2848: Breaker Box

2023-10-31T13:30:13Z

Sheldon2409: /* Table of the breakers labels */

{{comic
| number = 2848
| date = October 30, 2023
| title = Breaker Box
| image = breaker_box_2x.png
| imagesize = 560x776px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Any electrician will warn you to first locate and flip the house's CAUSALITY circuit breaker before touching the CIRCUIT BREAKERS one.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a HIGH-PITCHED HUM GENERATOR THAT WAS LAST MENTIONED EXACTLY 1258 COMICS AGO - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
A {{w|Distribution board}}, referred to as a "breaker box" here and commonly referred to as a "fuse box", "breaker panel", "DB box", and many other names, is a metal box inside a building that is attached to a wall, usually in some maintenance area, containing several {{w|circuit breakers}} that let power through to various parts of the building. A circuit breaker is an electrical switch, usually in the form of a small lever, that will physically open if too much power is flowing through, as might be the case if a fault occurs, in order to protect appliances.

In most breaker boxes, each individual breaker is labeled to let the operator know what that specific breaker controls. A breaker will usually control something like the outlets or lights in a certain room, or some large appliance. In houses that have been rewired multiple times(or are poorly wired), this can quickly become overcomplicated with seemingly random connections. The comic satirizes this, with multiple breakers "controlling" arbitrary things that may be impossible to hook a breaker up to, getting progressively more absurd to the point of disabling certain laws of physics as the switches get lower.

The title text is about causality. Turning off the circuit breaker using the circuit breaker may lead to a loop, as the disabled breaker can no longer disable itself, leading to it turning back on, etc. Turning off causality would prevent this loop as causes would no longer have effects.

===Table of the breakers labels===
{|class = "wikitable"
! Label next to breaker !! Explanation !!   !! Label next to breaker !! Explanation
|-
| Kitchen Lights || The lights in the kitchen. || || A whirring fan you didn't realize was on until now || The AC in a building usually creates quiet white noise from fans, which people usually do not hear until they become aware that there is a sound. Other appliances, such as fridges or home servers can have similar effects.
|-
| Living room lights || The lights in the living room. || || Dishwasher || The dishwasher.
|-
| Porch lights || The lights on the porch. || || Dishes || At a glance this could pass for a normal thing to be next to a breaker, despite dishes not requiring electricity. This might, however, actually be referring to an array of satellite dishes, but given how the switch for the dishwasher is immediately above this is most likely not the case.
|-
| Bathroom lights and one surprise mystery outlet somewhere || This controls the lights in the bathroom, but also a random outlet. This kind of situation can often occur, where the layout of the house and the wiring can mean that it is a sensible or convenient design decision from an electrician's perspective to wire seemingly logically unrelated things to the same circuit, but nonetheless is confusing to the homeowner when reviewing the breaker options. || || Hallway lights || The lights in the hallway or hallways.
|-
| North-facing appliances || Despite the impossibility of determining which way an appliance is facing, ignoring how you would even define that, without having a magnetic compass inside every appliance, and having all of those appliances be hooked up to one breaker, this apparently routes power to every appliance that faces north. It is unclear how strict this is as well - it could be as lax as northeast to northwest, or even as strict as {{w|Points of the compass#32-wind compass rose|north by east to north by west}}.|| || Hallway outlets || The outlets in the hallway or hallways.
|-
| Bathtub drain light || Bathtubs typically do not have drain lights, but this breaker provides power to that and only that. || || Hallway floors || This could pass for a normal breaker at a glance, given the two above and in some buildings there are floor outlets. This could also potentially refer to turning off the power for all the hallways on a given floor. Floors in and of themselves do not typically require power, but if they act differently when not powered is unknown. A simpler explanation is this just electrifies the floors, which is not usually desirable,{{citation needed}} but may be barely noticeable in this case when considering this breaker has been on the entire time. Unless the hallway is equipped with electric underfloor heating.
|-
| Appliances whose names contain the letter "F" || Another breaker that could theoretically be done despite the tremendous difficulty in doing so. Electrical systems do not carry data about names, and it is unclear how it would even get this information, if it would change depending on locality, if it uses the common name for something or the full name, how it would work in different languages, and so on. || || Social media || All of social media. This may be a reference to 'digital detoxes', where people turn off / delete / deny themselves access to all their social media apps, in the hopes that this will provide some improvement to their quality of life. It could also be a callback to [[908: The Cloud]]. Since most social media platforms are a centralized services, it would be theoretically possible to hook up a switch to the main power supply of every server building at once, given some extremely long wires, a breaker capable of handling the abhorrently massive electric load, and agreement from every social media provider<sup><i>(optional)</i></sup>.
|-
| Hot water heater || The heater for hot water. || || State law || It is unclear which state's laws this controls, but why they require power to operate is unknown. This may just be for enforcement of the laws, instead of nullifying every single one whenever it is turned off. Additionally, since Randall lives in Massachusetts, it's very likely this refers to the same state. Turning off the breaker could result in a state similar to martial law. Or it could be a State Law Breaker.
|-
| Regular water heater || The heater for regular water. Presumably, given the above switch, this is for heating lukewarm or cool water, while the above is for keeping it warm and acting as a storage medium. This could just be accomplished with a single water heater with the capacity of two, but it may be useful for getting a lot of adequately hot water quickly when only half a tank's worth is needed. Alternatively, this may imply that this heater is for heating water that is not yet hot, whereas the heater above is, unexpectedly and somewhat pointlessly, for heating water that is already hot.|| || Federal law || The ramifications of nullifying every federal law ever are immense, but this may still be for enforcement, like the above. Or, like above, it could be a Federal Law Breaker.
|-
| Outlets in rooms that it's normal to eat pizza in || This controls every outlet in rooms that it's normal to eat pizza in. This implies that the living room is not a room it's normal to eat pizza in, since those are on a different breaker. On the other hand, that breaker specifically specifies that it controls the living room '''''lights''''', but disregarding this, it's very likely it may still include the living room, seeing as the other switches fail to have any sort of constraints. Other eligible rooms would probably include the dining room, kitchen, and/or bedroom, but would be dependent on the inhabitants / regular visitors of the house (for example, they may regularly eat their pizza in the bathroom). || || Second law of thermodynamics || Turning off a physical law, especially the second law of thermodynamics, would be catastrophic, since the rest of the laws of physics would most likely follow suit once one collapsed unless they are held in place by other laws. Or, like above, it could be a Second Law of Thermodynamics breaker.

