Steve, After watching this you peeked my interest, a bit, so sadly, I measured the capacitance of a 50m roll of 1.0mm flat T&E which is the size of cable used in the UK for normal domestic lighting circuits, I got approx 5nf (100pf/m) between L&N. This means that the impedance or AC resistance (Xc) between L&N will be: 1/(2 pi x f x c) which = 1/(6.284 x 50 x 5x10-9) = 636.6K Ohms (31.82M ohms/m). Therefore at the UK nominal voltage of 230v a current of 230/636.6K = 0.36mA will flow in the circuit this is enough current to cause the LED's to glow. Now the reason that this lamp glows and the other does not is, because the one that does not has an electronic inverter (transformer) type LED current limiting circuit and 0.36mA is not enough to start the inverter so the LEDs stay off whilst the other (cheap) lamp appears to use a passive type (resistors & capacitors) of current limiter which will allow some of the 0.36mA to flow through the LEDs causing them to glow, there are pros and cons for both types. BTW that current would be flowing even if there was a standard tungsten lamp but it would not glow so it would not be noticed, and it also is present in every circuit in the house. The actual power wasted is very very small (probably < 50mW) due to the resulting current/voltage phase shift a domestic electric meter will not be able to meter this easily. Also it is unlikely the average UK house will have 50m of cable in the switch drop, probably more like 5 - 10m but even so maybe enough to make the LED lamp glow, some of the more efficient LEDs will glow with only a few 10's of micro amps! PS Good work
@@thebamplayer Canada is 240v Split Phase. There 180 degrees apart, allowing for 120 and 240, and almost all his high power appliances are 240. People obsessed with Canada and USA being 120v. ITS NOT its 240 they just centre tap transformers
@@astatics6176 What i meant was, that if you would touch the live wire in north america, you would only get exposed to 120 volts. To be exposed by 240 volts you need to touch BOTH phases at the same time, otherwise only 120 volt will flow through you'r body.
someones been watching technology connections but no. you'd almost only get 120V out of a outlet in america. the 240V is wired up differently and usually not accesible. so saying it's less dangerous because it's only 120V (which is still dangerous, electricity ain't a joke) is valid because the 120 volt is the one that's represented more and easier to access. also fyi, eu has the same deal, our common outlets are at 240V and we have 3 phase which effectively ends up with 400V reserved for pretty much just motors but also really high power apliances. cause 3 phase drives motors directly with barely any driving circuit. we do have specific 3 phase outlets tho, not that common, especially more rurally but those things exist, so you could even access the dangerous 3 phase voltage easier here. which is to say, eu electricity still is more dangerous by the voltage advantage cause 400V is much more dangerous than 240V. like saying 240V is more dangerous than 120V
I’m an electrician in Canada. This is why the bonding conductor is so important in the circuit. If the bond is disconnected from the system ground then an induced voltage can/will be introduced on every device box (the metal boxes that receptacles, switches, and lights sit in) after the break in the the bond. I have had a couple service calls of LEDs acting up because of this induced voltage, it can lead to some wacky voltage readings on your meter. It really throws you for a loop the first time you see it.
I am not an electrician, but have been interested in such matters for a long time (decades). I knew immediately that his circuit violates electrical codes. I now understand why -- because that long length of wires creates a capacitor. Properly installed home wiring does not create capacitors.
The cable disconnected at the light switch and connected to one side of the bulb is acting as an areal. It collects energy from RF signals in the atmosphere, so as long the other side of the bulb is connected to an earth (in this case the neutral star point of the supply) energy will be dissipated. Everything about capacitance is irrelevant. I can give 2 other examples. The first is the crystal set radio, where a tuned signal between an areal and earth is sufficient to run headphones without a power supply. For the second example, you need to consider a microphone. The interference noise that would be picked up if the cable was not screened is the energy. Interestingly, when he used the cable by connecting both wires at one end and then shorting the other, he was creating a balanced circuit, where the 2 wires side by side in opposite directions were cancelling the induction in each other. The same thing can happen on a CFL bulb. The energy can collect in the strike capacitor, causing a small flick of light about every 30 minutes. People using these bulbs in the bedroom wrongly suspect a fault in the wiring or a defective switch. Many years ago, a house was built in the UK where 30 tons of scrap lift cables were included in the structure. Each length of cable was earthed at one end and cut to length to tune it into what was probably the worlds largest RF areal. The system which heated the house by using the electrical resistance of steel to produce heat, drained every signal within a 3 mile radius. The designer, a radar engineer, was threatened with imprisonment if the system was not demolished. While this video and posts on this thread make no sense, none of what I explained is taught at school or college.
@@wilsjane that would be the case if the bulb lit when it had wires that were long but unplugged, which it doesn't. Whats actually happening is the wires are acting as a capacitor, which in an AC circuit actually allow current to flow through. The reason that this doesn't happen with most appliances is because they require far more current than the cheapo LED bulb.
I had an LED bulb that flashed every 5 seconds or so, I contacted my electrician and he told me it happens sometimes with low quality LED bulbs. Now I understand why... this effect must have been charging a capacitor in the bulb until it flashed and discharged, then started charging up again. Thanks for solving this mystery for me!
I don't think that is what happened at all. The glow is not caused by a capacitor, it is caused by the turned off wiring acting like a capacitor. The high quality bulb in this example hat a capacitor inside to suppress the glow. What I think happened in your case is that the bulb had loose wiring inside, or it did not fight perfectly into the socket.
Flashing of an led is more often a failure of the drive circuitry, usually due to a discreet component failure that doesn't allow the driver chip to properly run so it starts and crashes..
@@praestant8 The chip would have no idea. It would see a voltage built up on the capacitor and it would reach a threshold where the chip tries to drive the light, discharge the capacitor below the threshold and the chip would crash. Creating a blink of light. This can also happen due to the fact that capacitors will charge back up due to capacitor soakage.
Your case is different from the video..we had the same problem, my electrician fixed it for me by putting a capacitor on the bulb and it worked..consult to a “master electrician” split second he knows the answer to your problem..hehe
Sorry for being late, but I had a simmilar problem. In my case the flickering was caused by the stair light switches that were not been made to work with LED lamps. When the switches were turned off they still were passing a small amount of current thought the lamp just to light up the small LED that lets you find the switch in the dark.
I'm sure the energy draw is very, very tiny, so this not turning off and giving a gentle glow is a great feature. Especially for a landing or toilet which are otherwise totally unlit at night.
@@thefreedomguyuk I understand why you think that. Light=electricity=danger. But it's not quite like that. AC electricity gets out of wires and crosses between wires just through capacitance. Even if you put your hand near a cable you get that effect, but it is so small, that it doesn't present a danger. Because of the way LEDs work, they can harness even the tiny amount of electric transferred through capacitance between cables. Maybe even less than the current you get when placing a damp finger across a 9v battery.
If you use the "liquid" metaphor per electricity you can see a capacitor as an elastic membrane blocking the fluid. If you use dc it will stop the flow but if you use ac it will allow short movements in both directions.
Actually thats a great analogy. Most houses that use well water, will somewhere have a tank (usually in the basement) with a diaphragm inside that maintains pressure (voltage) on the system, even if the well pump is turned off. It stores some water and can push some out if the well is turned off. It also has the ability to dampen intermittent pressure spikes from a pump turning off and on again (much like capacitors are used to smooth out voltage spikes.
That's the best analogy first I heard was from BigClive. In this case I suppose that the two 50m long wires (red and black) would be acting as two parallel hoses (like to conductive plates in a capacitor) where the "live hose" is inducting pulses to the "neutral hose" because of the very pulsing nature of the water supply (AC current) even when the circuit is open. Actually the best analogy I have heard about how electricity flow through a conductor is given by ElectroBoom. With this two analogies, the one from BigClive and the one from ElectroBoom, it becomes very easy to understand the "led bulb that doesn't turn off" phenomenon.
I got multicoloured Christmas lights last year and wound up keeping them up around my room.. I had been wondering whether maybe some of the colouring was a little bit glow in the dark or something but now I think I was seeing a very small, quite faint version of this effect while the whole string was plugged into the wall. Neat!
I have some LED Christmas lights that dim-glow even when switched off, but in this case its multiple strings outside - enough to go all the way around the house (no capacitors or AC adapters or anything, simply 120v mains-powered lights). ...I'm guessing because the neutral is switched (I know it is), or there's some sorta weird EMF between that group of light-strings, and the others (on a separate circuit) that run right along beside them. (all lights are ofcourse taken down & put away after holiday season!)
actually this effect does not occur and much less if but in the whole load, if the load is wired in parallel, but only if the switch branches off with a long cable. but there are series AC christmas lights too.. :D
@@csquaredfilms Why do people use pfp instead of avatar these days? pfp means "picture for proof", it's supposed to be an actual picture of your person. :P
This is brilliant, great explanation, it’s sounds a bit like a gas accumulator in principle. Im in the Solar PV industry and come across this capacitance phenomenon when trying to fault find ground faults on large solar cable runs.
Steve: "I'll break the circuit. Please don't do it yourself, it's dangerous!" Also Steve: casually spills some water out of a giant syringe right above his wiring.
@@gyroninjamodder tap water is conductive due to the elements dissolved in it! However, try comparing the conductivity of tap water with that of the droplets that accumulate on the underside of a pot after boiling. It's not distillation, but it's noticeably less conductive. (Use a simple low-power circuit and a LED)
*clicks ElectroBoom's video* Mehdi: A friend of mine called Steve Mould told me... *me goes to watch Steve's video* Steve: A friend of mine called Mark Warner showed me....
I think it's more than a purely capacitive effect. The two long wires are coupled inductively too. As long as there's any current in one of the wires, the pair will act as a transformer.
Nope. The two long wires cannot act as a transformer because they run right next to each other, and the current through one wire is always going in the opposite direction relative to the current in the other wire. This causes the magnetic fields in each wire to perfectly oppose each other, which removes the inductance from that section of wire.
the magnetic field caused by the first wire is cancelled by the magnetic field of the second wire as long as they stick together in the same winding,, it's actually how we organise the extra length of audio wires, otherwise the quality of the audio output is going to be reduced
I think you are right that the coupling is inductive, but it is inductive at a frequency much higher than 60hz. Looking at the cheap LED bulb I see several ceramic capacitors, but no inductors. The capacitors on the LED connected to the inductive wire conductor makes a ringing LC circuit and the long wire next to it is still connected to the 60hz 120v driving the ringing. You can prove this is true by connecting a scope and finding the ringing frequency. You can measure the impedance of the cheap LED across the power connection and I bet it will measure capacitive.
@@skyak4493 The "you can measure..." is not quite completely true.... Take any regular measurement device and you won't measure much capacitance. There is also a bunch of leds in series with the capacitor. They block current in one direction and require a significant voltage (which any sane tester would stay well below) in the other. So most testers will register: "no connection". It is only when you apply a high enough AC voltage that the behavior becomes capacitive (with a twist: the threshold voltage of the leds). (detail: There is a bridge rectifier in there as well, so you'll never get the leds to block the current, only the forward voltage drop really applies).
@@rewolff2 Regular measurement devices measure reactance at one low frequency -that is the problem. Reactance varies over frequency. The circuit fails to address reactance at higher frequencies and has an oversimplified model of the semiconductors. When the current reverses and the diodes clip the current you make a square wave. The frequency content of this wave is high enough that inductance of leads can ring with the capacitors and the LED emits a small portion of this power.
you can tell the light bulb's "off" illumination is still being actively powered because the rolling shutter reveals that it flickers on and off in sequence.
Yeah and if you paid attention, you'd know why. Don't listen to the people saying "It siphons power of the neutral wire", that's nonsense because there's no power on neutral and that's also not how circuits work. A capacitor is like a frequency dependant resistor. The higher the frequency, the lower the resistance, because in AC, the electrons don't actually flow, they just vibrate back and forth and the transfer of energy works pretty similar to how materials transfer sound. It's the shockwave going from one particle to the next that carries the soundwave forward, even if the particles just vibrate in place. It works the same. If the circuit is on, the chain of electrons carries the up and down wave of the changing voltage to the bulb, but if the circuit is broken, because the wires are really close together for several meters of the cable, there's enough surface area for the charge in the one wire to interact with the electrons in the other wire. It's comparable to sound being shielded off by a pane of glass. The insulation in the cable is the glass and if you yell at someone through a closed window, the sound traveling through the air hits the glass and causes a tiny amount of energy is being transferred to the glass and to the air on the other side, so the sound is dampened, but not completely shielded off, but contuous flow of air is completely stopped. The cable works the same way in that the voltage alternating is like sound vibrations and the insulation in the cable is stopping continuous current, but only shielding, not stopping the electric (not magnetic) field from the alternating voltage. So to go back to the frequency dependant resistor. There's still current flowing, but it's just electrons vibrating back and forth with 50 (or in this case 60Hz), just severely dampened by the insulation of the cable and the higher the frequency, the stronger the effect because more vibrations per second means that more energy is being transferred from one wire to the other. And it only works with the cheap foreign bulb and not the more expensive domestic one, because the little transformer coil on the domestic bulb has inductivity, which cancels out the capacity of the wire, while the foreign bulb is just lots of LEDs put in series to take mains voltage directly. There.
Having done three years of electrical in high school, the reason its staying on in a quick simple explanation, the "Hot" wire is being continuously fed from the breaker. The "Neutral" wire is continuously taking the energy back. The hot is emitting and magnetic pulse that the white is taking it back to the ground, completing the circuit. The bulb is just sensitive enough to be powered off of that flow. It generally doesn't increase your electricity bill.
That only works if you're explaining it to someone with 3 years of electrical in high school as well, though. I don't have an understanding (knowledge vs. understanding) of what most of those words mean.
@@christianhernandez7740 Once again, you took a nine month course. I haven't completed any courses in electrical . . . I was just saying that it's only a "quick simple explanation" if you have completed one of those courses, or have a much better understanding than I do. Sorry for the confusion
Yeah I think it could happen because of induction. I learned a while ago you can syphon power from mains without breaking the cable by wrapping the wire abound it lots of times.
@@qtipextra It's a capacitive effect. The wire doesn't need to be coiled up, that was just for this demonstration. A length of domestic mains cable (ignoring earth/ground) just two open ended conductors in close proximity but with an open circuit between them, the very definition of a capacitor The slight glow is quite a common phenomenon in LED lamps with simple reactive droppers, and it only takes a few feet of cable to the light switch to affect some lamps, perhaps the equivalent of a few hundred picofarads. More expensive lamps aren't affected because they have active elecronics and need more power to start the circuit runnng.
@@ProdigalPorcupine It looks to me like the disconnected wire is enough of an inductor to form a high frequency ringing circuit with the capacitor on the LED and the circuit next to it connected to 120v ac is driving it. What we termed "crosstalk". If you put a scope on the switched off but glowing LED you will find high frequency voltage. Measure that connecting wire at that high frequency and the phase angle will show it is inductive. Measure the LED at that high frequency and phase angle will show it is inductive.
@@junkiexl86 *Pure* water is a poor conductor for electricity. The stuff on the water, like minerals, are what conduct electricity. If he filled that with tap water it conducts electricity just fine.
@ Doubtful. Tap water from South America or Flint MI maybe. Most cities have strict water quality laws that limit the amount of impurities in potable water and you need quite a bit for water to become conductive, which is well above what is classified as potable water.
@@junkiexl86 Sure, there are strict laws regulating the quality of tap water. But it’s in regard to *human consumption*! Which means it does contain sodium, potassium and chloride, all necessary for your health. It’s incredibly far from being pure water, as in pure, distilled water you expect to find in a lab, or water filtered through reverse osmosis. Tap water, while still being a poor conductor, isn’t resistive enough to not shortcut electrical circuits like this. It has a conductivity of 5 to 50 mS/m, which is between 2 and 4 orders of magnitude higher than pure to ultra-pure water.
After years, thanks to you, I resolve the mistery when I get a little shock trying to change a lamp even with the switch turned off. I was thinking I was crazy
Because your house is wired up wrong. In my house the mains wires are under the floor, the wire goes up the wall, through the switch, then up to the ceiling to the lights. No capacitor. To make it glow and to give you your little shock you need the utterly weird nonsensical way of the live going to the fitting first (well the connection block in the ceiling, not the one on the end of the wire where the bulb goes in), then going off to the switch, then coming back along the same wire! No idea why some houses get wired up like that, it means you turn off the switch and you still have live in the ceiling rose. OUCH! Off the ladder you fall when you jump.
This used to happen to me when I was using cheap led retrofits and I could not for the life of me think of why. This makes so much sense cause it always happened in older developments. They used to carry feeds to the lights and do a switch loop. That's why a lot of old switches have no neutrals in them. Thank you for solving a very old mystery for me!
He didn't solve it because he didn't explain the correct reason it's way more simple, it's just AC or alternating current, LED bulbs take less than a volt of alternating current to Glow even if a single wire is connected it's called the B field th-cam.com/video/bM738MUY-NM/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/_bgUy6zA0ts/w-d-xo.html
What's really happening is they have a small fusion reactor inside of each light bulb and they only need the initial power to Kickstart the fusion process. Once that's done, they'll not only power the light bulb, but your entire house.
@@スノーハッピー I assume he's saying that because of the coiled wire. It is an old myth that coiled extension cords will cause a fire. Some people will say it creates an inductor (it doesn't since both legs are coiled next to each other), and some people say the wires will great up because there's not enough air flow. You'd need to have the wire coiled super tight, airflow completely blocked, something on top of the coil to stop great from escaping, and be pulling TONS of current. The breaker will pop long before a fire starts, and there's rarely a time that all of those conditions are met. It's a situation that is extremely rare, and has only happened a handful of times. It usually happens when the wire is in some sort of an enclosure, like a job site box, it's super hot out, the box is closed, and they're pulling enough current to the point where it's barely not tripping the breaker.
I'm a sparky too, a trick I learnt years ago for LEDs that are affected by this is to use LED indicator lamps or basically any diode on the circuit in the off position, this means when the lamp is switched off your giving the current a path and a job to do which eliminates the problem. You can either install illuminated switches and have the switch illuminate when in the off position or just hide the LED indicator behind the lights switch plate.
This happens with my China LEDs at home, though it’s way more dim, I’ve been always wondering if my switches were broken or something. Thanks for explaining it!
Apart from him gesturing around a live wire. Jesus that's not setting a good example. I appreciate the explanation but damn, I fail my students if they leave a live wire in a test installation and here is a bad example.
I had a similar situation with the early LED bulbs that I used to replace my halogen bulbs in my highlight fixtures. My best guess was that the magnetic effect of the copper wiring provided just enough energy to keep them dimly lit. I was extremely surprised, but that was that: there was always a slight glow.
Take out the light switch, and you'll see two cables: one coming from your breaker box, the other going to the lamp. You'll notice that one wire from those cables is connected straight through, and the other goes through the switch. Turn that around: have the ones that are connected straight through go through the switch instead, and connect up the ones that previously went through the switch. Your glow will be gone.
@@EvenTheDogAgrees Hi, sorry to comment on an old post of yours, but I just want to clarify.. So I cut the one that goes straight through, make that go through the switch, then take the one from the switch, and connect it to the wire I just cut..?
@@neilsison7109 Hey, no worries, man. Besides, that post wasn't that old. 😉 First of all, it's best to test that this is indeed the problem. Take the front plate off the switch, and with one of those electrical tester screwdrivers, make sure that when the light is off, the terminals of the switch do not carry a voltage. If you've never worked with these, they're pretty simple to use: they have a metal cap that you touch with your thumb or finger, and then you touch the tip of the screwdriver to the terminal you wish to test. If the light comes on, there's voltage on the terminal. Test it first on something you know carries a voltage, like a wall outlet. Also, and this goes without saying: don't touch the tip during this process; only the handle and the cap. I mean, you'd still know if the terminal carries a voltage or not, but the goal here is to do it without injuring yourself. 😂 As for resolving it, it all depends on how your house is wired up. Which also depends on when it was wired up. In older installations, it was common to use individual wires. In such a case, you may not even have a cable going straight through, since it might as well have been routed via a shorter path directly to the lamp. But assuming there's one going straight through, and it's not the earth wire, you cut that one and connect both ends to both ends of the switch, while connecting the one that was in the switch together with a screw terminal or Wago clamp terminal or similar. In more modern installations, cables with multiple conductors are used. If you do a search for "xvb cable", you'll see what I mean. In that case, the cable is cut completely, and one conductor is switched, while the other is connected with a screw terminal or Wago clamp connector. If that's the case, just switch the one from the screw terminal to the switch, and the one that was on the switch to the screw terminal. Important to note: if the light can be switched from multiple switches, then you need to identify the one connected to the breaker box, as you need to make this modification on the one where the current "enters" the circuit. I don't know what part of the world you live in, but there are probably standards for colour coding mains wiring. Here in Belgium it's blue for neutral, brown for mains, and yellow/green striped for the earth wire. In case of three phase, or multiway switching, black and grey may be used for the extra phases or the signal wires connecting the multiway switches to each other. The specific colours may differ for your country. You always want to end up in a situation where the wire with the colour for neutral does not carry a voltage. So if you find yourself with a blue and a brown wire (or your local equivalents), where the blue carries voltage and the brown doesn't, the switcharoo should not be made in the switch, but in the breaker box (or junction box, if it's connected through one of those), because it means the screwup is upstream of the switch. However, a word of warning: you're working with mains voltage. If unsure, or if all of this sounds too complicated, get someone who knows about electricity to help you out or do it for you. Or pay an electrician they're a lot cheaper than the undertaker, from what I understand. 😉
Like when I helped a friend fix some wiring in her house. She had some LED bulbs working on one conductor, someone forgot or didn't do a good job on the second. As I fixed it I tried to explain the phenomenon to her and it was over head like a jet.
Used to happen in my old house with the compact fluorescent bulbs. It would flick every 20-30secs. As if the capacitor built up enough charge to trigger the starter.
Because there's still AC power within the line and it is being drawn by the LED bulb until there's no voltage left th-cam.com/video/_bgUy6zA0ts/w-d-xo.html
I have seen it at my home, and it glows even when another appliance on the same switchboard is turned on. It may be a capacitative induction on the adjacent wires of the active wires due to a/c current.
As an electrician we experience this often if there are a lot of cables laying together or in old houses where the insulation around the wires is bad. One way to deal with this problem is by inserting a resistor parallel to the light bulp this will eleminate the capacive charge from the wires
@@mariocueva8700 what did you expect? -He could also bill you a 100K to rewire your entire home... maybe you prefer a 50$ bill and a few pennies spent on electric bills going foreward? Maybe you shouod have maintained your home on a runnikg basis instead of blaming the electrician for your lousy home installation? And finally: Your ood glowbulbs also drew current while being off. You just didn't see them glow because they let off the inducted leak current as a bit of heat instead of light. The kicker: You glowbulb was 60-100w and might use a few watts when off... your led might light up a little when off, but it only uses a fraction of the wattage you glowbuob would...
The voltage that is induced into the second wire is only capable of very low current, almost nothing, so the other bulb that draws more current is not likely to glow because there is almost no current flow. The voltage is induce from one wire to an adjacent wire through capacitive(and inductive) coupling, this is why you don't run audio and video wires/cables next to power wires/cables. Capacitive: the voltage in one wire effects the electrons in the other wire. Inductive: The current flow in the wire creates a moving magnetic field which will induce a current/voltage(closed loop/open loop) into an adjacent wire.
3:40 - while it’s technically drawing power through the wires acting as a capacitor from nearby electrical cables I don’t think electricity cost from these things being barely on is a concern. If these LEDs are so efficient that the wires themselves can power it I can’t imagine it costing you more than $0.10/year if that.
New bulb in the hood over our range, works on high, works on low, works on off-erm, works when it's OFF? Thanks ever so much for this explanation. Also, extremely impressed with your ability to assemble a capacitor. When you were done, it looked as good as new . . .
Steve Mould, love your videos but I’m fairly certain you have this wrong here. This is likely an incident of inductive coupling. The alternating current can establish resonance in the Line side conductor when it is broken many wire lengths longer the wavelength of the alternating power source. The oscillating movement of the electrons in the Line side wire create an alternating magnetic field along the length of the wire according to the right hand rule. The second conductor in the cable (neutral or ground or load side) runs parallel and directly adjacent to the Line side wire. It is in the alternating magnetic field which as it fluctuates induces a weak oscillating electric field in the neutral/ground/load side conductor. The oscillating electric fields in both conductors are out of phase and amplitude creating a weak electrical potential allowing electrons to flow back and forth across the LED’s. Typically this is limited with a low pass RLC circuit, which I’m guessing is insufficient or lacking in the cheaper bulb. Also possible that the cheaper bulb has an inferior diode that allows enough backflow current to setup the oscillating resonant current in the long wire length. Capacitors store charge by holding electrons from jumping across a dielectric gap. When the circuit is closed, the potential difference exceeds the dielectric constant and the electrons rush past the dielectric gap rapidly delivering stored energy.
Much simpler than all that BS don’t put a switch on the neutral side of it because there will always be voltage at the bulb allowing it to glow expensive LEDs will flash when they have voltage to them but neutral gets broken
@@sparkylife4896 Exactly. Had the same issue with some LED TL's when I repaced the old TL armatures. Took me all of 5 seconds to realise that whoever did that installation cut the neutral rather than the live. Swapped the cables, and the glow was gone.
No inductance or capacitance, the extra wire is acting as ground and what we see is bleed voltage. HIs friends light sockets are always hot. Very dangerous.
"many wire lengths longer the wavelength of the alternating power source" Do you mean the wire is longer than the wavelength of the AC? 300,000,000 m/s / 50 hertz = 6000 kilometre... p.s. it's capacitance.
Thnx for explaining. Since I replaced classic light bulbs with Ikea 5watt leds, I had the same 'ghost light' issue and wondered why that was..... 10 years later I finally learned.... 🙂
The old tube lights in my room used to flicker at some intervals even when switched off. I guess that should have been same phenomenon, just its starter capacitor getting charged and then releasing voltage when it becomes enough for creating arc.
Did you have an illuminated switch? Those pass a very small amount of power through the bulb to light the switch (they don't directly connect to the neutral). incandecents would never light from it, far to little power. CFLs, LEDs, etc slowly build up a charge and try to light, instantly draining the charge. hence the flicker.
CFL lights can also emit a glow from ambient electromagnetic fields, microwaves, e.t.c. they also contain built in capacitors that often take a crap and don't discharge properly.
I had this on a large crane a few years ago. The power for the crane was picked up from bars that ran the length of the main beam. There were three lamps which indicated to the operators that the power was switched on and non of the fuses were blown, these were six meters up and needed replacing every few years, so to reduce working at height risks these were replaced with LEDs which did not need replacing as often. Unfortunately they did not turn off when a fuse blew, resulting in maintenance loosing a day chasing the wrong fault down. Induction can also hold relays in for long cable runs, especially when you replace old inefficient relays with modern ones...
When I saw the cable with the two wires going in parallel my IT background immediately made me hear alarm bells. We don't really deal with constant currents like this but signal corruption is always a consideration. Now this went a little differently than I would've thought but it's the same forces at play.
In the twin and earth cable you should have a CPC (earth) core. Connect that to the earth pin of the plug and see if the light goes out. I think the bulb stays on for the same reason a non contact voltage detector works. If the CPC being connected makes the light go out, would suggest it is induction, and your friend should probably have the continuity of his earthing checked out! 👍
I've seen it happen with the cpc connected to be fair but I will keep this in the old brain just for the next time .. something tells me we are going to see more of this as people try to save money on light bulbs etc !
@Steve Mould you are not incorrect saying that the long coil wire is a capacitor, but the capacitor doesn't create the effect you are noticing. It's rather that the long wire is working like a transformer. One is the live wire is creating an oscillating electric field and the other is converting it back into oscillating voltage. This is essentially how every regular transformer works. You could even increase the glow if you decrease the loop size or wrapping it around a metal rod. You are correct that this constantly drawing power of the line, which is different to what a capacitor would do. It would discharge (quickly) and not draw any power of your main line.
You said it yourself, it works through an oscillating electric field being converted back into oscillating voltage. But this is how a _capacitor_ works, not a transformer. A transformer works through an oscillating magnetic field (generated by an oscillating current) being converted back into oscillating current. There is an oscillating current passing through the wires (the bulb needs current to power on, obviously), but it's tiny next to the oscillating voltage (full mains), so the capacitive effect wins over with a large margin.
According to my calculations, if you doubled the length of the wire and did not stack the wires on top of each other, the light of the LEDs would increase. This test can also be done with DC current and normal LEDs. Just increase the length of the wire and don't pile them on top of each other. You have a very good channel. Thankyou.
I loved the way you showed the construction of the capacitor by reversing/rewinding the video. I didn't see the symbol and only noticed when I saw that very odd plier movement.
This style works and the other one shown doesn't because this style has just a capacitive dropper, the other has a switching converter controlled by an IC. Also, a filament light bulb will probably be costing you money when off, just like this LED bulb, it just just doesn't emit any light at the low currents caused by this relatively high impedance phantom voltage.
Right, the filament bulb will create heat as it does with any amount of current, but frequency is related to temperature and it will only be hot enough to produce low-frequency invisible infra-red light.
An incandescent bulb probably costs you a lot less from this effect. The resistance of a cold filament is far lower than a hot one, so the power factor will be very low. It's essentially just a capacitor with no resistance in series, which dissipates zero power.
Greg Ewing The cost is pretty inconsequential as LEDs, unlike incandescent bulbs, will glow on mere microwatts of power and what we were witnessing in the bulb in this video was likely on the order of some milliwatts (the camera will tend to make the bulb appear *much* brighter than in real life since the full intensity bulb tends to overexpose and blowout the highlights thus not actually representing to us how intense the fully lit bulb was in real life). Many cheap capacitive dropper style LED bulbs address the issue by literally adding a resistive load in parallel with the bulb such that the resistor absorbs the vampire current, converting it into heat, pulling the voltage across the LEDs below their forward conductance voltage such that they do not glow (or at least do not glow to any noticeable degree). The affect was further accentuated in this video as most switched lighting circuits don’t have the better part of 100m in their switches return loop leading to greater capacitive coupling and thus more vampire current for the LED bulb than in a typical household setup.
I've seen the same effect in my homemade LED bulbs and learned about the capacitance in the wiring from Big Clive, but you presented and explained it very well.
One thing I notice, the UK bulbs appear to have a small transformer built into them along with a capacitor and probably some other components. The Chinese bulb had none of this. It looks like the Chinese ball may actually just simply use a resistive load to reduce the voltage down to a totolerable level for the leds. I suspect what's actually happening is that the coil of wire and the brake in the switch are acting as a coil capacitor circuit and causing the circuit to ring, where the switch acts as a small capacitor and the wiring acts as an inductor. I really wish you would have used in oscilloscope to better see the leakage current through the system. The explanation of the wiring acting as a capacitor, would not explain why breaking the circuit with a switch causes the light to remain on. Electric current would still have to get through the gap in the switch somehow. What would make more sense is if the wiring were acting as an inductor and the switch acting as the very small value capacitor which with alternating current, will allow current to leak through into the bulb. Since the Chinese bulb does not appear to have any kind of step down transformer to isolate it, I believe it is this leakage current that's keeping the bulb dimly lit.
capacitors let through AC current. Hence Xc=1/ωC (the formula to calculate the impedance of a capacitor for a given frequency and capacitance). Better designed LED bulbs fix this problem by having a resistor between phase and neutral to shunt this tiny current.
I have normal Philips bulbs and I still have the same “problem”, but I have what we call in French “va et vient” switches, so that the bulb can be turned on and off from two deferent places. I guess between the two switches it creates a closed circuit on its own. Thankfully it’s in a corridor with no windows, so in a sans it’s saving me money cause most of the time I don’t turn on the light at all.
Saksham Singh you really made me think about why I kind of like that bulb. As it is constantly at 10% capacity On, I don’t need to switch it on, it’s like a night light. There is enough movement in that corridor and no day light whatsoever to justify leaving the light fully on, all day long. So in a sense, for me, in that particular configuration, it may actually be saving energy. Also it is particularly useful to check on the baby without the 100W above the door. But I understand that in any other case it is extremely wasteful.
when i encountered this a while back, i had a couple of theories. either, 1, something wrong with the wall wirings; or 2, maybe it's caused by the induction of ac current through the switch (facilitated by the copper wirings in the wall); or 3, due to discharging capacitors in the circuit of the led module. in the end, we ended up replacing the led module (hoping that it's either caused by 2 or 3). didn't even realize that this was a common phenomenon with chinese led lamps. i feel so much more relaxed and reassured now. fantastic video!
1:00 Steve: Uses isolating Gloves ElectroBoom: Touches line wires from a microwave transformer with his bare hands because he want to build a jacobs ladder
I'm an electronics engineer and understood the nature of the phenomenon pretty quick... Your voice and fascination with the explanation just kept me watching all the way through
Love, love, love, love, how easy you make it to understand things. Honestly, it's amazing how skilled you are at explaining complicated concepts using simple analogies and illustrations. Cant get enough of your videos Steve!!
Actually the effect described could never happen in a house built after common european laws, because it's illegal to not use the live for the switch. The effect you described is also the cause why power lines and radio/antenna lines never are drawn parallel to each other
The live IS used for the switch. BUT, it wouldn't work in my house because the mains wires are under the floor, the wire goes up the wall, through the switch, then up to the ceiling to the lights. No capacitor. To make it work you need the utterly weird nonsensical way of the live going to the fitting first (well the connection block in the ceiling, not the one on the end of the wire where the bulb goes in), then going off to the switch, then coming back along the same wire! No idea why some houses get wired up like that, it means you turn off the switch and you still have live in the ceiling rose. OUCH! Off the ladder you fall when you jump.
If it was acting like a capacitor while the live is switched off, even with some stored charge in the cable, the lamps would not run indefinitely, It`s getting power from the neutral which is also a line conductor, and no switch wire in a house is 50M long coiled up like that to create an induction loop. Double pole switching solves this issue.
The difference is in the test arrangement and a house. In a house you always got bundles of cables coming out of the fuse box so you will always have induction from the live wires, even of theyre not coiled up. Thats why you try to not put the big cables from bigger devices like the heating or water boilder in your house next to the smaller cables that power your rooms. Youll get a lot of induction from the big cables that could destroy the flimsy electronics of some devices. Im an industrial electrician, and first thing you learn there is never put 24 Volts DC cables in one place with 240 Volts AC cables cause it will fry all your PLCs and electronics cause of the induction.
I had this happen on my chandelier when we switched to led 5 years ago , i thought the wire was acting like a capacitor. it always made me scratch my noodle
This happens when you connect the ground through the swich while the led is permanently connected to live. It can happen when it has pemanent ground as well, depending on the ground resistance and if you have electric motors on the circuit.
You have two wires separated by insulation. When you open the wire at the end you create a capacitor. The longer the wire the greater capacitance. The LED is connected in series with the capacitor when the wire is opened at the end. The capacitance creates an impedance XC and the voltage splits between the LED (mostly its internal bias resistor) and XC. In this case the impedance XC is such that it allows a voltage drop across the LED that is within the LED's operating voltage range. Also of note is the fact that the light never turned on until the switch was closed. The LED needs to be forward biased before it will light and this happens the first time the switch is closed and full voltage is applied to the LED turning it on. Once the LED is biased and the switch is opened then the circuit is completed through the capacitor and the light will stay on. The light will have 2 different brightness levels as one turns on and off the switch the capacitor will be cut in and out of the circuit.
I have a question?? I have 5 LED lights I've been using for a while 2 of them does the same thing when the timer cuts off the whole light stays lit slightly( maybe 5% of the full hundred percent illumination) I'd hate to get rid of them do you have a fix????? I don't want to have to unplug them every time the timer supposed to cut them off so I'm using them for veg only right now ( but it's too much of a monster light to just use it for veg it's a waste of money SMH) I bought them long ago and didn't use them until after the warranty ,,,Genius huh!!!
To Ronald Everston. Use a "2 pole" switch instead of a "1 pole" switch. You will probably have to go to an electrical supplier to find one. If the general public is not asking for an item then Rona, Hope Depot, etc. won't stock it. Break both wires to your light and you can keep those lights.
We got $1 screw in LED light bulbs for our house when we first moved here. They all glow for quite a long time after we turn them off. I always wondered about that.
6:45 He plunges his bare hand way too close to live open ends of wire, with the bulb glowing to show that there is definitely power running through it.
Had this happen with a small LED indicator light on a panel we were building for an industrial piece of equipment. It was a real head-scratcher for about a week.
those type of bulbs were designed originally for smal lamps, decoration peices etc, that use dual pole switches (inline switches or other types). if your using such bulbs in main lighting use dual pole wall switches that are available
This shows you that you always have some loss in jacketed (Romex) wire in your house due to capacitive effects between hot and neutral/ground (maybe knob and tube had some advantages). When I'm doing new wiring, I try to run power to the switch first which removes hot from the equation. This only happens when you run hot and return originating from the light fixture.
Your water anology actually does still work: if you compare a capacitor to a flexible non permiable wall. An example test setup could be two balloons in one box, where one balloon is the anode and one the cathode. The capacity is decided by the size of the container. (The water tubes are connected to the balloons, resulting in a limited amount of "DC" flow, since the balloons can only displace eachother, not leak trough) For this to work however, It's important that the box is small enough that the balloons push against eachother when inflating.
That maniac Thomas Alva Edison deliberately electrocuted an elephant in an attempt to prove that DC was a better choice than AC, as proposed by Nikola Tesla. I would hope that Edison is burning well keeping the demons in the Hell House warm.
If the LED bulb is still on when he turns off the switch that means the light socket is positioned before the switch within the circuit. This only happens to LED as they are very low wattage!! So although the switch is off and the circuit interrupted, the bulb is still using the electricity that is in the circuit just before the switch. My standard LED bulbs I bought from Home Depot do that. After researching it, turns out my situation is just as mentioned above. Technically, it's poor electrical work that was done incorrectly but at least it won't cause a fire!
It has a bridge rectifier. Which turns the AC into DC. The little transformer lowers the current and voltage for use before the rectifier. A bridge rectifier is literally just 4 diodes hooked in a configuration.
