and bounce around much like the leidenfrost effect with water on a super hot surface. Eventually all of it burns up and so it looks like it it disappears in thin air.

But in can be indeed hard to recall details in a panic moment. I had a cheep chinese PSU module blow up out of the blue and i don't recall what exactly i seen. All i know is that everything went dark because it tripped the breaker, i think there was a loud bang and i think there was a flash but im not sure. Later on i found the glass fuse in that PSU only had the PCB pins remaining, the rest of the fuse was in the form of shrapnel.
 

Online coppercone2Topic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11335
  • Country: us
  • $
Re: did you ever see a plasma ball fly out of a power strip?
« Reply #28 on: March 17, 2021, 02:17:50 am »
this happened at like 3pm with home lights off (the room has 4 plane windows with partial blinds) and an open kitchen with 3x window connected to a porch with 4x big glass window,

When I came inside the power came back and I only noticed because the refrigerator was off again but the stove was on so I knew something tripped. (stove clock and refrigerator temperature display), the sony clock is hardly noticeable in the day and its set to dim settings.

If it was at night its a different story but this room is bright, the blinds are also not metal but just cloth that diffuses light, the kitchen has no blinds either. I only need light when its already almost dark outside. It was also a very nice day save for the wind.

The kitchen window that shines into the room is also facing the porch which is semi sealed (it uses grey smoke diffused plastic corrugation for the roof).. so there was no direct sunlight there, its all nicely diffused with white cloth blinds, corrugated porch roof and the windows that shine directly outside only get inside through reflection, and it was some what overcast, enough at least with high clouds that did not really let the sun shine directly.   
« Last Edit: March 17, 2021, 02:25:48 am by coppercone2 »
 

Offline SilverSolder

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6126
  • Country: 00
Re: did you ever see a plasma ball fly out of a power strip?
« Reply #29 on: March 17, 2021, 01:17:06 pm »

Did you hear the thunderclap / lightning strike itself?  Or did it happen far away and just propagate?
 

Online coppercone2Topic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11335
  • Country: us
  • $
Re: did you ever see a plasma ball fly out of a power strip?
« Reply #30 on: March 17, 2021, 07:50:41 pm »
i heard nothing I thought it was just something happening with the regulation, I assume wind took out tree branches because it was really windy, this is unrelated to any rain, thunder or lightning as far as I know.

I don't know what happens I assume they up the voltage because of losses and it shoots up when load is disconnected by a tree?
 

Offline SilverSolder

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6126
  • Country: 00
Re: did you ever see a plasma ball fly out of a power strip?
« Reply #31 on: March 17, 2021, 10:05:55 pm »
i heard nothing I thought it was just something happening with the regulation, I assume wind took out tree branches because it was really windy, this is unrelated to any rain, thunder or lightning as far as I know.

I don't know what happens I assume they up the voltage because of losses and it shoots up when load is disconnected by a tree?

I guess it's possible to get one heck of an inductive "smack" out of those big transformers, in the right (wrong) circumstances?
 

Online Berni

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 5050
  • Country: si
Re: did you ever see a plasma ball fly out of a power strip?
« Reply #32 on: March 18, 2021, 06:14:55 am »
i heard nothing I thought it was just something happening with the regulation, I assume wind took out tree branches because it was really windy, this is unrelated to any rain, thunder or lightning as far as I know.

I don't know what happens I assume they up the voltage because of losses and it shoots up when load is disconnected by a tree?

Over here we run 3 phase with neutral on power poles. So if a tree happens to break the neutral line first then the voltage on the least loaded phase is going to shoot up.

But MOVs are known to spontaneously combust here and there. As they experience surges they gradually deteriorate, eventually they deteriorate enough to start conducting slightly at the rated voltage too, making them get hot. Eventually it deteriorates enough where it just start conducting properly at rated voltage, making an enormous amount of power dissipate in them. This makes them smoke, catch fire or explode.
 

Online coppercone2Topic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11335
  • Country: us
  • $
Re: did you ever see a plasma ball fly out of a power strip?
« Reply #33 on: March 18, 2021, 06:20:37 am »
3 power strips and a clock in 1 day is no coincidence, and I don't think they can explode that bad as the picture shows normally? not sure though
 

Online Berni

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 5050
  • Country: si
Re: did you ever see a plasma ball fly out of a power strip?
« Reply #34 on: March 18, 2021, 07:17:59 am »
3 power strips and a clock in 1 day is no coincidence, and I don't think they can explode that bad as the picture shows normally? not sure though

Yeah perhaps the quality of the power coming into your house is particularly bad. Try measuring it with a dataloging multimeter.

We had undervoltage problems at out house, we didn't really notice since everything worked fine. But then dad got a solar array installed on the roof and every so often the inverter would trip out into error about mains voltage. So i hooked up a multimeter to the phase it was complaining about the most and logged it over a few days. Turns out the mains voltage was sometimes briefly dropping to 180V, but other times was the proper 230V, sometimes staying at 200V for periods etc... Obviously this was not okay, we emailed the plot to the power company, they came around and installed there own dataloger on all of the phases and came to the same conclusion that this is not good. Eventually they came around and we let them run a new underground cable along our property to give this area of the street its own feed from the transformer.

Opposite effects can happen with overvoltage if the power company decides to 'fix' such a problem by turning the transformer up to a higher voltage tap. This may get the people on the end of the line the proper voltage but the people close to the transformer might be getting too much. Fast transients can also come trough the lines since they might not get swallowed by the transformer due to inductance at high frequency.

But blowing up is an intended mode of operation for a MOV. They are designed to absorb power surges so that they don't blow up something more valuable. If the surge is small enough that might only result in the MOV getting hot from the energy. If the surge is large then the MOV can absorb so much power that it burns up or even explodes, but even then it is still doing its job in turning the energy of the power surge into thermal energy (or light and sound in the extreme cases), this is energy that could have otherwise continued on and blew up a power supply. Just that these large surges physically destroy the MOV so it needs to be replaced.

I repaired things before where lightning hit it. I open it up and find the fuse blown and the MOVs looking like charcoal. I place a incandescent lamp across the fuse to see if the thing still works enough to be worth attempting to fix. Sometimes they are shorted or make a fireworks show when voltage is applied. But often it just needs a new fuse and MOVs. They have taken the sacrifice for protecting the rest of the device.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf