Slightly OT- Electrical

Sort of reminds me of a college prank. I disassembled one fellows electric alarm clock, and slid the shading coils on the frame to the opposite sides. This resulted in the motor running backwards.

When the victim saw it, he opened up the clock, diked off the factory-installed crimp terminals connecting the AC line cord to the motor, interchanged the line wires, twisted the connections back together, (I forget whether he taped them for insulation or used wire nuts.) Anyway -- he was amazed to discover that the clock *still* ran backwards).

While he was gone to get someone to witness this, we swapped in the frame from another similar clock, and took our time later shifting the shading coils back to the proper position.

Enjoy, DoN.

That's not funny. Hee hee. No really, it was probably hilarious. Great prank.

If the shading coil is open, however, you wind up with a motor that starts at random direction. Much more frustrating. I found this out by inference when our old dishwasher would sometimes start and run through the cycle just fine - and other times would start, and then shut itself off again.

Interrupting it in mid-cycle would lead to *all* kinds of trouble!!

Jim

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Just a hystorical note: in 1943 two soviet scientist, Mr. and Mrs. B. R. and N.J. Lazarenko, were researching how to avoid erosion of contacts in relays. They tryied to use oil as insulator ... and found out that this improved erosion and so invented the EDM process!