I have had exactly the same effect with compact fluorescent bulbs. Both lights are extremely good at making some small amounts of light from tiny amounts of electricity. If the switch is inline with the active wire on the way to the light there is no issue. If both the active and neutral wires are taken to the light and then a LOOP is made from the active wire to the switch and back to the light then the problem does happen. The glowing light might be viewed as a "night light" or as an annoyance. PS the same amount of electricity is used if you had an incandescent bulb. The capacitance has not altered. The only difference is that the incandescent bulb doesn't glow with low current flows.
ahh... thats why my ceiling light never shuts down completely... i tried to take a photo of it wiht long exposure and the photo ended up like bright day light....
@@linecraftman3907 thats the neon which causes flickering. Some brands fixed it in previous gen lamps by adding 2sec delay in powering on. Havent tested it on LED tbh
@@firefish111 if you're too busy this week don't start watching his videos, I'm sure you'll miss your deadlines. To answer your questions, he's the funnies TH-camr that will teach you but will scare you A LOT :D
@@bolow That man gives me anxiety, every time I sense he's about to do something that'll go bang I have to pause and re-adjust my volume. But F000LBREEDGERECTIFYRRR FTW
I ran into this phenomena once in my years of semi-amateur handyman work. I was installing a ceiling fan. Both wires coming out of the ceiling were very old fabric sheathed, that through years of dirt and heat became the same color (dirt brown). So I got out my multi-meter to find hot and neutral. I found hot easily (USA 110V). But I was puzzled why I was getting a few steady volts out of the neutral. I called my friend who was a real electrician. He explained it to me.
It made you anxious because you got no clue about electricity (except for fears). 220V on normal household A only tingles you (bit violently) on the spot. When it starts to get shocking is 380V double-live systems. The water part wasn't ok imo either.
@@3goats1coat Trust me 220V (or rather 230VAC nominal, closer to 245VAC in many places) can and does kill people. I know, I came close when I stupidly didn't turn the power off when changing a breaker on an old MEM2000 Consumer unit, couldn't breathe as AC voltage was disrupting muscle control, only survived as the breaker burned out (30Amps!!) otherwise I'd be a corpse pushing up daisies by now. (and I'm an ex sparky so I should have known better, but its common in the industry as a time saver and complacency kills)
@@johnphillip1711 first of, I'm glad to hear you're ok. Wasn't smart of you.. What I've been talking about is an outlet, which floats around the 1-2A range, not the main intake. By the way, did you ground yourself with the other hand? From the breathing problems I'd assume so, otherwise it'd just run through to the closer foot and not really affect the chest area.
I've experienced this effect! I had an Ethernet cable which ran from the room that I rent to the modem just outside, but it was way too long for this purpose, so most of it sat coiled in my room. This cable was old and busted, the shielding had become useless. This coil of cable ended up becoming a sort of electromagnet, and causing EMI for the house's Wi-Fi connection. I fought for months that my Ethernet cable wasn't the problem, because why would I sacrifice my phone's ability to connect to WiFi? And the Ethernet cable was just going to a spare hobby box with no WiFi card. It wasn't using bandwidth. They thought that it was the modem "prioritizing" the Ethernet connection, which is... not a thing. But then I realized what was going on, and it was like a lightbulb went off (ha) It was the cable, but for a completely different reason!
I always thought it was like a transformer, generating a tiny current due to the alternating current generating a shifting magnetic field that generates a tiny current in the other cable. Especially since in my house the cables are not in the same cable, but two separate wire in a bigger plastic tube.
I'd also say that this is more correct. A capacitor regulates the pass through of electrons, but what happens here is the interaction of flux. Think an antenna (communication by creating and detecting electromagnetic fields), or rather a transformer since we're talking conversion of power. This isn't "travel of electrons", but conversion of energy from electric to electromagnetic and back to electric.
A transformer works by creating magnetic field at the apparent disconnection point, which in turn generates electric field on the other side and transfers energy. That is certainly not happening at that simple switch or his hand.
@@iwatchwithnoads7480 the lamp contains metal, this metal is held in the air. In the air a changing electric field is created. This creates a small current in the metal in the bulb and since the bulb requires only a small current it's enough to light it gently. So it's exactly like how a transformer works. As a shifting electric field is also creating current in an air gapped secondary circuit.
@@zazethe6553 you're describing two conductors separated by a dielectric, one inducing current on the other side by oscillating electric field. You're describing a capacitor
his remark of the coppling at the end of the long wire just sending the power back again through the other wire made me laugh just that little "and it comes out, this is stupid- and goes back in"
In other words the stray capacitance in the cable causes a capacitive reactance low enough at 50Hz to inject enough forward current into the LED's to power them.
@@j-man72b72 Semantics man. Yes Suzy Siviter. The capacitive coupling induces a voltage on the adjacent wire and therefore provides CURRENT! Obviously lacking current the LED would not light! However yes the current is small and proportional to the dielectric capacity of the wire, the voltage, resistance and the frequency (50Hz UK, 60Hz US).
Induction. Make that long cable longer, it'll glow brighter. And it happens with the cheap ones because there is no reverse voltage protection in the lamp.
No. Induction needs a flowing current on one side to induce a current on the other side. You get a tiny bit of that here, too, but the amount is miniscule and would not be enough to power anything.
The biggest issue is that our AC systems use a push / pull system rather than the two sides actually switching polarity. This is also why most US plugs are keyed to only go in one way. Among other reasons like rare safety conditions, some devices would not function correctly if plugged in the opposite way because complex electronics have to factor in the amount of power that is lost as it goes through the system. If power were coming the opposite direction it could result in incorrect voltages and currents at certain points.
Steve, After watching this you peeked my interest, a bit, so sadly, I measured the capacitance of a 50m roll of 1.0mm flat T&E which is the size of cable used in the UK for normal domestic lighting circuits, I got approx 5nf (100pf/m) between L&N. This means that the impedance or AC resistance (Xc) between L&N will be: 1/(2 pi x f x c) which = 1/(6.284 x 50 x 5x10-9) = 636.6K Ohms (31.82M ohms/m). Therefore at the UK nominal voltage of 230v a current of 230/636.6K = 0.36mA will flow in the circuit this is enough current to cause the LED's to glow. Now the reason that this lamp glows and the other does not is, because the one that does not has an electronic inverter (transformer) type LED current limiting circuit and 0.36mA is not enough to start the inverter so the LEDs stay off whilst the other (cheap) lamp appears to use a passive type (resistors & capacitors) of current limiter which will allow some of the 0.36mA to flow through the LEDs causing them to glow, there are pros and cons for both types. BTW that current would be flowing even if there was a standard tungsten lamp but it would not glow so it would not be noticed, and it also is present in every circuit in the house. The actual power wasted is very very small (probably < 50mW) due to the resulting current/voltage phase shift a domestic electric meter will not be able to meter this easily. Also it is unlikely the average UK house will have 50m of cable in the switch drop, probably more like 5 - 10m but even so maybe enough to make the LED lamp glow, some of the more efficient LEDs will glow with only a few 10's of micro amps!
PS Good work
Good reply Col, spot on in my opinion.
Brilliant, thanks for this comment!
*piqued your interest...
Superb comment Col. Bravo.
Maybe this could have done with pinning as initial comment.
It was certainly good enough.
Now take all bulb circuits in the world, and I feel we are wasting energy.
Okay that reversed deconstruction of the capacitor to demonstrate how they're made was just brilliant.
Aluminium and more aluminium....
Lol!
Actually it's weird
They use this type of light in jail cells
Agree
A - construction if you will
As a fan of ElectroBoom I really appreciate your use of insulated gloves while handling live wires.
He got in the UK 240 Volt, so it's alot more lethal than the 120 Volt in Canada.
@@thebamplayer Canada is 240v Split Phase. There 180 degrees apart, allowing for 120 and 240, and almost all his high power appliances are 240.
People obsessed with Canada and USA being 120v. ITS NOT its 240 they just centre tap transformers
@@astatics6176 What i meant was, that if you would touch the live wire in north america, you would only get exposed to 120 volts. To be exposed by 240 volts you need to touch BOTH phases at the same time, otherwise only 120 volt will flow through you'r body.
someones been watching technology connections but no. you'd almost only get 120V out of a outlet in america. the 240V is wired up differently and usually not accesible. so saying it's less dangerous because it's only 120V (which is still dangerous, electricity ain't a joke) is valid because the 120 volt is the one that's represented more and easier to access.
also fyi, eu has the same deal, our common outlets are at 240V and we have 3 phase which effectively ends up with 400V reserved for pretty much just motors but also really high power apliances. cause 3 phase drives motors directly with barely any driving circuit. we do have specific 3 phase outlets tho, not that common, especially more rurally but those things exist, so you could even access the dangerous 3 phase voltage easier here.
which is to say, eu electricity still is more dangerous by the voltage advantage cause 400V is much more dangerous than 240V. like saying 240V is more dangerous than 120V
lol same
I’m an electrician in Canada. This is why the bonding conductor is so important in the circuit. If the bond is disconnected from the system ground then an induced voltage can/will be introduced on every device box (the metal boxes that receptacles, switches, and lights sit in) after the break in the the bond. I have had a couple service calls of LEDs acting up because of this induced voltage, it can lead to some wacky voltage readings on your meter. It really throws you for a loop the first time you see it.
This is the reason you don't bond sub panels. Your customers were smart to call you. This does not and will not happen in a properly wire home.
i have seen it on ceiling grids that get voltage on them from the troffer lights if the ground fails on them
I am not an electrician, but have been interested in such matters for a long time (decades). I knew immediately that his circuit violates electrical codes. I now understand why -- because that long length of wires creates a capacitor. Properly installed home wiring does not create capacitors.
@@dlawsAcer of course it does! How could it not?
My first thought was an inductor. But a capacitor makes much more sense, it’s like 2 really long parallel plates exist in that wire
I had the same thought at first too.
I thought that there would just be a small capacitor, storing energy for a short time
Well to be fair an inductor is basically the AC version of a capacitor and vice versa in terms of what they do.
The cable disconnected at the light switch and connected to one side of the bulb is acting as an areal. It collects energy from RF signals in the atmosphere, so as long the other side of the bulb is connected to an earth (in this case the neutral star point of the supply) energy will be dissipated. Everything about capacitance is irrelevant.
I can give 2 other examples.
The first is the crystal set radio, where a tuned signal between an areal and earth is sufficient to run headphones without a power supply.
For the second example, you need to consider a microphone.
The interference noise that would be picked up if the cable was not screened is the energy.
Interestingly, when he used the cable by connecting both wires at one end and then shorting the other, he was creating a balanced circuit, where the 2 wires side by side in opposite directions were cancelling the induction in each other.
The same thing can happen on a CFL bulb. The energy can collect in the strike capacitor, causing a small flick of light about every 30 minutes. People using these bulbs in the bedroom wrongly suspect a fault in the wiring or a defective switch.
Many years ago, a house was built in the UK where 30 tons of scrap lift cables were included in the structure. Each length of cable was earthed at one end and cut to length to tune it into what was probably the worlds largest RF areal.
The system which heated the house by using the electrical resistance of steel to produce heat, drained every signal within a 3 mile radius.
The designer, a radar engineer, was threatened with imprisonment if the system was not demolished.
While this video and posts on this thread make no sense, none of what I explained is taught at school or college.
@@wilsjane that would be the case if the bulb lit when it had wires that were long but unplugged, which it doesn't. Whats actually happening is the wires are acting as a capacitor, which in an AC circuit actually allow current to flow through. The reason that this doesn't happen with most appliances is because they require far more current than the cheapo LED bulb.
I had an LED bulb that flashed every 5 seconds or so, I contacted my electrician and he told me it happens sometimes with low quality LED bulbs. Now I understand why... this effect must have been charging a capacitor in the bulb until it flashed and discharged, then started charging up again. Thanks for solving this mystery for me!
I don't think that is what happened at all. The glow is not caused by a capacitor, it is caused by the turned off wiring acting like a capacitor. The high quality bulb in this example hat a capacitor inside to suppress the glow.
What I think happened in your case is that the bulb had loose wiring inside, or it did not fight perfectly into the socket.
Flashing of an led is more often a failure of the drive circuitry, usually due to a discreet component failure that doesn't allow the driver chip to properly run so it starts and crashes..
@@praestant8 The chip would have no idea.
It would see a voltage built up on the capacitor and it would reach a threshold where the chip tries to drive the light, discharge the capacitor below the threshold and the chip would crash. Creating a blink of light.
This can also happen due to the fact that capacitors will charge back up due to capacitor soakage.
Your case is different from the video..we had the same problem, my electrician fixed it for me by putting a capacitor on the bulb and it worked..consult to a “master electrician” split second he knows the answer to your problem..hehe
Sorry for being late, but I had a simmilar problem.
In my case the flickering was caused by the stair light switches that were not been made to work with LED lamps.