This law of physics was also explored in the What If? article [https://what-if.xkcd.com/145/ Fire From Moonlight]. As explained by Randall in this article, the second law of thermodynamics states that you cannot transfer heat from one location A to make another location B any hotter than location A, unless you expend some form of energy in doing so.
|-
| High-pitched hum generator || Controls a high-pitched hum generator. This is a call-back to [[1590: The Source]]. || || Friction || Again, turning off a physical law would be catastrophic, but turning off friction may not destroy reality. If it was turned off, however, many things would become incredibly unsafe or useless, while others would have increased efficiency. The benefits, however, would be negligible in comparison to how many systems would collapse instantly, such as ratchets, car tires, standing up, or just things staying still in general. Being in a frictionless environment (and a vacuum, as physicists love...) was the subject of [[669: Experiment]].
|-
| The solution to the cryptogram below: || A cryptogram is a puzzle where a sentence has been encoded using a cipher, usually very simple, and the goal is to determine the cipher used and recover the original sentence from the encoded one. This may be literal, as in the solution is "circuit breaker", but it also may be controlling the ability to know what the solution is or if it can be discovered. || || Gravity || If this was turned off, the Earth would explode, along with all other celestial objects. Planets and stars have extremely high internal pressure that is constantly in conflict with gravity. Every part would be forced outward at incredibly high speeds, and any object that requires gravity would simply not be able to form. Of course, this might also just make everything in the house weightless, which has much less disastrous consequences and would probably actually be pretty cool.
|-
| Bugs || This could either refer to software bugs or actual bugs, both of which do not make much sense to be able to turn off. If this does refer to actual bugs, it may be a reference to [[2753: Air Handler]].|| || Circuit breakers || If this was turned off, it would presumably turn off all power in the house since no breaker is supplied or supplying power any more. (Most houses have a main circuit breaker that provides this functionality.) However, if this circuit breaker disables the ability to toggle circuit breakers, you would not be able to turn this circuit breaker back on.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[An open breaker box is shown. There are 26 labelled breakers, all of which are on, paired back to back in thirteen rows as a label, switch, switch and label.]
:Kitchen lights / A whirring fan you didn't realize was on until now
:Living room lights / Dishwasher
:Porch lights / Dishes
:Bathroom lights and one surprise mystery outlet somewhere / Hallway lights
:North-facing appliances / Hallway outlets
:Bathtub drain light / Hallway floors
:Appliances whose names contain the letter "F" / Social media
:Hot water heater / State law
:Regular water heater / Federal law
:Outlets in rooms that it's normal to eat pizza in / Second law of thermodynamics
:High-pitched hum generator / Friction
:[There are words that are too small to read on the left breaker's label.]
:The solution to the cryptogram below: / Gravity
:Bugs / Circuit breakers

{{comic discussion}}

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2848: Breaker Box