3211: Amperage

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Amperage
Oh, and do you have any tips on how to vacuum up copper that's melted into your carpet?
Title text: Oh, and do you have any tips on how to vacuum up copper that's melted into your carpet?

Explanation

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Cueball explains to Ponytail how he has modified some parts of his house's wiring to avoid having power to his appliances interrupted on account of overcurrent conditions from running too many appliances at once. Households usually receive 200 amps (an amount of electricity power) from the utility. Individual circuits often support 15 amps or 20 amps. If one tries to use more power than that from one circuit, the circuit breaker will cut off that circuit. This is annoying, but unwise to bypass. Circuit breakers exist to prevent more current from flowing through wires that is expected, which is usually indicative of a short circuit of some kind. Preventing a circuit breaker from tripping, either by soldering wire into the fusebox where fuses are supposed to go or by placing breakers rated at excessively high amperages defeats this safety mechanism, meaning a fault such as a short circuit is much more likely to become a house fire.

Additionally, while Cueball has stated he has changed the service he receives from the local utility company and the ratings of his breakers, he has *not* stated he has changed the wiring in his house to the outlets. Typical wires for outlets are between 14 and 10 gauge, rated between 15 and 30 amps. If he has appliances drawing anywhere near 500 amps, he will most likely melt the wires inside his walls and start a fire, even if there is no fault.

Transcript

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Discussion

Seems like this would be at least tangentially related to the Cursed Connectors series, although it's just the outlets and cords this time. Zakator (talk) 05:51, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I would assume that this is related to styropyro's latest video? 142.126.42.193 05:59, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

200 amps is NOT "an amount of electricity power"; The amp is a unit of electrical current, from which power can be derived by multiplying by voltage.2001:8003:7087:E602:3CBE:B25:5BFC:61BD 07:41, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Iโ€™ll second the comment about the new styropyro video; it seems very likely that it inspired Randall to make this comic and is probably worth a mention.

2607:FB91:829C:47BD:C826:B8DB:5A5E:913A 07:50, 24 February 2026 (UTC)
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