When the switches were turned off they still were passing a small amount of current thought the lamp just to light up the small LED that lets you find the switch in the dark.
Him: This bulb can't turn off!
Horror movie characters: I'll take your entire stock!
monster cuts the power entirely, mission failed, you’ll get them next time
i need some of those for phasmophobia so even if the ghost turns off the lights i can still see
@@leodalton3527 You're both bots aren't you?
@@AggressiveAegyo you know that can just be a bot programmed to use two accounts. And even if they aren't bots, it's clearly a scam
@@Fogolol well it worked. I want to buy whatever they tell me to now
I'm sure the energy draw is very, very tiny, so this not turning off and giving a gentle glow is a great feature. Especially for a landing or toilet which are otherwise totally unlit at night.
The big issue here is safety. This lightbulb is actually not switched off when the switch is thrown to "off".
@@thefreedomguyuk I understand why you think that. Light=electricity=danger. But it's not quite like that. AC electricity gets out of wires and crosses between wires just through capacitance. Even if you put your hand near a cable you get that effect, but it is so small, that it doesn't present a danger. Because of the way LEDs work, they can harness even the tiny amount of electric transferred through capacitance between cables. Maybe even less than the current you get when placing a damp finger across a 9v battery.
@@thefreedomguyuk No, there is no current, the reason it glows is because LED's are so efficient that they can function even with microAmps
@@Splarkszterso....there is current...
@@unscentednapalm8547 At this point i don't know what i wrote or even why.
If you use the "liquid" metaphor per electricity you can see a capacitor as an elastic membrane blocking the fluid. If you use dc it will stop the flow but if you use ac it will allow short movements in both directions.
Nice one. I hope this gets upvoted further than duplicate comments about ElectroBoom and water near electronics.
oh yeah that's very good
Actually thats a great analogy. Most houses that use well water, will somewhere have a tank (usually in the basement) with a diaphragm inside that maintains pressure (voltage) on the system, even if the well pump is turned off. It stores some water and can push some out if the well is turned off. It also has the ability to dampen intermittent pressure spikes from a pump turning off and on again (much like capacitors are used to smooth out voltage spikes.
That's the best analogy first I heard was from BigClive. In this case I suppose that the two 50m long wires (red and black) would be acting as two parallel hoses (like to conductive plates in a capacitor) where the "live hose" is inducting pulses to the "neutral hose" because of the very pulsing nature of the water supply (AC current) even when the circuit is open.
Actually the best analogy I have heard about how electricity flow through a conductor is given by ElectroBoom. With this two analogies, the one from BigClive and the one from ElectroBoom, it becomes very easy to understand the "led bulb that doesn't turn off" phenomenon.
That's really nice! I really want to build something now!
I got multicoloured Christmas lights last year and wound up keeping them up around my room.. I had been wondering whether maybe some of the colouring was a little bit glow in the dark or something but now I think I was seeing a very small, quite faint version of this effect while the whole string was plugged into the wall. Neat!
You can make sure by checking do the lights have an ac to dc adapter
Christmas lights are a produc5 of slavery
@@norml.hugh-mann bruh shut up you're probably typing that in a phone that's a product of slavery as well
I have some LED Christmas lights that dim-glow even when switched off, but in this case its multiple strings outside - enough to go all the way around the house (no capacitors or AC adapters or anything, simply 120v mains-powered lights). ...I'm guessing because the neutral is switched (I know it is), or there's some sorta weird EMF between that group of light-strings, and the others (on a separate circuit) that run right along beside them.
(all lights are ofcourse taken down & put away after holiday season!)
actually this effect does not occur and much less if but in the whole load, if the load is wired in parallel, but only if the switch branches off with a long cable. but there are series AC christmas lights too.. :D
- breaks circuit
- plugs in power
- light turns on
Me: Confused screaming.
pfp checks out
Абдулло
lmfao
@@csquaredfilms Why do people use pfp instead of avatar these days? pfp means "picture for proof", it's supposed to be an actual picture of your person. :P
@@TheArchivistArchive nowadays it's used as "profile picture"
This is brilliant, great explanation, it’s sounds a bit like a gas accumulator in principle. Im in the Solar PV industry and come across this capacitance phenomenon when trying to fault find ground faults on large solar cable runs.
"I can't turn it off"
"Turn it off"
"I can't!"
Turn the god dam light off man... 🤣
Online games really be like that
Turn it off or your grounded
I never thought I'd live to SEE a resonance cascade!
The 90s dad is furious that you didnt turn the lights off. Do you want to pay the electric bill it's not free
Steve: "I'll break the circuit. Please don't do it yourself, it's dangerous!"
Also Steve: casually spills some water out of a giant syringe right above his wiring.
That's why he says don't do it yourself. He's smart enough to know that but of water is inconsequential, but you're not.
Water is not conductive
@@gyroninjamodder Tap water is pretty much conductive, unlike bidistillated or deionized water.
@@gyroninjamodder tap water is conductive due to the elements dissolved in it! However, try comparing the conductivity of tap water with that of the droplets that accumulate on the underside of a pot after boiling. It's not distillation, but it's noticeably less conductive. (Use a simple low-power circuit and a LED)
Exactly my thought.. he is demonstrating with water near exposed live wires!
*clicks ElectroBoom's video*
Mehdi: A friend of mine called Steve Mould told me...
*me goes to watch Steve's video*
Steve: A friend of mine called Mark Warner showed me....
The wierd thing is, it was Mehdi who showed it to Mark.
@@SteveMould where does the multiverse end
@@SteveMould pls explain, my head is boiling
@@SteveMould You reminded me with the TV series (DARK).
Aaah shit! Here we go again!
I think it's more than a purely capacitive effect. The two long wires are coupled inductively too. As long as there's any current in one of the wires, the pair will act as a transformer.
Nope. The two long wires cannot act as a transformer because they run right next to each other, and the current through one wire is always going in the opposite direction relative to the current in the other wire. This causes the magnetic fields in each wire to perfectly oppose each other, which removes the inductance from that section of wire.
the magnetic field caused by the first wire is cancelled by the magnetic field of the second wire as long as they stick together in the same winding,, it's actually how we organise the extra length of audio wires, otherwise the quality of the audio output is going to be reduced
I think you are right that the coupling is inductive, but it is inductive at a frequency much higher than 60hz. Looking at the cheap LED bulb I see several ceramic capacitors, but no inductors. The capacitors on the LED connected to the inductive wire conductor makes a ringing LC circuit and the long wire next to it is still connected to the 60hz 120v driving the ringing.
You can prove this is true by connecting a scope and finding the ringing frequency. You can measure the impedance of the cheap LED across the power connection and I bet it will measure capacitive.
@@skyak4493 The "you can measure..." is not quite completely true.... Take any regular measurement device and you won't measure much capacitance. There is also a bunch of leds in series with the capacitor. They block current in one direction and require a significant voltage (which any sane tester would stay well below) in the other. So most testers will register: "no connection". It is only when you apply a high enough AC voltage that the behavior becomes capacitive (with a twist: the threshold voltage of the leds). (detail: There is a bridge rectifier in there as well, so you'll never get the leds to block the current, only the forward voltage drop really applies).
@@rewolff2 Regular measurement devices measure reactance at one low frequency -that is the problem. Reactance varies over frequency. The circuit fails to address reactance at higher frequencies and has an oversimplified model of the semiconductors. When the current reverses and the diodes clip the current you make a square wave. The frequency content of this wave is high enough that inductance of leads can ring with the capacitors and the LED emits a small portion of this power.
“It will stay on indefinitely” uh oh we broke entropy
Nah,still drains electric power,you just can't quite break the circuit
It drains power from the higgs field
well until the power grid breaks down
Wait no it made more entropy. It's more chaos right?
@Jyles Prescott I appreciated the little lesson
you can tell the light bulb's "off" illumination is still being actively powered because the rolling shutter reveals that it flickers on and off in sequence.
Wellspotted, I saw this & believe the coil of wire is acting as an intenna.
Yeah and if you paid attention, you'd know why. Don't listen to the people saying "It siphons power of the neutral wire", that's nonsense because there's no power on neutral and that's also not how circuits work. A capacitor is like a frequency dependant resistor. The higher the frequency, the lower the resistance, because in AC, the electrons don't actually flow, they just vibrate back and forth and the transfer of energy works pretty similar to how materials transfer sound. It's the shockwave going from one particle to the next that carries the soundwave forward, even if the particles just vibrate in place. It works the same. If the circuit is on, the chain of electrons carries the up and down wave of the changing voltage to the bulb, but if the circuit is broken, because the wires are really close together for several meters of the cable, there's enough surface area for the charge in the one wire to interact with the electrons in the other wire. It's comparable to sound being shielded off by a pane of glass. The insulation in the cable is the glass and if you yell at someone through a closed window, the sound traveling through the air hits the glass and causes a tiny amount of energy is being transferred to the glass and to the air on the other side, so the sound is dampened, but not completely shielded off, but contuous flow of air is completely stopped. The cable works the same way in that the voltage alternating is like sound vibrations and the insulation in the cable is stopping continuous current, but only shielding, not stopping the electric (not magnetic) field from the alternating voltage. So to go back to the frequency dependant resistor. There's still current flowing, but it's just electrons vibrating back and forth with 50 (or in this case 60Hz), just severely dampened by the insulation of the cable and the higher the frequency, the stronger the effect because more vibrations per second means that more energy is being transferred from one wire to the other. And it only works with the cheap foreign bulb and not the more expensive domestic one, because the little transformer coil on the domestic bulb has inductivity, which cancels out the capacity of the wire, while the foreign bulb is just lots of LEDs put in series to take mains voltage directly. There.
@@Dragongaga Actually it is 50Hz. The plugs and sockets are UK ones and the video creator is British. The UK grid runs at 230V 50Hz.
@@slendermanRblx Oh, you're right. I mistook him for someone else
Where did you see it?
Having done three years of electrical in high school, the reason its staying on in a quick simple explanation, the "Hot" wire is being continuously fed from the breaker. The "Neutral" wire is continuously taking the energy back. The hot is emitting and magnetic pulse that the white is taking it back to the ground, completing the circuit. The bulb is just sensitive enough to be powered off of that flow. It generally doesn't increase your electricity bill.
That only works if you're explaining it to someone with 3 years of electrical in high school as well, though. I don't have an understanding (knowledge vs. understanding) of what most of those words mean.
What do you mean generally? Why would it/ wouldn’t it?
So you mean it’s like borrowing electricity right? xD
@@staalman1226 i took a 9 month course ....understood it fine.....literally covered stuff like this the first month....maybe your school just sucked?
@@christianhernandez7740 Once again, you took a nine month course. I haven't completed any courses in electrical . . . I was just saying that it's only a "quick simple explanation" if you have completed one of those courses, or have a much better understanding than I do. Sorry for the confusion
Yeah I think it could happen because of induction. I learned a while ago you can syphon power from mains without breaking the cable by wrapping the wire abound it lots of times.
I'm with you. A collapsing magnetic field over that much cord could do it!
You are correct. This is an inductor, not a capacitor.
@@qtipextra It's a capacitive effect. The wire doesn't need to be coiled up, that was just for this demonstration. A length of domestic mains cable (ignoring earth/ground) just two open ended conductors in close proximity but with an open circuit between them, the very definition of a capacitor
The slight glow is quite a common phenomenon in LED lamps with simple reactive droppers, and it only takes a few feet of cable to the light switch to affect some lamps, perhaps the equivalent of a few hundred picofarads. More expensive lamps aren't affected because they have active elecronics and need more power to start the circuit runnng.
@@ProdigalPorcupine good call I realized that as well
@@ProdigalPorcupine It looks to me like the disconnected wire is enough of an inductor to form a high frequency ringing circuit with the capacitor on the LED and the circuit next to it connected to 120v ac is driving it. What we termed "crosstalk".
If you put a scope on the switched off but glowing LED you will find high frequency voltage. Measure that connecting wire at that high frequency and the phase angle will show it is inductive. Measure the LED at that high frequency and phase angle will show it is inductive.
Him: This is dangerous *squirts water all over it*
Water is a poor conductor for electricity.
@@junkiexl86 *Pure* water is a poor conductor for electricity. The stuff on the water, like minerals, are what conduct electricity. If he filled that with tap water it conducts electricity just fine.
@ Doubtful. Tap water from South America or Flint MI maybe. Most cities have strict water quality laws that limit the amount of impurities in potable water and you need quite a bit for water to become conductive, which is well above what is classified as potable water.
@@junkiexl86 Sure, there are strict laws regulating the quality of tap water. But it’s in regard to *human consumption*! Which means it does contain sodium, potassium and chloride, all necessary for your health. It’s incredibly far from being pure water, as in pure, distilled water you expect to find in a lab, or water filtered through reverse osmosis.
Tap water, while still being a poor conductor, isn’t resistive enough to not shortcut electrical circuits like this. It has a conductivity of 5 to 50 mS/m, which is between 2 and 4 orders of magnitude higher than pure to ultra-pure water.
