cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/48079645 because it was headshotted within five minutes without any explanation. :/
In the laundry room where I live, there is this machine.
The fan in the back blows air onto the heating elements that heat up the air, which in turn hits the laundry, speeding up the evaporation of the water.
I have no formal education on electricity, I’m just extremely interested and eager to learn. I think I understand that the rods heat up because enough current is “pushed” with enough voltage through this material that has enough resistance for it to heat up.
If these are the hot and neutral rods next to each other (which I visually believe I confirmed) with no insulator in between, why is there no arcing?
What are prerequisites for arcing? I guess, if arcing occurred so easily, then we would have a lot more ground faults and short circuits all over electrical installations?
Each insulator (air is one) has an specific minimum voltage/distance ratio for an arc to appear.
Those probably wouldn’t arc even if their surface was electrified. But as a sibling already noted, their surface is insulated. They would be extremely sensitive to any kind of dirty, though.
Sweet! I’m gonna look up those ratios. Would be cool to see if there are calculations on arcing in vacuum.
If you want to look:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakdown_voltage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschen's_law
Technically there are no arcs in vacuum. Things work differently there, the discharge voltage depends on the electrode material and temperature.