Judging by the cut, he shot the water scene after removing/before constructing his electricity setup.
Him doing gestures with his hands around an exposed live wire made me uncomfortable.
ElectroBOOM
He'll be alright
And then he yanks out a syringe filled with water and starts squirting all over the table
Breadsnake - It's the amps, not the volts that will kill you dead! You could survive 200volts @ 2 amps, but not at 10amps.
@@rogertycholiz2218 I wanna see you grab a wire that's live at 200VAC but current-limited to 2 amps.
Go ahead, film it, I'll wait. :)
Him : "It will stay on indefinitely"
*We did it boys, physics is no more*
this long wire has huge magnetic field. think again :)
Well GR is about to go through the ringer so who knows maybe thermodynamics is fucked too.
@@cipi7640it's just a joke :/
@@cipi7640 hey man I still can't understand how this works , I don't get how the metal coiling acts as a capacitor ca someone expalain
@@cipi7640 is there a charge seperation in the wire and the metal coat over it, is that the capacitor
After years, thanks to you, I resolve the mistery when I get a little shock trying to change a lamp even with the switch turned off. I was thinking I was crazy
Because your house is wired up wrong. In my house the mains wires are under the floor, the wire goes up the wall, through the switch, then up to the ceiling to the lights. No capacitor. To make it glow and to give you your little shock you need the utterly weird nonsensical way of the live going to the fitting first (well the connection block in the ceiling, not the one on the end of the wire where the bulb goes in), then going off to the switch, then coming back along the same wire! No idea why some houses get wired up like that, it means you turn off the switch and you still have live in the ceiling rose. OUCH! Off the ladder you fall when you jump.
@@lambertovitali3152 yep finally someone that understands. its where the switch is placed that matters
This used to happen to me when I was using cheap led retrofits and I could not for the life of me think of why. This makes so much sense cause it always happened in older developments. They used to carry feeds to the lights and do a switch loop. That's why a lot of old switches have no neutrals in them. Thank you for solving a very old mystery for me!
Nowadays switches cut off positive and negative wire so you dont have a closed circuit. That pretty much solves the problem with induction.
He didn't solve it because he didn't explain the correct reason it's way more simple, it's just AC or alternating current, LED bulbs take less than a volt of alternating current to Glow even if a single wire is connected it's called the B field th-cam.com/video/bM738MUY-NM/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/_bgUy6zA0ts/w-d-xo.html
@@GuninGamesThank you!
What's really happening is they have a small fusion reactor inside of each light bulb and they only need the initial power to Kickstart the fusion process. Once that's done, they'll not only power the light bulb, but your entire house.
Those sneaky CHINESE!!
@@Mohammad__M__ 😂
It’s a pocket dimension where people generate electricity from Christmas cheer and murder
Don't tell me the future, I want to see it for myself
Bullshit?🤯
Watched this with my dad who's an electrician. He wasn't happy.
Edit: "No he hasn't changed the circuit, he's just created a fire hazard."
But it's a fire hazard because it's charged :3
@@スノーハッピー I assume he's saying that because of the coiled wire. It is an old myth that coiled extension cords will cause a fire. Some people will say it creates an inductor (it doesn't since both legs are coiled next to each other), and some people say the wires will great up because there's not enough air flow. You'd need to have the wire coiled super tight, airflow completely blocked, something on top of the coil to stop great from escaping, and be pulling TONS of current. The breaker will pop long before a fire starts, and there's rarely a time that all of those conditions are met. It's a situation that is extremely rare, and has only happened a handful of times. It usually happens when the wire is in some sort of an enclosure, like a job site box, it's super hot out, the box is closed, and they're pulling enough current to the point where it's barely not tripping the breaker.
@@littlejackalo5326 nope
I'm a sparky too, a trick I learnt years ago for LEDs that are affected by this is to use LED indicator lamps or basically any diode on the circuit in the off position, this means when the lamp is switched off your giving the current a path and a job to do which eliminates the problem. You can either install illuminated switches and have the switch illuminate when in the off position or just hide the LED indicator behind the lights switch plate.
@@littlejackalo5326 I've seen it on a coiled up extension lead plugged into a 3kw site heater.
This happens with my China LEDs at home, though it’s way more dim, I’ve been always wondering if my switches were broken or something. Thanks for explaining it!
Why…
Why would it ever be the switch?
@@JACKHARRINGTON never heard of a switch breaking?
@@BMPK if a switch breaks it is either on or off.
@@handlesarefeckinstupid Not necessarily, you never had a loose contact causing flicker?
Well sometimes it might be a switch problem - if switch has a small indicator light. Its fixed by simply cutting it off.
Talk about how dangerous electricity is, play with water over all the electrical components
If the water is even somewhat pure, it's not that bad. ElectroBoom has a video on this exact topic actually.
Smug Anime Girl so you think it is pure water inside that syringe? 😂
Apart from him gesturing around a live wire. Jesus that's not setting a good example. I appreciate the explanation but damn, I fail my students if they leave a live wire in a test installation and here is a bad example.
I noticed he wore massive gloves, then played with water then took the gloves off, then turned it on again.
@@reneg8 Go watch ElectroBoom's channel and then come back to complain here.
I had a similar situation with the early LED bulbs that I used to replace my halogen bulbs in my highlight fixtures. My best guess was that the magnetic effect of the copper wiring provided just enough energy to keep them dimly lit. I was extremely surprised, but that was that: there was always a slight glow.
Take out the light switch, and you'll see two cables: one coming from your breaker box, the other going to the lamp. You'll notice that one wire from those cables is connected straight through, and the other goes through the switch. Turn that around: have the ones that are connected straight through go through the switch instead, and connect up the ones that previously went through the switch. Your glow will be gone.
Magnetic? No, this is just because th plus wire is still connected.
@@EvenTheDogAgrees Hi, sorry to comment on an old post of yours, but I just want to clarify.. So I cut the one that goes straight through, make that go through the switch, then take the one from the switch, and connect it to the wire I just cut..?
@@neilsison7109 Hey, no worries, man. Besides, that post wasn't that old. 😉
First of all, it's best to test that this is indeed the problem. Take the front plate off the switch, and with one of those electrical tester screwdrivers, make sure that when the light is off, the terminals of the switch do not carry a voltage. If you've never worked with these, they're pretty simple to use: they have a metal cap that you touch with your thumb or finger, and then you touch the tip of the screwdriver to the terminal you wish to test. If the light comes on, there's voltage on the terminal. Test it first on something you know carries a voltage, like a wall outlet. Also, and this goes without saying: don't touch the tip during this process; only the handle and the cap. I mean, you'd still know if the terminal carries a voltage or not, but the goal here is to do it without injuring yourself. 😂
As for resolving it, it all depends on how your house is wired up. Which also depends on when it was wired up. In older installations, it was common to use individual wires. In such a case, you may not even have a cable going straight through, since it might as well have been routed via a shorter path directly to the lamp. But assuming there's one going straight through, and it's not the earth wire, you cut that one and connect both ends to both ends of the switch, while connecting the one that was in the switch together with a screw terminal or Wago clamp terminal or similar.
In more modern installations, cables with multiple conductors are used. If you do a search for "xvb cable", you'll see what I mean. In that case, the cable is cut completely, and one conductor is switched, while the other is connected with a screw terminal or Wago clamp connector. If that's the case, just switch the one from the screw terminal to the switch, and the one that was on the switch to the screw terminal.
Important to note: if the light can be switched from multiple switches, then you need to identify the one connected to the breaker box, as you need to make this modification on the one where the current "enters" the circuit.
I don't know what part of the world you live in, but there are probably standards for colour coding mains wiring. Here in Belgium it's blue for neutral, brown for mains, and yellow/green striped for the earth wire. In case of three phase, or multiway switching, black and grey may be used for the extra phases or the signal wires connecting the multiway switches to each other. The specific colours may differ for your country. You always want to end up in a situation where the wire with the colour for neutral does not carry a voltage. So if you find yourself with a blue and a brown wire (or your local equivalents), where the blue carries voltage and the brown doesn't, the switcharoo should not be made in the switch, but in the breaker box (or junction box, if it's connected through one of those), because it means the screwup is upstream of the switch.
However, a word of warning: you're working with mains voltage. If unsure, or if all of this sounds too complicated, get someone who knows about electricity to help you out or do it for you. Or pay an electrician they're a lot cheaper than the undertaker, from what I understand. 😉
Longer I watched this, the less I understood it lol
Like when I helped a friend fix some wiring in her house. She had some LED bulbs working on one conductor, someone forgot or didn't do a good job on the second. As I fixed it I tried to explain the phenomenon to her and it was over head like a jet.
The more you know the more you know you don't know 😉
It's just back feeding off the neutral
TL;DW: Long wires act as capacitors, and AC flows through capacitors.
Why? Because the wire is a capacitor. I still don’t know why that makes it stay on.
Used to happen in my old house with the compact fluorescent bulbs. It would flick every 20-30secs. As if the capacitor built up enough charge to trigger the starter.
Because there's still AC power within the line and it is being drawn by the LED bulb until there's no voltage left th-cam.com/video/_bgUy6zA0ts/w-d-xo.html
I have seen it at my home, and it glows even when another appliance on the same switchboard is turned on. It may be a capacitative induction on the adjacent wires of the active wires due to a/c current.
No, you just have wrong (on neutral) switch.
As an electrician we experience this often if there are a lot of cables laying together or in old houses where the insulation around the wires is bad. One way to deal with this problem is by inserting a resistor parallel to the light bulp this will eleminate the capacive charge from the wires
Won't that just cause the resistor to dissipate the same energy as heat?
@@HappyBeezerStudios depends on the rating of the resistor.
insert a X capacitor to the two side of the bulb,when the circuit turn off,the voltage of the bulb will remain the same.
I am sure your customers appreciate the higher energy bill from the parasitic current draw you’ve gifted them. You’re and electrician you say?
@@mariocueva8700 what did you expect? -He could also bill you a 100K to rewire your entire home... maybe you prefer a 50$ bill and a few pennies spent on electric bills going foreward?
Maybe you shouod have maintained your home on a runnikg basis instead of blaming the electrician for your lousy home installation?
And finally: Your ood glowbulbs also drew current while being off. You just didn't see them glow because they let off the inducted leak current as a bit of heat instead of light. The kicker: You glowbulb was 60-100w and might use a few watts when off... your led might light up a little when off, but it only uses a fraction of the wattage you glowbuob would...
The voltage that is induced into the second wire is only capable of very low current, almost nothing, so the other bulb that draws more current is not likely to glow because there is almost no current flow.
The voltage is induce from one wire to an adjacent wire through capacitive(and inductive) coupling, this is why you don't run audio and video wires/cables next to power wires/cables.
Capacitive: the voltage in one wire effects the electrons in the other wire.
Inductive: The current flow in the wire creates a moving magnetic field which will induce a current/voltage(closed loop/open loop) into an adjacent wire.
3:40 - while it’s technically drawing power through the wires acting as a capacitor from nearby electrical cables I don’t think electricity cost from these things being barely on is a concern. If these LEDs are so efficient that the wires themselves can power it I can’t imagine it costing you more than $0.10/year if that.
Dads be like: we'll never financially recover from this
New bulb in the hood over our range, works on high, works on low, works on off-erm, works when it's OFF?
Thanks ever so much for this explanation. Also, extremely impressed with your ability to assemble a capacitor. When you were done, it looked as good as new . . .
"You need to head over to Elektroboom."
*Thunder Crackles and Mad Scientist Cackling*
Electroboom*
Steve Mould, love your videos but I’m fairly certain you have this wrong here. This is likely an incident of inductive coupling. The alternating current can establish resonance in the Line side conductor when it is broken many wire lengths longer the wavelength of the alternating power source. The oscillating movement of the electrons in the Line side wire create an alternating magnetic field along the length of the wire according to the right hand rule. The second conductor in the cable (neutral or ground or load side) runs parallel and directly adjacent to the Line side wire. It is in the alternating magnetic field which as it fluctuates induces a weak oscillating electric field in the neutral/ground/load side conductor. The oscillating electric fields in both conductors are out of phase and amplitude creating a weak electrical potential allowing electrons to flow back and forth across the LED’s. Typically this is limited with a low pass RLC circuit, which I’m guessing is insufficient or lacking in the cheaper bulb. Also possible that the cheaper bulb has an inferior diode that allows enough backflow current to setup the oscillating resonant current in the long wire length.
Capacitors store charge by holding electrons from jumping across a dielectric gap. When the circuit is closed, the potential difference exceeds the dielectric constant and the electrons rush past the dielectric gap rapidly delivering stored energy.
Much simpler than all that BS don’t put a switch on the neutral side of it because there will always be voltage at the bulb allowing it to glow expensive LEDs will flash when they have voltage to them but neutral gets broken
@@sparkylife4896 Exactly. Had the same issue with some LED TL's when I repaced the old TL armatures. Took me all of 5 seconds to realise that whoever did that installation cut the neutral rather than the live. Swapped the cables, and the glow was gone.
No inductance or capacitance, the extra wire is acting as ground and what we see is bleed voltage. HIs friends light sockets are always hot. Very dangerous.
"many wire lengths longer the wavelength of the alternating power source"
Do you mean the wire is longer than the wavelength of the AC?
300,000,000 m/s / 50 hertz = 6000 kilometre...
p.s. it's capacitance.
Same thing with .5w led bulbs in house
Thnx for explaining. Since I replaced classic light bulbs with Ikea 5watt leds, I had the same 'ghost light' issue and wondered why that was..... 10 years later I finally learned.... 🙂
The old tube lights in my room used to flicker at some intervals even when switched off. I guess that should have been same phenomenon, just its starter capacitor getting charged and then releasing voltage when it becomes enough for creating arc.
Did you have an illuminated switch? Those pass a very small amount of power through the bulb to light the switch (they don't directly connect to the neutral). incandecents would never light from it, far to little power. CFLs, LEDs, etc slowly build up a charge and try to light, instantly draining the charge. hence the flicker.
@@zolartan4442 yes
@@zolartan4442 yeah I found that shit out yesterday. Dangerous as fuck!
Same thing happened with a CFL at a hotel I stayed at
CFL lights can also emit a glow from ambient electromagnetic fields, microwaves, e.t.c. they also contain built in capacitors that often take a crap and don't discharge properly.
You did an incredible job of assembling that capacitor with those tin snips, nicely done!
I think he just played it in reverse
@@orlagskapten9829 He was joking.
@@orlagskapten9829 This really clears things up. Here I was thinking he could manipulate time. Imagine my shock.
I had this on a large crane a few years ago. The power for the crane was picked up from bars that ran the length of the main beam. There were three lamps which indicated to the operators that the power was switched on and non of the fuses were blown, these were six meters up and needed replacing every few years, so to reduce working at height risks these were replaced with LEDs which did not need replacing as often. Unfortunately they did not turn off when a fuse blew, resulting in maintenance loosing a day chasing the wrong fault down.
Induction can also hold relays in for long cable runs, especially when you replace old inefficient relays with modern ones...
When I saw the cable with the two wires going in parallel my IT background immediately made me hear alarm bells. We don't really deal with constant currents like this but signal corruption is always a consideration. Now this went a little differently than I would've thought but it's the same forces at play.
In the twin and earth cable you should have a CPC (earth) core. Connect that to the earth pin of the plug and see if the light goes out. I think the bulb stays on for the same reason a non contact voltage detector works. If the CPC being connected makes the light go out, would suggest it is induction, and your friend should probably have the continuity of his earthing checked out! 👍
I've seen it happen with the cpc connected to be fair but I will keep this in the old brain just for the next time .. something tells me we are going to see more of this as people try to save money on light bulbs etc !
Light stays out because you are supposed to disconnect +, not neutral. It is a common mistake.
@Steve Mould you are not incorrect saying that the long coil wire is a capacitor, but the capacitor doesn't create the effect you are noticing. It's rather that the long wire is working like a transformer. One is the live wire is creating an oscillating electric field and the other is converting it back into oscillating voltage. This is essentially how every regular transformer works. You could even increase the glow if you decrease the loop size or wrapping it around a metal rod. You are correct that this constantly drawing power of the line, which is different to what a capacitor would do. It would discharge (quickly) and not draw any power of your main line.
Um actually a transformer needs a current running trough it’s primary coil in this example it’s not connected so no current could flow trough it
Um and I didn't know the English term last time, the who thing is called Mutual Inductance.
Physic II intensify
You said it yourself, it works through an oscillating electric field being converted back into oscillating voltage. But this is how a _capacitor_ works, not a transformer. A transformer works through an oscillating magnetic field (generated by an oscillating current) being converted back into oscillating current.
There is an oscillating current passing through the wires (the bulb needs current to power on, obviously), but it's tiny next to the oscillating voltage (full mains), so the capacitive effect wins over with a large margin.
Should have sent it to Big Clive. This is literally his entire channel.
I was looking for someone to mention BC…so now do we need a three-way collaboration?
I'm pretty sure Clive has already mentioned this effect in one of his videos.
Clive would probably like Mr BOOM did a good job. Enjoyable and funny
I've never got into ElectroBoom content. BigClive is a lot more down to earth. No pun intended.
@@bolton368 Clive does watch Mehdi, he's mentioned his channel a couple of times during rambles.
According to my calculations, if you doubled the length of the wire and did not stack the wires on top of each other, the light of the LEDs would increase. This test can also be done with DC current and normal LEDs. Just increase the length of the wire and don't pile them on top of each other.
You have a very good channel. Thankyou.
I loved the way you showed the construction of the capacitor by reversing/rewinding the video. I didn't see the symbol and only noticed when I saw that very odd plier movement.
I was waiting for him to accidentally brush the live wires while it was plugged in with his sweeping hand gestures.
@Diesel Techie nahh.. that's not gonna happen. coz LED bulb has only a low power DC input... and that power wont even kill a mouse... ^_^
@@silaynons @ 3:40 in the video it say AC 230V on the white circuit board lol
@Diesel Techie Or PhotonicInduction! He is REALLY crazy!!! th-cam.com/channels/l9OJE9OpXui-gRsnWjSrlA.html
me too. I would have used Wagos to make life easier and just cap the ends.
go to eletroboom. he touches wires often, jumps around. might be a better way to say do not do this at home
This style works and the other one shown doesn't because this style has just a capacitive dropper, the other has a switching converter controlled by an IC.
Also, a filament light bulb will probably be costing you money when off, just like this LED bulb, it just just doesn't emit any light at the low currents caused by this relatively high impedance phantom voltage.
Right, the filament bulb will create heat as it does with any amount of current, but frequency is related to temperature and it will only be hot enough to produce low-frequency invisible infra-red light.
An incandescent bulb probably costs you a lot less from this effect. The resistance of a cold filament is far lower than a hot one, so the power factor will be very low. It's essentially just a capacitor with no resistance in series, which dissipates zero power.
Greg Ewing The cost is pretty inconsequential as LEDs, unlike incandescent bulbs, will glow on mere microwatts of power and what we were witnessing in the bulb in this video was likely on the order of some milliwatts (the camera will tend to make the bulb appear *much* brighter than in real life since the full intensity bulb tends to overexpose and blowout the highlights thus not actually representing to us how intense the fully lit bulb was in real life). Many cheap capacitive dropper style LED bulbs address the issue by literally adding a resistive load in parallel with the bulb such that the resistor absorbs the vampire current, converting it into heat, pulling the voltage across the LEDs below their forward conductance voltage such that they do not glow (or at least do not glow to any noticeable degree). The affect was further accentuated in this video as most switched lighting circuits don’t have the better part of 100m in their switches return loop leading to greater capacitive coupling and thus more vampire current for the LED bulb than in a typical household setup.
Anyone here speaks English.?
@@rohanbaviskar9373 Sorry, for the last 10 years I only speak Wikipedia
"This bulb can't be switched off!"
*shows us how to switch it off within the first minute*
thanks Mr Mould, you just saved me 9 minutes of time!
I've seen the same effect in my homemade LED bulbs and learned about the capacitance in the wiring from Big Clive, but you presented and explained it very well.
One thing I notice, the UK bulbs appear to have a small transformer built into them along with a capacitor and probably some other components. The Chinese bulb had none of this. It looks like the Chinese ball may actually just simply use a resistive load to reduce the voltage down to a totolerable level for the leds. I suspect what's actually happening is that the coil of wire and the brake in the switch are acting as a coil capacitor circuit and causing the circuit to ring, where the switch acts as a small capacitor and the wiring acts as an inductor. I really wish you would have used in oscilloscope to better see the leakage current through the system.
The explanation of the wiring acting as a capacitor, would not explain why breaking the circuit with a switch causes the light to remain on. Electric current would still have to get through the gap in the switch somehow. What would make more sense is if the wiring were acting as an inductor and the switch acting as the very small value capacitor which with alternating current, will allow current to leak through into the bulb. Since the Chinese bulb does not appear to have any kind of step down transformer to isolate it, I believe it is this leakage current that's keeping the bulb dimly lit.
capacitors let through AC current. Hence Xc=1/ωC (the formula to calculate the impedance of a capacitor for a given frequency and capacitance). Better designed LED bulbs fix this problem by having a resistor between phase and neutral to shunt this tiny current.
I have normal Philips bulbs and I still have the same “problem”, but I have what we call in French “va et vient” switches, so that the bulb can be turned on and off from two deferent places. I guess between the two switches it creates a closed circuit on its own. Thankfully it’s in a corridor with no windows, so in a sans it’s saving me money cause most of the time I don’t turn on the light at all.
In US it's called a three way
Three way wiring. My mind won’t let you just say three way
Ménage à trois wiring 😎😙
How does it saves money what do you didn't get that .. can some please explain it to me
Saksham Singh you really made me think about why I kind of like that bulb. As it is constantly at 10% capacity On, I don’t need to switch it on, it’s like a night light. There is enough movement in that corridor and no day light whatsoever to justify leaving the light fully on, all day long. So in a sense, for me, in that particular configuration, it may actually be saving energy. Also it is particularly useful to check on the baby without the 100W above the door. But I understand that in any other case it is extremely wasteful.
when i encountered this a while back, i had a couple of theories. either, 1, something wrong with the wall wirings; or 2, maybe it's caused by the induction of ac current through the switch (facilitated by the copper wirings in the wall); or 3, due to discharging capacitors in the circuit of the led module.
in the end, we ended up replacing the led module (hoping that it's either caused by 2 or 3). didn't even realize that this was a common phenomenon with chinese led lamps. i feel so much more relaxed and reassured now.
fantastic video!
1:00 Steve: Uses isolating Gloves
ElectroBoom: Touches line wires from a microwave transformer with his bare hands because he want to build a jacobs ladder
There is areason why hes called electroBOOM Y'know.
I'm an electronics engineer and understood the nature of the phenomenon pretty quick... Your voice and fascination with the explanation just kept me watching all the way through
lol you have a crush for him
Or maybe I appreciated the subject matter and the way it was presented, exactly like I said?
Also I'm gay. So no.
Love, love, love, love, how easy you make it to understand things. Honestly, it's amazing how skilled you are at explaining complicated concepts using simple analogies and illustrations. Cant get enough of your videos Steve!!
Actually the effect described could never happen in a house built after common european laws, because it's illegal to not use the live for the switch. The effect you described is also the cause why power lines and radio/antenna lines never are drawn parallel to each other
My names Elias Truer btw
Isn't he switching live in the video? I'm not good with electrical stuff but it looked that way to me
The live IS used for the switch. BUT, it wouldn't work in my house because the mains wires are under the floor, the wire goes up the wall, through the switch, then up to the ceiling to the lights. No capacitor. To make it work you need the utterly weird nonsensical way of the live going to the fitting first (well the connection block in the ceiling, not the one on the end of the wire where the bulb goes in), then going off to the switch, then coming back along the same wire! No idea why some houses get wired up like that, it means you turn off the switch and you still have live in the ceiling rose. OUCH! Off the ladder you fall when you jump.
@@lambertovitali3152 is the switch capacitance alone not enough? I suspect it would be.
7:38 Love to use of reverse playback to show how a real capacitor works. No visualizations, you see the real thing. This is a great channel.
If it was acting like a capacitor while the live is switched off, even with some stored charge in the cable, the lamps would not run indefinitely, It`s getting power from the neutral which is also a line conductor, and no switch wire in a house is 50M long coiled up like that to create an induction loop. Double pole switching solves this issue.
The difference is in the test arrangement and a house. In a house you always got bundles of cables coming out of the fuse box so you will always have induction from the live wires, even of theyre not coiled up. Thats why you try to not put the big cables from bigger devices like the heating or water boilder in your house next to the smaller cables that power your rooms. Youll get a lot of induction from the big cables that could destroy the flimsy electronics of some devices.
Im an industrial electrician, and first thing you learn there is never put 24 Volts DC cables in one place with 240 Volts AC cables cause it will fry all your PLCs and electronics cause of the induction.
It will not not work with + switched off.
I like the cut edit at 0:40. Like you just decided to cut to the chase.
My idea was to measure electro magnetic fields and see what you normally would on IR. Big oversight was that MRI exist and it's very difficult
I had this happen on my chandelier when we switched to led 5 years ago , i thought the wire was acting like a capacitor. it always made me scratch my noodle
That's because it's your head you have to scratch, duh!
Don't scratch too much, your noodle might lose some electrons
This happens when you connect the ground through the swich while the led is permanently connected to live.
It can happen when it has pemanent ground as well, depending on the ground resistance and if you have electric motors on the circuit.
You have two wires separated by insulation. When you open the wire at the end you create a capacitor. The longer the wire the greater capacitance. The LED is connected in series with the capacitor when the wire is opened at the end. The capacitance creates an impedance XC and the voltage splits between the LED (mostly its internal bias resistor) and XC. In this case the impedance XC is such that it allows a voltage drop across the LED that is within the LED's operating voltage range.
Also of note is the fact that the light never turned on until the switch was closed. The LED needs to be forward biased before it will light and this happens the first time the switch is closed and full voltage is applied to the LED turning it on. Once the LED is biased and the switch is opened then the circuit is completed through the capacitor and the light will stay on. The light will have 2 different brightness levels as one turns on and off the switch the capacitor will be cut in and out of the circuit.
Basically what he said in the video.
I have a question?? I have 5 LED lights I've been using for a while 2 of them does the same thing when the timer cuts off the whole light stays lit slightly( maybe 5% of the full hundred percent illumination) I'd hate to get rid of them do you have a fix?????
I don't want to have to unplug them every time the timer supposed to cut them off so I'm using them for veg only right now ( but it's too much of a monster light to just use it for veg it's a waste of money SMH) I bought them long ago and didn't use them until after the warranty ,,,Genius huh!!!
To Ronald Everston.
Use a "2 pole" switch instead of a "1 pole" switch.
You will probably have to go to an electrical supplier to find one. If the general public is not asking for an item then Rona, Hope Depot, etc. won't stock it.
Break both wires to your light and you can keep those lights.
@@cdnskiiertracker1058 thank you I'll try that.....
We got $1 screw in LED light bulbs for our house when we first moved here. They all glow for quite a long time after we turn them off. I always wondered about that.
Mains electricity, bare terminals, and water from a syringe. All at one small desk.
Hmmm: I would like to see your risk assessment for this video
Distilled water, no problem.
6:45 He plunges his bare hand way too close to live open ends of wire, with the bulb glowing to show that there is definitely power running through it.
True River it depends if it’s mineralised
KnuckleHunkybuck it’s not enough voltage to arc. Don’t be a idiot
The horror of the fact that you are sending a Thundering Herd of defenseless Souls into the clutches of electroboom.😁
I had a night light/reading lamp like this, was super confusing to me. Thank you for explaining it!
You are explaining simple concept in difficult terms.
Had this happen with a small LED indicator light on a panel we were building for an industrial piece of equipment. It was a real head-scratcher for about a week.
How did you fix it?
@@plinkfuture2557 Move the switch to the other wire.
those type of bulbs were designed originally for smal lamps, decoration peices etc, that use dual pole switches (inline switches or other types). if your using such bulbs in main lighting use dual pole wall switches that are available
Steve: no bulbs, wires, switches, etc were harmed in the making of this video
Mehdi: my time to shine
This shows you that you always have some loss in jacketed (Romex) wire in your house due to capacitive effects between hot and neutral/ground (maybe knob and tube had some advantages). When I'm doing new wiring, I try to run power to the switch first which removes hot from the equation. This only happens when you run hot and return originating from the light fixture.
Your water anology actually does still work: if you compare a capacitor to a flexible non permiable wall.
An example test setup could be two balloons in one box, where one balloon is the anode and one the cathode. The capacity is decided by the size of the container.
(The water tubes are connected to the balloons, resulting in a limited amount of "DC" flow, since the balloons can only displace eachother, not leak trough)
For this to work however, It's important that the box is small enough that the balloons push against eachother when inflating.
"They're not your typical screw-in Edison"
You mean screw you Edison.
shes made of iron sir, she'll sink.
@@alanssnack1192 yeah that's the kind of statement we'd expect from Trump.
Is that a line from "The Current War"?
That maniac Thomas Alva Edison deliberately electrocuted an elephant
in an attempt to prove that DC was a better choice than AC, as proposed
by Nikola Tesla.
I would hope that Edison is burning well keeping the demons in the Hell House warm.
@@Zarrar2802 *B U I L D A W A L L*
If the LED bulb is still on when he turns off the switch that means the light socket is positioned before the switch within the circuit. This only happens to LED as they are very low wattage!!
So although the switch is off and the circuit interrupted, the bulb is still using the electricity that is in the circuit just before the switch.
My standard LED bulbs I bought from Home Depot do that. After researching it, turns out my situation is just as mentioned above. Technically, it's poor electrical work that was done incorrectly but at least it won't cause a fire!
Rooms with parallel switches (1 switch turns on or off, the other does the same but they are independent) causes some electricity going unfortunately
@@AhmetOmerOzgen Yes, that is happening in the fixture over my staircase.
@@AhmetOmerOzgen yes, the naive construction has to put the switch on neutral in this case, which is always wrong.
You did a really good job putting that capacitor back together.
the schematic for the "round and round and round housed in a single casing" gave me a real belly laugh. thanks for that
I came for click-bait and now I'm getting educated about something I've always wondered about... what a ripoff.
Yeah, sorry about that.
Oof
Click bait? This post? A click bait? Lol...
That's funny right there I tell you.
life sucks eh
It has a bridge rectifier. Which turns the AC into DC. The little transformer lowers the current and voltage for use before the rectifier.
A bridge rectifier is literally just 4 diodes hooked in a configuration.
FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER
try reading it with Mehdi's voice. 😂
Nicholas Lenzo FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIRE!!!!
TH-cam: Does Electricity REALLY Flow? (Electrodynamics)
TH-cam: How Electricity Actually Works
Thank you Mehdi aka Electroboom for directing me here. Can't believe youtube never made the recommendation.
You are going yo have a great time watching "the man that pour things out of veakers" hahahahaha.
Steve has a great channel
I have had exactly the same effect with compact fluorescent bulbs. Both lights are extremely good at making some small amounts of light from tiny amounts of electricity.
If the switch is inline with the active wire on the way to the light there is no issue. If both the active and neutral wires are taken to the light and then a LOOP is made from the active wire to the switch and back to the light then the problem does happen. The glowing light might be viewed as a "night light" or as an annoyance. PS the same amount of electricity is used if you had an incandescent bulb. The capacitance has not altered. The only difference is that the incandescent bulb doesn't glow with low current flows.
ahh... thats why my ceiling light never shuts down completely... i tried to take a photo of it wiht long exposure and the photo ended up like bright day light....
my switches had tiny lights in them and removing them solved the issue with glowing LEDs
@@linecraftman3907 thats the neon which causes flickering. Some brands fixed it in previous gen lamps by adding 2sec delay in powering on. Havent tested it on LED tbh
What camera?
@@linaskvedaras oneplus 6 camera
ElectroBOOM solved it with a high value resistor on the LED
LEDs don’t require that much voltage, and when you switch it off there’s still enough to light it up just really dim
That's nonsense
I knew it's gonna be ElectroBOOM. Because Mr. Mould is playing with water near an electrical socket...
Who is ElectroBOOM>?¬?!??!?!?!??
@@firefish111 if you're too busy this week don't start watching his videos, I'm sure you'll miss your deadlines.
To answer your questions, he's the funnies TH-camr that will teach you but will scare you A LOT :D
@@bolow Hence the name electro *_BOOM_* 😜😜😜
@@bolow That man gives me anxiety, every time I sense he's about to do something that'll go bang I have to pause and re-adjust my volume.
But F000LBREEDGERECTIFYRRR FTW
Oh Lordy...water and electricity. Some of you folks are rally uneducated....th-cam.com/video/WvbvMT-ieTw/w-d-xo.html
I ran into this phenomena once in my years of semi-amateur handyman work. I was installing a ceiling fan. Both wires coming out of the ceiling were very old fabric sheathed, that through years of dirt and heat became the same color (dirt brown). So I got out my multi-meter to find hot and neutral. I found hot easily (USA 110V). But I was puzzled why I was getting a few steady volts out of the neutral. I called my friend who was a real electrician. He explained it to me.
Talking with your hands near the live wire made me so anxious
If you think that's bad you should watch Electroboom.
It made you anxious because you got no clue about electricity (except for fears). 220V on normal household A only tingles you (bit violently) on the spot. When it starts to get shocking is 380V double-live systems.
The water part wasn't ok imo either.
@@3goats1coat 220V definitely won't just "tingle" you. Electroboom once touched 120V and from his experience it isn't great.
@@3goats1coat Trust me 220V (or rather 230VAC nominal, closer to 245VAC in many places) can and does kill people. I know, I came close when I stupidly didn't turn the power off when changing a breaker on an old MEM2000 Consumer unit, couldn't breathe as AC voltage was disrupting muscle control, only survived as the breaker burned out (30Amps!!) otherwise I'd be a corpse pushing up daisies by now. (and I'm an ex sparky so I should have known better, but its common in the industry as a time saver and complacency kills)
@@johnphillip1711 first of, I'm glad to hear you're ok. Wasn't smart of you..
What I've been talking about is an outlet, which floats around the 1-2A range, not the main intake.
By the way, did you ground yourself with the other hand? From the breathing problems I'd assume so, otherwise it'd just run through to the closer foot and not really affect the chest area.
I've experienced this effect! I had an Ethernet cable which ran from the room that I rent to the modem just outside, but it was way too long for this purpose, so most of it sat coiled in my room. This cable was old and busted, the shielding had become useless. This coil of cable ended up becoming a sort of electromagnet, and causing EMI for the house's Wi-Fi connection.
I fought for months that my Ethernet cable wasn't the problem, because why would I sacrifice my phone's ability to connect to WiFi? And the Ethernet cable was just going to a spare hobby box with no WiFi card. It wasn't using bandwidth. They thought that it was the modem "prioritizing" the Ethernet connection, which is... not a thing.
But then I realized what was going on, and it was like a lightbulb went off (ha)
It was the cable, but for a completely different reason!
I always thought it was like a transformer, generating a tiny current due to the alternating current generating a shifting magnetic field that generates a tiny current in the other cable. Especially since in my house the cables are not in the same cable, but two separate wire in a bigger plastic tube.
This
I'd also say that this is more correct. A capacitor regulates the pass through of electrons, but what happens here is the interaction of flux. Think an antenna (communication by creating and detecting electromagnetic fields), or rather a transformer since we're talking conversion of power. This isn't "travel of electrons", but conversion of energy from electric to electromagnetic and back to electric.
A transformer works by creating magnetic field at the apparent disconnection point, which in turn generates electric field on the other side and transfers energy.
That is certainly not happening at that simple switch or his hand.
@@iwatchwithnoads7480 the lamp contains metal, this metal is held in the air. In the air a changing electric field is created. This creates a small current in the metal in the bulb and since the bulb requires only a small current it's enough to light it gently. So it's exactly like how a transformer works. As a shifting electric field is also creating current in an air gapped secondary circuit.
@@zazethe6553 you're describing two conductors separated by a dielectric, one inducing current on the other side by oscillating electric field.
You're describing a capacitor
The anxiety of watching his hands moving next to the live wires when he talks 🥴
It's a camera trick. If you look, the wires are out of focus because they're much closer to the camera, or spliced in from a second shot.
Zero anxiety. Because I am not an idiot.
@@watcherofwatchers I was just writing a comment no need to reply to it like an idiot
I've seen this phenomenon in the wild in a hotel room in Spain.
Thanks for the explanation; I was wondering.
his remark of the coppling at the end of the long wire just sending the power back again through the other wire made me laugh just that little "and it comes out, this is stupid- and goes back in"
In other words the stray capacitance in the cable causes a capacitive reactance low enough at 50Hz to inject enough forward current into the LED's to power them.
It induces a voltage, not current because it's an open circuit.
At a higher frequency it would get worse.
@@j-man72b72 Semantics man. Yes Suzy Siviter. The capacitive coupling induces a voltage on the adjacent wire and therefore provides CURRENT! Obviously lacking current the LED would not light! However yes the current is small and proportional to the dielectric capacity of the wire, the voltage, resistance and the frequency (50Hz UK, 60Hz US).
Yes, Suzy, that is exactly the explanation for what is happening. Why is it so hard for the rest of you to understand?
@@freddyzdead1 As they say, a little knowledge is dangerous).
@@danthemancasey you mean inductive effect.
8:18, i have seen that in more complex circuits, it converts AC to DC of a lower voltage
Induction. Make that long cable longer, it'll glow brighter. And it happens with the cheap ones because there is no reverse voltage protection in the lamp.
No. Induction needs a flowing current on one side to induce a current on the other side. You get a tiny bit of that here, too, but the amount is miniscule and would not be enough to power anything.
@@HenryLoenwind it is called mutual induction, self induction is what he must be implying, these two are genereral categories of induction.
The biggest issue is that our AC systems use a push / pull system rather than the two sides actually switching polarity. This is also why most US plugs are keyed to only go in one way. Among other reasons like rare safety conditions, some devices would not function correctly if plugged in the opposite way because complex electronics have to factor in the amount of power that is lost as it goes through the system. If power were coming the opposite direction it could result in incorrect voltages and currents at certain points.